Bryan Meltz

RESETTLED: Clarkston, Georgia

“Before the war our life was good, we had four little girls. I learned to farm when I was a girl in Somalia. We got separated when the war came to our home, the home where my parents were killed. We started running, and the older girls ran away on their own. It was too dangerous for me to go back. Bullets were flying. I was afraid of losing the two children I was carrying, may God help me. I carried them both out of Somalia…”

----Arbai Barre Abdi, 2004.

¬Arbai Barre Abdi was one of nearly 13,000 Somali Bantu refugees that were resettled throughout the US beginning in 2004. I met Arbai in that same year, when she and her four children were placed in Clarkston, Georgia directly from a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya.

Over the past decade, Clarkston, a former railroad town outside of Atlanta, has been transformed into the Ellis Island of the South for refugees from every corner of the globe. It is estimated that 1 in 3 of Clarkston’s residents are immigrants and over sixty languages are now spoken in this small Southern town. Refugees come to Clarkston from a myriad of cultures suffering the effects of protracted civil wars and massive human suffering: Somalia, Sudan, Burma, Bosnia, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan just to name a few. Over 71% of the refugees in Clarkston are female, and all of those, as implied by their refugee status, are survivors of civil conflict, war, trauma, rape and/or genocide. Having traveled thousands of miles for the promise of a new start, Arbai arrived in the United States filled with a tremendous hope for a better life, for herself and for her children.

This series of portraits, taken over the last seven years, focus primarily on Arbai, her six children, three grandchildren, and their neighbors of the Willow Branch apartment complex in Clarkston, Georgia.

  
Maynun, 8, and her older brother Said, 12, were born in a refugee camp in Kenya. They arrived in Clarkston, Georgia in 2004 as part of a massive resettlement program for Somali Bantu refugees.
  
     
  
   
Agan and his family are from Sudan and live at the Willow Branch apartment complex in Clarkston, Georgia. It is estimated that 1 in 3 Clarkston residents are immigrants and over 60 languages are spoken in this small town
   
     
  
   
  
     
  
   
Despite arriving to the US two years earlier, Said, who had never attended school in the refugee camp, struggles to read at a third grade reading level.
   
Clarkston, a small town outside Atlanta, has the highest percentage of people reporting Somali ancestry than any other American city.
     
  
“Before the war our life was good, we had four little girls. I learned to farm when I was a girl in Somalia. We got separated when the war came to our home, the home where my parents were killed. We started running, and the older girls ran away on their own. It was too dangerous for me to go back. Bullets were flying. I was afraid of losing the two children I was carrying, may God help me. I carried them both out of Somalia…”----Arbai Barre Abdi, 2004.
  
  
Saida was born in 2006 and is the first member of Arbai’s family to be born in the US.
     
  
Maynun Ahmed, 11, in her room in Clarkston, Georgia. 2008.
   
  
     
  
   
  
Maynun and Rahmo visit a horse park in Conyers, Georgia. 2008.
     
  
Arbai at job training in 2005. The Bantu, who were often denied access to education and jobs in Somalia, were almost completely untouched by modern life.
   
Arbai at work. 2005. Within six months of arriving in the US, Arbai found a full time job as a custodial worker.
   
Zahara and friends at Clarkston High School, 2005.
     
  
Arbai and Saida. 2008. Arbai gave birth to two more daughters since moving to America; Saida and Rahmo.
  
Maynun experiences her first trip to a laundromat. Maynu and her older sister Zahara, arrived to the US three days earlier as part of a resettlement program for Somali Bantu refugees.
  
     
  
   
  
     
  
In September of 2005, Arbai’s oldest daughter Khadija was married in a traditional Somali wedding ceremony that enlisted the help of their entire community in Clarkston, Georgia.