When A Nuclear Family Explodes

It is the second day in the camps, and each day brings more and more questions and less and less answers to the forefront of my mind.

I remember when I was studying for the LSAT spending one Sunday after another wading through complex word prolems trying to figure out who would be sitting next to Shelly playing the flute if Sam with the trombone suddenly fell off the face of the earth. Today, we were confronted with a similar and equally as perplexing challenge: the family composition.

Americans love the nuclear family. We relish the idea of happy parents with their son and daughter, appropriately spaced in birth by about 2.5 years, living behind a white picket fence and eating sloppy joes while playing with Spot the dog. Yes, there is the extended family--aunts and uncles, cousins and such. And sometimes there is a grandparent that gets adopted into the nuclear family, but that happens only when there is not a retirement home within sufficient distance from the family's 2.5 acre family home on a suburban culdesac.

Enter: the African family.

One of the largest challenges of the job that is to be done when screening refugees and determining whether or not they qualify for resettlement is making sure their family members are actually all related, and only the immediate members of the family are the ones who are being considered for resettlement. The "extraneous" members, or non-nuclear aspects, are screened out and sent back to the camps. This is a difficult, if not impossible, idea to convey to Somalis and most Africans in general. When we receive the sheet with the family data, listing the head of the household and any dependants, we usually have a list of about 6 or 7 people, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on how many children there are, if there are children who were married whose husbands have died, or if there are grandchildren who are adopted into a family after their parents have been killed. But generally, the list is not terribly extensive.

We receive the list and look it over, identifying the individual with the disability, and head off to the holding pen to locate the family. This morning, the pen was swarming and packed as people were also being screened for other purposes. We went through a couple of cases with nothing out of the ordinary going on, and hit case number three. Walking outside we had already identified potential problems with how the family comp looked--one older woman, all her brothers and sisters, and a stray grandchild. No husbands, no children. When we arrived to call her name we expected that 5 people would walk forward, maybe 6. Instead, we were confronted by the slew of people, all claiming to be brothers and sisters, uncles, children, husbands.

We have to be careful when we deal with these families. One thing that UNHCR is particularly cognizant of is not separating children from their parents which could lead to serious custody issues once the family has been resettled, and a terrible situation for UNHCR in future resettlement endeavors. For example: what often happens is a mother and all of her children will come for an interview. One of her children will be disabled, a couple of the kids will be married, but the spouse of the married child is no where in sight. Instead, you have 8 people who are trying to be included in the case even though some may have spouses elswhere in the camp. If we include the married people and not the husbands, and the family is eventually resettled, the father can come waving a stick claiming the custody rights that he, indeed, has.

It is hard to look at a family and start peicing them off. OK, you, you and you are ok, but I'm sorry ma'am, you're husband is here and you have two chldren with him, therefore even though the rest of your family is going to be considered, you are no longer affiliated with the case, so go back to the camp and continue to hang out.

Another common problem is the stray child. Where did this child come from? Is he on your ration card? Oh, you had him with your first husband? Where is he? Oh, he's dead? huh. ok, well. right.

The problem is that people will tell you anything to get out. They will leave spouses behind, they will give their children to others. The desperation is at a point where it is permeating everything, and while I stand and look at a group of refugees whose lives have been tortured and hard, I look at them wondering how they are trying to scam the system. And this is only day number two.

So back to the LSAT problem. Who goes, and who stays? There are no marriage certificates, and there are no paternity tests. There are, however, strict guidlines set up by the UNHCR and the resettlement countries as to who will qualify and who will not. We look at a family and say great, there is the mother, the father, and the children, and they are all present and accounted for, but the Somalis don't see it in the same way. They say: Look at these people who have saved me, who have shared my pain, who have been adopted into your idea of a nuclear family when parents were murdered, and their children died. Look at the cousins who fled and have no one but us. This is our family, every last one of them.

But...when it comes down to it...most of these people are willing to leave some behind at the opportunity for resettlement. This morning we had the case of a father and his disabled son and three other children, one of whom was married and had a child. When we asked her where her husband was, and she replied: oh, in the camp. We had to tell her that she was off the case. We looked at the father and explained that the only way to move forward was without his daughter and whether he wished to continue, and his reply was: oh yeah, she's got her husband, she can stay here.

Nice. Love you too dad.

But, everything else aside. Nothing is easy here, and I wonder what I would do in the same situation. When I arrived I thought how perfect it would be to get some groups into the camp and start some economic development projects--give these people some tangible skills that can be translated to the real world. But we can't. It's NOT ALLOWED. Groups can't come in and do this econ development, the government won't allow it. So instead, they sit. And wait. And hope that one morning when they walk up to the board where the names of the families to be interviewed each day are posted, their name will magically appear.

Until then...