By
FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
Omar Bah, with son Samba,
was so overwhelmed by the kindness he enjoyed upon this arrival in Rhode Island
that he’s committed to helping other refugees build a home here. (Joanna
Detz/ecoRI News photos)
PROVIDENCE — Omar Bah likes to say he fled the smallest country in
Africa to be saved by the smallest state in America. His journey was grueling.
When he landed in Rhode Island, in 2007, he didn’t know a soul.
Not surprising, since he didn’t know anyone anywhere in the entire United
States. He hadn’t even heard of Providence or Rhode Island until the day before
he arrived.
Less than a decade later, Bah is a pillar in the local community,
especially when it comes to helping those who share a similar experience.
While many of our presidential candidates and elected “leaders”
have spent the past several years vilifying refugees and immigrants as terrorists,
drug mules, rapists and murderers, Bah has been helping men, women and children
from war-torn countries and the tyrannical oppression of dictators reclaim
control of their lives. He understands the trauma and challenges refugees face.
He still lives it.
Omar Bah was forced to flee Gambia in the mid-2000s.
Bah, a journalist in Gambia in his previous life, was forced to
flee his native land when he was 26. The country’s dictatorial government
didn’t appreciate his brand of political reporting, nor did its officials like
the fact Bah wrote about the many problems associated with the dumping of
rubbish in an open pit in the center of the country’s capital.
He was arrested by government officials — luckily for him, his
arrest was witnessed by human-rights workers and fellow journalists. He was
held for a day, much of it spent being tortured. If not for the witnesses, Bah
would have “disappeared.”
Bah wrote a book titled
“Africa’s Hell on Earth: The Ordeal of an African Journalist.” Published
in 2014, the book details his experiences living and working in Africa’s
smallest country.
He describes Gambian life as: “If you are hungry, you die hungry.
If you are sick, you die sick. If you are hopeless, you die without hope.”
There is one TV station, a propaganda arm of the government.
The military
shoots protesters. He once witnessed a pregnant woman in need of medical
attention taken to the hospital in a donkey cart, where she and her newborn
died screaming in the waiting room.
The book’s title “Africa's Hell on Earth” refers to the nickname
of the infamous Gambian prisons where many people have disappeared. The prisons
are overcrowded, and there is much disease, torture, killing and suffering.
On the back cover of Bah’s 230-page memoir is this line: “Now,
with a gun pointed at me, a torch light flashing into my face, I stood up and
raised my arms up in surrender.”
After his release from Gambian custody, and after several more
run-ins with government officials who feared his intelligence, Bah fled to
neighboring Senegal, without his wife, whom he had recently married. His path
to freedom led him to Ghana and eventual resettlement in the United States.
Once in Rhode Island, Bah found work, earned undergraduate and
graduate degrees, and founded a refugee advocacy and assistance organization.
He said he was able to accomplish those things because he was embraced by the
community.
“People cared for me and about me,” Bah said. They gave him a
home, hope and encouragement. They believed in him.
For three years, during his time in Senegal, Ghana and his
beginnings in the United States, Bah was separated from his wife, Teddi Jallow.
The couple had only been married for two months before Bah was forced to,
literally, run for his life. Jallow was constantly threatened and harassed by
Gambia’s corrupt police, until she was able to be reunited here with her
husband.
Bah now represents the state of Rhode Island at the Refugee
Congress, which is hosted by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees
in Washington, D.C. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communication studies with
a minor in political science from the University of Rhode Island, and a
master’s degree in public administration from Roger Williams University. He
also has completed a trauma treatment certification program at Harvard
University through the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. He has led workshops
at Brown University.
Most importantly, he and Jallow are the parents of two sons —
Barry who turns 6 next month and 4-year-old Samba.
The nonprofit Refugee Dream Center was
established by Bah and his wife to bridge the gap between the services refugees
receive from the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island and the Diocese
of Providence and living on their own in a new country with a different
language and culture.
During ecoRI News’ recent Friday afternoon visit, the center’s
space on Lockwood Street was buzzing with kids, a group of women was being
taught English and several recent refugees were working with a staffer.
“We don’t bring refugees here; we help continue services,” Bah
said. “Six months isn’t a long time for refugees to get acclimated to a new
culture. There’s a huge gap in services. Every refugee is dealing with trauma —
PTSD, depression. In the 1980s the U.S. government used to fund services for
three years."
The center currently is working with about 50 refugees. Its work
is largely funded by grants and donations. “People have been generous,” Bah
said.
Center staff and volunteers help refugees get referrals and
assistance, and they provide health-care education and cultural orientation,
mental-health support services, after-school programs, tutoring and mentoring
for youth, and English language and job skills development. The center gives
refugees the chance to integrate into the larger U.S. society by providing them
the means to interact and share their unique cultures and skills.
Basically, Bah and his staff provide society with the opposite of
what a Feb. 22 political stunt at the Statehouse was offering: ignorance and
fear.
Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, a former chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee, came to Rhode Island to join Rep. Mike
Chippendale, R-Foster, and Charles Jacobs, president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, to call on
Gov. Gina Raimondo to reconsider the welcoming of Syrian refugees. Chippendale,
originally advertised to be part of the circus, didn't show up.
In a press release touting the stunt, Jacobs peddled: “We are a country
of immigrants that welcomes people who come to join us and bolster our way of
life. We sympathize with people fleeing war. But an influx of Syrian refugees
may pose significant dangers to Rhode Islanders, especially to the Jewish
community here.
“Throughout the national discussion, few have raised the question
of deeply ingrained hatred of the West, especially of Jews, inculcated through
Syrian educational intuitions — starting from childhood.
Yet studies of Syrian
school curricula and culture show that practically every Syrian will have been
taught these hatreds.”
Rhode Island welcomes about 200 refugees annually, as it has for
decades. Many have come from Syria, Iraq and Rwanda, countries that, like the
United States, feature segments of the population known to preach hate.
The Ocean State needs more people like Bah, his wife and the
people who help them run the Refugee Dream Center, no matter where they’re from
or how they got here.