Educating Super Learners: Monthly Newsletter of the ESL Department of Columbus Public Schools, Columbus, OH. November 2004 Vol. 1 Issue 3

The challenge to many Columbus Public ESL teachers who have new Bantu students in class isn’t on how to modify tenth-grade content for a student at a pre-K reading level or how to teach students the rules of proper punctuation—it’s how to teach these West African students to correctly hold a pencil, get on the right bus to go home and learn to print the letters in their names.

To growing numbers of Somali Bantu students, our ESL classrooms are, in many cases, the first and only place they’ve been outside the rickety tents and sweltering heat of the unstructured refugee camps where they were born. Following Somalia’s government collapse in 1991 and resulting civil war, the Bantu—a minority group of subsistence farmers and menial laborers denied land ownership and education—were forced to flee Somalia and relocate to Kenya where they found temporary reprieve in one of two refugee camps: Dabaab, until crimes and assaults against the Bantu by native Kenyan Turkanas forced the refugee agencies to relocate the Bantus to the Kakuma camp.

Originally native to Mozambique, Malawi, Mauritania and Tanzania, Bantus were taken to Somalia over two hundred years ago by Arab slave traders. Amidst the upheaval in their lives, most of the Bantu adopted Somali culture and religion as their own. Most are Muslim and find strength in numbers with other Bantu members. Owing to their background of farmers and laborers, Bantu tend to have large families of eight to ten children and no formal education or schooling. They have no written language and speak Mai Mai, a Somali dialect.

While 172 Bantu students are currently enrolled in Columbus Public, 12,000 refugees will settle in the United States within the next two years. Part of the largest refugee group to receive permission to relocate to America since the mid-1990s, the Bantu cannot resettle in Somalia, and the native countries of Mozambique and Tanzania have rescinded offers to house them. Units at Linden Elementary and Linden Park Elementary School have been opened exclusively to host the growing Bantu student population in Columbus. The middle school-aged students are enrolled at the Mifflin Welcome Center and Southeast Welcome Center hosts the high school Bantu. With guidance, patience and time they will eventually make their way into classrooms around the district.

*Special thanks to Amina Mohammed for contributing to this article.

For more information on culture, customs and traditions of the Bantu, visit these sites:

Burlington Free Press: Bantus in Vermont—
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/bantu/

Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture—
http://www.culturalorientation.net/bantu/

US Dept. of State: International Info Programs—
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/af/usafr/a3020502.htm

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