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'This is my house': African refugees get their chance at American Dream

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 30, 2012 - No word about the mortgage crisis, the declining economy or the disappearing jobs -- none of it -- reached the survivors of Congo's war living in refugee camps in Tanzania. To the refugees, America was still America, amorphous and malleable enough to suit their imagination; a dream.

Tutu Nsabuwimye, who immigrated with his family to the United States at age 10, heard about a land where dirt didn't exist. Brigitte Nizeyimana, who left when she was in her 20s, thought that American homes had no insects and required no rent. 

"I thought maybe it's like heaven," she said in an interview with the Beacon.

Five years after her arrival in the United States, Nizeyimana chuckled at her original expectations. She is becoming a homeowner in the Carondelet neighborhood through Habitat For Humanity, a nonprofit aiming to eliminate substandard housing and give people the chance to build and own a home. America is different than Nizeyimana thought it would be, but still good, she said. She belongs to one of three families from Congo who are about to move into new Habitat homes.

Nizeyimana, now 28, had already come a long way before she arrived five years ago in St. Louis, a place she had never heard of and didn't choose. The U.S. is one of 10 countries that accepts refugees for resettlement, said Kelly Moore, who works at the International Institute of St. Louis, an agency that assists refugees with their transition. According to Moore, out of more than 6,000 total refugees in the last decade, the International Institute has worked with 129 from Congo and Burundi.

Nizeyimana had been living for 10 years at a camp in Tanzania, a hard life in which food was rationed out every two weeks. There was no going back to Burundi, where she'd come from: In the wake of war, someone else was living in the home that at one time had been her family's.

Even in St. Louis, there was little stability, she said. When her baby tested positive for lead from her house on Chippewa, Nizeyimana and her husband Boniface Ndagigimana moved to Sutherland Street, also in south city. The discovery of lead in their new homes is a common reality for refugees, said Moore.

Meanwhile, Nizeyimana was still trying to learn English, her eighth language. With a second child on the way, the family had an inspector come to the Sutherland house. When she learned their second house was contaminated, Nizeyimana knew she had to find a safer and more permanent solution, and she applied for a house through Habitat.

Janvier Nsabuwimye and Aline Hareimana, along with their son Tutu Nsabuwimye, also emigrated from a refugee camp in Tanzania. In an interview with the Beacon, Hareimana explained that as part of the immigration program, the government pays for the first three months rent but after that, the family must support itself. At that point, neither Hareimana nor her husband had a job or a means to get one.

One day in church, at a loss for what to do, Janvier Nsabuwimye said he asked for help. Through an extraordinary stroke of luck, someone responded. An American woman who has since passed away, came through, he said.

"God sent her to us. Without her, everything would be different," said Tutu Nsabuwimye, now 15.

The American woman found Nsabuwimye a job cleaning in west county, assuring him he could still do the work even though he couldn't speak English. There were other barriers, like figuring out the Metro and bus transfers and getting lost and all the buildings seeming the same, but that passed, Hareimana said. The two families became close.

Still, after three years, even with jobs, Hareimana said she still felt a sense of instability. Her neighborhood had high crime. Problems with the house went unfixed. Hareimana said she never knew what was going to happen.

A friend recommended Habitat for Humanity, and she said she applied as a way out. Two years later, after rounds of interviews and forms and 350 hours of "sweat equity" working on her house, Habitat presented Hareimana, along with four other families, the key to her new house in Carondelet on a cold and sunny October morning.

For these five families, three from the Congo and two with American single moms, the home dedication felt like a miracle.

In front of supporters, volunteers and staff, Nizeyimana gave a prayer in English, eyes closed, and deeply grateful. Habitat "lifts the poor from the dust. I know you did this for us and you can do it for other people," she said. In front of the volunteers who put in long hours helping to building the house from scratch, Nizeyimana said to a chorus of laughter, "God will pay you back. We can't pay you back."

Hareimana was originally at a loss for words and opted for a song in her native language, thanking Jesus. Then the words started to come. She pointed to the white tent under which everyone was sitting and said how at the camp in Tanzania, her home wasn't much different. And indeed, the tent will come down after the ceremony, a juxtaposition to the five brand-new LEED-Platinum houses with facades of brick, the street opening up to them like a vision.

"Oh my God, this is my house," Hareimana said into the microphone. "I still don't believe it. I don't know how this happened," she said.

Jason Schwartzman is a Beacon intern.