Imagine coming to a place where everything is different, a place where your culture, your look, is questioned, and a place where you have to adopt a new life, a new environment and a new culture. A place where you have to have to have language skills to support yourself and loved ones.

This is a place where many immigrants and refugees who came to Maine live, a place where they have to wake up and adopt this new culture and environment.

Many of these immigrants and refugees had no choice when they left their country. Some even had better lives than the ones they have here, but they had to leave because of a civil war in their countries. They had to leave because they lost loved ones. They had to leave because they lost the only land and home they knew. Many of these immigrants and refugees lived more than 10 years confined in a refugee camp before they were resettled into the United States.

Despite our struggles and hardships we went through in our country, we have to adjust and adopt the new country — a country we now call home, a country we are proud to be in.

Many of us wake up every morning to meet the needs of our family here and those we left back home. Some of us attend local adult education to take English classes during the week and a community-based organization on the weekend to take English classes. Many of us never had the opportunity to attend school. Many of us never had the opportunity to get job skills in our countries. These classes and training are the only hope we have to better our selves and become a contributing member of the city and state we live in.

Many of us drive more than 40 minutes for a job that pays the minimum wage. We are driving this far not because we want to drive that long, but to earn money to support our families here and those we left in our country. We drive to these jobs because those are the only jobs that fit our skills or language.

“I have been to many countries as a refuge. I come to Maine in 2011, I love Maine. My kids love Maine. We have a lot of opportunities here,” — Sado Yassin.

“When I came to USA, I was isolated because I didn’t speak English. It was difficult for me to speak to other people, but now I attend English classes and I can talk to people.”   Mohamed Ahmed

“I want people to understand that we are loving and caring people. We love to learn, even though we don’t have work experiences employers want, we have many experiences and skills in our culture. We love to integrate and understand other people’s culture. Moving to Lewiston changed my life. Ambio Aden

Many immigrants and refugees left loved ones back home, a place where civil war is still going on; a place where famine and fear of being killed is always present. A place where they may hear the death of their loved ones. Many of these refugees have to work not only to support their children here, but those that are struggling in their home countries.

Rilwan Osman is a native of Somalia who came to the United States from refugee camps in Keyna. He  is the executive director at Lewiston’s Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services. He is a leader in the immigrant community, having helped create homework programs, mentoring and soccer teams for students, language and citizenship classes for adults, and an annual forum to help immigrants understand the legal system. 

Editor’s note: Today we welcome a new monthly column, “Somali Voices,” to the Inside Maine rotation, joining “Rearview Mirror” written by Elliott Epstein of Lewiston, and “Past and Prologue,” written by Paul Mills of Farmington.
Epstein and Mills are lawyers and historians, and each have provided years of knowledgeable insight and learned context to current events for the Sun Journal’s weekend Perspective section.
The new column, written by rotating contributors among Lewiston’s growing immigrant community, will look at current-day perspectives, culture, education, and other elements of their Lewiston experience.
The city’s first wave of immigrants started arriving in 2001 and their numbers have steadily grown. This year, one out of every four students in the Lewiston School District is an English Language Learner studen; among those, the majority are from Somali families.
We welcome their voices to our pages, and look forward to sharing their continuing experience here.

— Executive Editor Judith Meyer