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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

12/26/2003

Nowehere But Here
This kind of story happens nowhere on earth but in the United States of America.

Before the civil war in the 1990s, most Bantu, as did Ader, eked out an existence as farmers living in huts without running water, electricity, flush toilets or televisions. Few ever attended school. The Aders are among many who have arrived malnourished.

Ader's wife, Fatuma Abdi, has had to learn how to use a stove instead of firewood and a dishwasher for plates, frying pans and forks the family never owned before. Her children have overcome their suspicions of packaged pretzels. Abdi, 24, who keeps her father's name in Bantu tradition, says she felt like crying with joy when she first understood disposable diapers never had to be washed.

Outranking all of those modern novelties, however, is this one:

''None of my children have cried of hunger here,'' said Ader, 36, through a translator as he watched his boisterous 2-year-old son wrestle an older brother to the carpeted floor of their two-bedroom apartment near Murfreesboro Pike.

By 2005, the United States plans to resettle about 12,000 Bantu across the country, according to the U.S. State Department.

...

Ader has just been here a month. He anticipates learning English and getting a job before his next child is born in May. This one will be Bantu-American. The child can be president, Ader said.
Here for just one month, doesn't speak the language, and finds modern gadgetry confusing. But he already knows that his unborn child can one day become anything it desires, in America.

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