Sudanese Refugees Find a Home in Chicago

Dec. 12, 2008

Story by Ebony L. McCline

Maketh Bul Mabior walks into a downtown Starbucks ten minutes late. However, he does not appear to be in a rush. His six-foot frame turns as the revolving, see-through door twirls around. He stops. He looks around. He pulls out his cell phone, proceeds to dial a number, not realizing that he has already been noticed.

Mabior, a Sudanese refugee, has a huge smile on his face, highlighting the contrast between the color of his skin and his pearly white teeth. Even though it is warm in Chicago, 26-year-old Mabior has seen some not so warm nights in his past.

He is just one of the thousands of refugees who resettle in the United States each year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2007, 698 Sudanese refugees resettled in the United States; 22 of them ended up in Illinois.

It took almost a decade for Mabior to get to this Starbucks in Illinois. He now lives in an apartment with a roommate, who is also from Sudan, near downtown Chicago.

He was 10 years old when he and his four siblings left their screaming parents in Sudan. Mabior can still here his mother’s voice.

“These people are not making me leave my house,” his mother said after encouraging her children that the right thing for her to do was to stay, while they left to go to live with their uncle.

“This is our house,” his parents said with conviction. However, Mabior said the only reason his parents stayed was because they believed the war would not last long.

They were wrong. The war that caused Mabior to flee his country has lasted about 20 years. It is on again and off again, Mabior said. But the day he left, the day his parents forced him to leave for his own good, is the day he remembers well.

The war that is happening now in the Darfur region of western Sudan stems from overpopulation and desertification. The current death toll is unknown; however, the bulk of the fight is over the control of resources, such as oil, in South Sudan.

Mabior was directly affected by the war each day. Government forces would invade his village and destroy it by blowing things up and setting the village on fire, he said.

A sea of yellowish, red-orange flames set ablaze, while people from his Sudanese village ran around in different directions in what can only be referred to as total chaos.

Little did he know that after spending three years with his uncle, he would be forced to leave to return to the same chaos he already experienced in Sudan, this time in a refugee camp in Kenya.

“It was a war we did not prepare for,” Mabior said. “Sometimes we had no shoes because we had to leave with what we had.”

At times, there was food, and Mabior’s sister would carry an empty container that they would fill with water.

After nine years of going from country to country, in a refugee camp in Kenya, Mabior started the process of coming to the United States, a grueling ordeal that begins with an in-depth interview to determine who would be eligible to leave.

“I will go to school and work,” he told the interviewer. “I would do anything to help myself when I come to the United States.”

“If you answer questions like ‘I’m going to go and lay around and do nothing,’ then you would not pass the interview,” Mabior said.

Mabior’s answers must have been correct because he passed his interview. Next, he passed a medical exam. He received an $850 loan, which he had to pay back after getting a job, for a plane ticket to the United States. Mabior arrived here alone.

When Sudanese refugees resettle in the United States, they usually come with small families, said Andrea Kaufmann, marketing and communications manager of World Relief, a Baltimore-based organization that works with churches in an effort to relieve human suffering.

“There has not been a noticeable increase or decrease of Sudanese refugees within the last few years,” said Kaufmann. “There was only a huge influx when people fled South Sudan in the early 90’s.”

Last year Mabior traveled back home for the first time in the seven years that he has been in the U.S. He owes all the thanks to his job, which awarded him employee of the year. The consolation prize: paid airfare to anywhere in the United States. Mabior missed his family so much that he convinced his employer to fund his first trip back home.

“I could’ve went to Vegas or somewhere else and had a ball,” he said, “but I wanted to see my family. When I finally made it home, it was so emotional.”

Emotional primarily because it had been 19 years since he had seen his mother, who had no idea that he was coming.

For about 30 seconds, Mabior stood in shock as he watched his mother jump up and down with joy as she hugged him. He was a little boy the last time she saw him. She was taller than him then, but that has all changed.

“She wanted to lift me up,” he said, in between a huge roar of laughter,”but I was too heavy.”

Mabior is already planning another visit back home next year because the three months he spent in 2007 was not enough.

Peter Magai is a life-long friend of Mabior’s and president of Ayual Community Development Association, an organization that is comprised of Sudanese refugees resettled in the United States, of which both men are members. Magai wants to go back to Sudan as well.

“Maybe we can go back together soon,” Magai said. “Maketh went back before me last time. When he goes back, I always tell him to bring school supplies and stuff for students in Sudan.”