BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – The largest group of refugees settling in Vermont comes from central and east Africa.

Seventeen of the 56 children in the Holbrook center’s New Arrivals program this summer are Congolese, according to the center’s director, Leisa Pollander.

“The situation of refugees in African countries is particularly compelling to the U.S. right now,” said Stacie Blake, director of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.

“Some of the protracted situations in places like Afghanistan have been resolved by people being able to return to their country. For many African countries that’s just not the case today,” she said.

Elia Louis came from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now he lives in a crowded apartment just down the street from a family of cousins who arrived about the same time.

Each morning, Elia attends the New Arrivals program, where attendance at the daily play-and-study session reflects the changing face of Vermont’s refugee community.

When New Arrivals began 15 years ago, most of the children were Vietnamese. In the middle 1990s, young Bosnians joined them. Today, central and east Africans make up the largest group.

While the Vermont community’s attention has focused recently on the well-publicized arrival of refugees from Sudan and Somalia, 75 Congolese also have resettled here in the past three years.

Elia’s father, Abedi Pililo, fled political persecution with his family in 1979. His mother, Oonda Eacha, lived in a village near Lake Tanganyika until it was attacked by rebels in 1996. Her family escaped to Tanzania in a boat across the big lake. She met her future husband in a refugee camp.

“In the camp, you just sit and try to survive,” she said Wednesday in Swahili. Refugee caseworker Wanza Muguvuli translated as Eacha’s children bounced around the Sara Holbrook playground.

She knew nothing about the United States before her flight touched down, she said. “People said America is wonderful and there is peace over there,” she summed up.

Her husband has found work at the York Capacitor factory in Winooski. Volunteers from the First Congregational Church help Eacha with tasks like grocery shopping.

Elia, Selina, 6, and Eliza, 4, spend mornings at Sara Holbrook, a nonprofit social service center on North Avenue. The New Arrivals program helps immigrant children maintain their English skills or get a head start in their new language.

AP-ES-07-30-04 1334EDT