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Food was scarce. Violence, starvation, and the death of newborns were common. But Muridi came to manhood and steered clear of most trouble. Occasionally, he found work as a janitor. He let his uncle find a bride for him. "Halima? She is good," Muridi says, describing his arranged marriage. "Even I have two children from her. How can I leave her? I love her so much. Halima, she's my wife."

Halima's family also fled Somalia when she was very young, and she has no memory of the trip. But she and her children, like half the Somali Bantu, have no memory of anything but exile. She is tiny—100 pounds of lean muscle. Gaining much weight in a refugee camp is unheard of. Daily survival requires the hard labor of hauling water and firewood. "That's how we lived," she now says. "Sometimes we never even had water. We didn't have enough food." The U.N.'s World Food Program rations made the difference between life and death. "We had no money so there was no food. We just had the food the white people give us. Just corn; we used to eat that."

But even in the camps, Somali Bantu suffered discrimination from other refugees. They endured violent attacks more than other ethnic groups. In time, relief workers uncovered their plight, and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) now recognizes them as a minority at-risk population.

Eventually, many Somali Bantu, including Muridi and Halima, relocated to Kakuma, another sprawling camp of 60,000 on the Kenya-Sudan border. Many Somali Bantu made the best of their situation, attending classes and working at meager jobs. They elected elders to represent their interests with aid organizations, their first taste of self-determination. Traditionally moderate Muslims, they resisted pressure to join extremist sects. Though they have been a small group within the refugee camp, they held a majority of the manual labor jobs. They quickly gained a stellar reputation among international aid workers.

Pius Sefu, a project manager for World Vision at Kakuma, says, "I find the Somali Bantu very industrious. Have you looked at the cleanliness of that place?" The Somali Bantu have made their own bricks to build extensions onto their houses, decorated their homes with intricate whitewash designs, and dug irrigation to grow gardens in an otherwise arid wasteland. "That's unique to the Somali Bantu," Sefu says.

While many ethnic Somalis look forward to returning to Somalia when peace returns to their nation, the Bantu know they cannot go back. It was never really their home. In 1997, the UNHCR began negotiations to resettle the Somali Bantu to ancestral homelands in Mozambique and Tanzania. Burdened with their own internal problems, both nations backed away from the idea.

In 1999, the Clinton administration offered asylum to all Somali Bantu who had agreed to resettle in Africa. A long process ensued to verify exactly which refugees qualified. Applicants had to prove that they were indeed Somali Bantu and that they had been persecuted in Somalia.

The U.S. government's offer turned out to have an astonishing price tag. By the end of August 2001, the Bantu finally were ready. But the September 11 terrorist attacks changed everything. With new security risks, Americans could not safely visit refugee camps to conduct immigration interviews. All Somali Bantu had to be re-verified to ward against infiltrators. The men also had to prove they were not a security threat to Americans. The only way the State Department could honor its offer and maintain U.S. security was to set up a new, secure processing office and move the Somali Bantu to a safe holding site until they migrate. To do so, the State Department expects to spend $50 million for staff, security, and supplies in one of the world's least hospitable places.

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July 2004, Vol. 48, No. 7