‘We feel loved’
Wednesday, February 6th, 2019
Young Mumba Musabimana and his wife, Dorothy Girinmbabazi, six months pregnant, were quietly beginning a life together in Ceya, a Congolese village near the Ugandan border, when they found themselves fleeing for their lives.
A conflict, fueled by fallout from the Rwandan genocide of 1994, had concentrated in the border area of the three countries. As the number of groups at odds with each other grew, the indiscriminate killing began.
“It was our first time to see war,” Mumba says. “We had never even heard the sound of a bullet.”
One brother-in-law was killed outright. Another was taken never to be seen again. A cousin also died. Dorothy lost a brother too. Close family friends—mother, father and five children—were killed in one day. The rebels used anything on hand–guns, car bombs, landmines, hammers.
The couple fled to the nearby mountains, sneaking back home for food. Rebels Mumba met on an excursion back promised the fighting had stopped, but it was just to lure families back to their homes to be slaughtered.
After two weeks, Mumba and Dorothy heard refugees were being received in Uganda and they left their hiding place to join those escaping their homeland. Mumba remembers the exact day of their exodus: Nov. 15, 1996.
Twenty-two years later, the family—which had grown to five children (one daughter is now deceased)—stepped off the plane into the August heat of East Tennessee. The couple live with their two younger sons and daughter. An older son, Joseph, arrived in the U.S. earlier and also lives in Knoxville.
For years, the family held onto the hope of returning to the Congo. But many of those who did, including a tribal king who called for his people to return, were killed. And refugees arrived at the Kyangwali refugee settlement in ever growing numbers.
Although they did their best to make a life in Uganda, cultivating the plot of land they were provided, raising a house and sending their children to the settlement school, Uganda would not grant them citizenship. It could never be home, Mumba says.
The camp was also a volatile place, subject to internal violence as well as threats from the outside. In 2003, for instance, Ugandan’s notorious Lord’s Republican Army rebels attacked the camp, killing, kidnapping and looting.
Mumba originally applied for refugee status in 2007, but it wasn’t until the plight of the Congolese refugees raised broader international attention that the process began to move forward. Finally, after more than 10 years of waiting, the family is adjusting to life in America. They marvel at the weather extremes—wiltingly hot in summer and winters in which “you can see the sun but it’s still cold,” Mumba says—at the variety of American grocery stores, the well-equipped schools, the doctors who take time to make a diagnosis before prescribing medication. The family is still adjusting to not having a garden or being able to walk anywhere they need to go.
They have been most surprised by the welcome reception of their new homeland—from the attentive stewardesses on their flights to the U.S. to the Bridge case workers who helped set up their apartment, enroll their children in school and find Mumba his current job at Custom Foods. Mumba appreciates the large local community of Congolese and has even reconnected with friends from Uganda. He has found a local congregation of his faith, Jehovah’s Witnesses, where he says members have welcomed them– some are even learning Swahili.
“We feel like we are really loved,” he says.