From A Prison to Princeton

In August 2005, Abass landed on U.S. soil. He moved into a tiny dorm room: the most magnificent dwelling he had ever seen. "The room was very beautiful, well furnished with a bed, with a mattress, with a chair, with a table, with electricity. I didn't have to use my kerosene lamp anymore," he says. It took Abass weeks to figure out the radiator on the wall. He also had to learn how to use the shower. His first day in the dining hall, he was astonished at the amount and variety of food: "I thought it was part of Princeton's hospitality welcome … Then I realized that was the same thing that was being served almost on a daily basis." He found two jobs and quickly adjusted to the strange new place.

Now a junior studying environmental science, Abass is still working two jobs and sending money back home. But he's also settled in. "I miss my family … but I feel at home in Princeton," he says. Earlier this year he was approved for political asylum, which means eventually he may be able to marry a girl in the camps he has his eye on, and even bring some family members to the United States. That hope makes their lives so much brighter than the lives of tens of thousands of their neighbors, who see only desert sand stretching into infinity.

For kids in Dadaab without Abass's diligence and luck, options are few. Even if they can get into a Kenyan university, they're prohibited as refugees from taking jobs in the country once they graduate. If they are not awarded a precious resettlement slot in a peaceful country, or spirited away by a program like WUSC, they essentially have three choices. They can languish, vanish into the illegal netherworld or return to violence-racked Somalia. An estimated 7 million refugees worldwide are similarly "warehoused"—separated from society, deprived of basic rights, trapped in a stateless limbo. That number gives only a hint of the daunting odds a would-be Abass has to overcome.

Adapted from “Against the Odds,” A radio production of Ellis Cose, Inc., distributed by Public Radio International and supported by the Ford Foundation.

© 2007