DENVER (AP) – In the kitchen of his sparsely furnished Denver apartment, Jonathan Nduwayo Sarukundo displays a large yellow can of Nido, a nutrient-rich powdered milk. He keeps it as a reminder of his past.

Sarukundo, his wife and their four sons fled civil war in their native Democratic Republic of Congo, survived a refugee camp massacre in neighboring Burundi, and were resettled this spring in Denver by the United Nations. Cans of Nido were status symbols in the refugee camp.

“I’m happy here with what I’ve got,” Sarukundo, a slightly built and soft-spoken 42-year-old, said through a Swahili-speaking interpreter. “Now all I’m focusing on is raising this family.”

Making Denver home is an emotionally and physically exhausting process for Sarukundo, one of 500 refugees of the Banyamulenge tribe being resettled here and in San Francisco, Louisville, Ky., Abilene, Texas, and other cities.

He had never felt temperatures like the low 30s of mile-high Denver in the spring – or seen snow. He’s never used public transportation. He has to remember how to shake hands for job interviews.

There are the sprawling grocery stores with their packaged foods, membership cards and discounts. The challenge of using an electric range. The intricacies of the telephone, the television.

It’s a far cry from the street markets and cooking over open fires that were part of life in his native Kivu province in eastern Congo. Sarukundo, a teacher, welcomes the challenge.

“Everything is different,” he said. “Very much is new to me. I love it.”

Sarukundo wore a tie and slacks for his first trip to a King Soopers supermarket. His wife, Elene Namudagiri Nankama, a petite woman with short curly hair, wore a colorful dress and sweater. She gazed about in amazement, overwhelmed by the variety of food.

“I don’t even know what I’m going to buy,” she said through an interpreter. “In Burundi, we bought food in open-air markets in the streets. It’s nothing like this.”

The family’s case worker, Lado Jurkin, coached the couple as they walked up and down the aisles, teaching them about discounts, expiration dates, how to compare prices in a strange currency.

Jurkin tried to persuade them it was OK to buy more than they immediately needed; it could cut their expenses, and a refrigerator could store the extra food. Many newly arrived refugees are accustomed to buying just enough for a day or two.

Still, the couple went home with just a few items, bought with a gift card from Denver’s African Community Center: cooking oil, chicken wings, bananas, milk and orange juice.

Inside their small, garden-level apartment near Denver’s former Lowry Air Force Base, Sarukundo’s 11-year-old son, Joseph Mpumuro, loaded the groceries into the refrigerator, which the children had decorated with stickers.

Joseph said he liked his new home but missed his best friend and school in Burundi.

The community center has placed refugees from other African nations in the same apartment building to ease the transition process for new immigrants. When he’s not learning English or walking his children to a culture acclimatization program, Sarukundo says he enjoys talking with people “with the same background, same stories and same suffering.”

Sarukundo taught French, geography and math in Kivu. He wants to teach here someday. Once he learns enough English, case workers will teach him how to fill out a job application, how to interview, even how to shake hands.

The family’s resettlement is funded by the United Nations, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and local agencies such as the African Community Center. The aid will continue until Sarukundo finds a job.

“Right now, they’re going through in a sense a blur,” said Michigan State University professor Barry Stein, who has researched refugee assimilation for 30 years. “The children will have the easiest time. They’re the most plastic.”

He estimated it could be three years before the family, who arrived March 19, feel comfortable in Colorado – more than 8,600 miles away from their home in the African Great Lakes region.

The Banyamulenge – literally, “people of the Mulenge,” in eastern Congo – are part of a Tutsi ethnic minority whose rivalry with majority Hutus has claimed millions of lives in the past 40 years, the United Nations says.

In 2004, fighting among rival groups forced Sarukundo’s family and 900 fellow tribesmen to move to Kamanyola, northwest of Bujumbura, the Burundian capital on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. From there, the Banyamulenge were given refuge at Gatumba, just inside the Burundi border.

“Everybody was blaming political problems on Banyamulenge,” Sarukundo said, gesturing animatedly and occasionally jotting down place names or numbers or sketching maps for emphasis. “Whoever could, left.”

The refugees were crowded into huts or dormitory-style tents. Conditions were bad, Sarukundo said: There was little food, and many people were malnourished.

The night of Aug. 13, 2004, a large group of uniformed raiders entered the camp.

The arrivals sang religious songs to hide their intent before they began killing, using guns, grenades and knives, according to Human Rights Watch.

“People started pulling out machetes and chopping arms and legs and burning houses,” Sarukundo said. “Everything burned. People who were asleep were burned.”

At the urging of two nephews, Sarukundo’s family hid in the bush. The two boys went back for their own family and were killed. Sarukundo lost a sister and niece; in all, at least 160 people were killed and 116 severely wounded.

“Some don’t know now where their loved ones are,” Sarukundo said.

A U.N. investigation linked the massacre to Hutu rebels operating with armed groups from Rwanda and Congo. Burundi’s government and its last rebel group signed a cease-fire last year after 12 years of civil war. The pact is key to long-term peace there and in neighboring Rwanda and Congo, where the rebels had bases, the International Crisis Group says.

Sarakundo, however, is trying to put Africa behind him. He no longer closely follows events in his homeland. He dismisses the Burundian pact as “lip service,” saying lasting peace is unlikely.

For the moment, life consists of simpler joys, especially a recent reunion at Denver International Airport.

The arrivals included Elene’s aunt, her two children and three grandchildren who were orphaned in the massacre.

The group arrived from Africa exhausted, carrying clear plastic bags stuffed with paperwork. One of the kids, a 4-year-old boy wearing a too-large blue fleece jacket, burst into laughter as a joyful Sarukundo lifted him into the air.

“I’m so happy they’re here,” Sarukundo said. “They made it.”

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On the Net:

African Community Center: http://www.africancommunitycenter.net

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: http://www.unhcr.org

AP-ES-06-17-07 1203EDT

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