Bryan Meltz

CLARKSTON, GEORGIA (Current Project): 4x5 Polaroids

In the past twenty years nearly 50,000 refugees have settled in and around Clarkston, Georgia, a small town ten miles east of Atlanta. This series of portraits focuses on Somali Bantu and Sudanese families. Recent Board of Health estimates show that over 71% of these refugees in Clarkston are female, and all of those, as implied by their refugee status, are survivors of civil conflict, war, torture, trauma, rape and/or genocide. Having traveled thousands of miles for the promise of a new start, these women arrive in the US filled with tremendous hope for a better life for themselves and for heir children.

This project began in 2004 while working as the still photographer for the PBS film, Rain in a Dry Land, a documentary that followed the resettlement of two Somali Bantu families in America.

  
  
     
  
   
The Bantu, who were denied access to education and jobs, were almost completely untouched by modern life. Few could read or write in any language, and almost none spoke English. Most had never seen a light switch, a telephone, a set of stairs, or even a building that wasn’t made of mud.
  
Maynun, Saida and Jelani. 2009
     
  
“I learned to farm when I was a girl in Somalia. Before the war our life was good. We had four little girls. We got separated when the war came to our home. At home where my parents were killed. We started running, and the other girls ran way on their own. I thought we were all together but then I discovered they weren’t with us. It was too dangerous for me to go back. Bullets were flying everywhere. I was afraid of losing the two children I was carrying. May God help me. Zahara and Khadija were very young then. I carried them both out of Somalia. But I couldn’t find my husband or my other daughters. I found my husband later in the refugee camp…but I never found my older daughters. Said and Maynun were born in the refugee camp. When I was pregnant with a baby boy, my husband came to me and said, he was tired of digging latrines…his hands were bruised, his back aching…and he would just leave and go wherever God takes him. I asked him to stay, I told him it was a miracle that we were all together. He said he couldn’t stay any longer. He left me then. I don’t know where he is. I lost that baby in childbirth.” -Arbai Barre Abdi lived in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for 13 years before she and her four children were resettled to Clarkston, Georgia in 2004.
  
Family Portrait, 2006.
   
Khadija, 2008
     
  
Maynun, 2009.
   
Said, 2006.
   
Fatuma, 2006.
     
  
Maynun with Saida and Rahmo, 2006.
   
Younger Somali Woman, 2006.
  
Older Somali Woman, 2006.
     
  
Saida, 2008.
   
Said, 2006.
   
¬ “I learned to farm when I was a girl in Somalia. Before the war our life was good. We had four little girls. We got separated when the war came to our home. At home where my parents were killed. We started running, and the other girls ran way on their own. I thought we were all together but then I discovered they weren’t with us. It was too dangerous for me to go back. Bullets were flying everywhere. I was afraid of losing the two children I was carrying. May God help me. Zahara and Khadija were very young then. I carried them both out of Somalia. But I couldn’t find my husband or my other daughters. I found my husband later in the refugee camp…but I never found my older daughters. Said and Maynun were born in the refugee camp. When I was pregnant with a baby boy, my husband came to me and said, he was tired of digging latrines…his hands were bruised, his back aching…and he would just leave and go wherever God takes him. I asked him to stay, I told him it was a miracle that we were all together. He said he couldn’t stay any longer. He left me then. I don’t know where he is. I lost that baby in childbirth.” -Arbai Barre Abdi lived in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for 13 years before she and her four children were resettled to Clarkston, Georgia in 2004.
     
  
   
Brother Sister FightSaid and his sister Maynun came to the United States with their mother in 2004. Both were born and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya. Their family was originally from Somali and forced to flee to neighboring Kenya in 1991 when civil war broke out. Now that they are living in America, they have opportunities they never would have had living in the refugee camps.
   
“I learned to farm when I was a girl in Somalia. Before the war our life was good. My husband and I had four little girls. We got separated when the war came to our home. At home where my parents were killed. We started running, and the older girls ran away on their own. I thought we were all together but then I discovered they weren’t with us. It was too dangerous for me to go back. Bullets were flying everywhere. I was afraid of losing the two children I was carrying, Zahara and Khadija were very young then. I carried them both out of Somalia. I found my husband later in the refugee camp…but I never found my older daughters. Said and Maynun were born in the refugee camp. When I was pregnant with a baby boy, my husband came to me and said, he was tired of digging latrines…his hands were bruised, his back aching…and he would just leave and go wherever God takes him. I asked him to stay. I told him it was a miracle that we were all together. He said he couldn’t stay any longer. He left me then. I don’t know where he is. I lost that baby in childbirth. - Arbai Barre Abdi, now lives in Clarkston, Georgia with her 6 children.
     
  
Agan is one of the hundreds of Sudanese kids whose families have resettled to Clarkston, Georgia over the past five years. In the Clarkston apartment complex where Agan and his family live, there are dozens of other African refugees living there, mainly from Sudan and Somalia.
   
  
January 4, 2009.Clarkston, Georgia.