Refugees - Some splinter groups aiding migrants feel slighted and criticize IRCO’s leadership and actions

ANGIE CHUANG

Djimet Dogo, who will lead the Portland area’s first service center specifically for African refugees, has heard it all before.

A lot of people say Africans can’t get along," he said. "You put two of us in one room, and we will fight."

In the past six years, agencies and individuals have tried to organize this multinational, multilingual community, which has led to power struggles, mutinies and splinter groups — some with nearly the same names.

Dogo, a native of Chad, rattles off an alphabet soup of acronyms — ACCO One, ACCO Two and ARINO — each of which has sought to be recognized as the representative of Africans in the state: the African Community Center of Oregon, the African Community Coalition of Oregon and the African Refugee and Immigrant Network of Oregon.

On Wednesday, as the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization officially opened Africa House, the community — which includes the diasporas of dozens of countries, many of which have been torn by civil war and genocide — is at a turning point.

Dogo and IRCO representatives say it’s a pivotal opportunity for one of Oregon’s fastest-growing refugee populations to come together at last. At least 15,000 African refugees are in the state, according to federal and community estimates.

But community leaders who have split from IRCO say the state’s largest nonprofit service provider for refugees hasn’t done enough to reach out and to honor their desire to have an independent African organization. Ultimately, they say, an agency originally founded by and for Southeast Asian refugees cannot truly meet the needs of Africans.

"We are not enemies. We just have different philosophies," said Basko Kante, a Ghanaian immigrant and board president of the African Community Coalition of Oregon, a group that broke from IRCO about a year ago. "Some of us have a yearning that Africans must organize themselves, not be an arm of a larger institution."

United is the strongest way

It’s no accident that the organizers of Africa House have consulted with Asian American community leaders, many of whom were active when Oregon’s first major refugee population arrived after the wars in Southeast Asia.

There is a trajectory, experts say, that refugee and immigrant populations travel to learn how to organize around a new identity. The idea of a unified "African," "Asian" or "Slavic" community is foreign to populations that encompass a range of national, ethnic and religious identities — as well as groups that have been at war. As many African refugees note, no one was just "African" in Somalia, Eritrea or Togo.

Thirty years ago, IRCO executive director Sokhom Tauch recalled, a panoply of migrants from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as minority ethnic groups such as Hmong and Mien, fought bitterly about how to best serve their communities.

Referring to the founding of the Asian Family Center about a decade ago, Tauch, a Cambodian native, said, "It took us 20 years to be able to forget the past and work together. I want to show the African community that united is the strongest way we have."

IRCO was founded more than a quarter-century ago, as a merger of the Indochinese Cultural and Service Center and the Southeast Asian Refugee Federation. It has replicated its model for self-sufficiency training for successive refugee groups — from the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa.

Therein lies one of the main sticking points within the African community. In 2000, IRCO started the African Refugee and Immigrant Network of Oregon, or ARINO. A year later, members of the network severed ties with IRCO, saying the organization was run by Asian Americans who gave a disproportionate share of resources and time to Asian groups.

By 2003, both groups said they were working to open the region’s first African community center, or Africa House. They competed for a Multnomah County Health Services contract to provide mental health counseling to Africans; IRCO got it.

IRCO formed the African Community Coalition of Oregon to replace ARINO. Last spring, another splinter group, led by Kante, broke from IRCO. Kante registered the nonprofit as the African Community Coalition of Oregon, forcing IRCO to change its group’s name to the African Community Center of Oregon to keep the acronym familiar to its clients.

IRCO’s group "was not representative of Africans," Kante said. "It had employees of IRCO and was selected by IRCO.
"In order to be a true African organization, you must have people who were selected by each country’s associations at the table."

Some feel slighted

After a couple of unsuccessful tries, Tauch and IRCO learned this summer that they had received a $200,000-a-year grant for three years from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to establish the Africa House. The grant would pay for a project coordinator and two staff members, as well as money to lease and operate a site.
The only problem? They couldn’t get an African to apply for the job of leading the Africa House.

"One African woman did, but she withdrew her application," Dogo said. He was working for IRCO at the time but did not apply. "It’s a very tough job."

Dogo said he decided to apply at the last minute, after fellow African refugees convinced him he was the right person to bring the fractious community together.

He was educated in peace studies and conflict resolution in France and Austria and trained in Russia, Slovenia, Hungary and South Africa to learn how those nations overcame their divides. He thought he could handle the African community in Portland.
Dogo said he has reached out to every African group he can think of to make clear he wants to work with all of them. He has organized a series of meetings to gather input.

Karifa Koroma, board president of IRCO’s advisory group, African Community Center of Oregon, said he has made clear that the Africa House will help, not compete with, other organizations.

"It’s not about you versus me or them," said Koroma, an immigrant from Sierra Leone. "It’s about the community we want to help."

But even in these efforts toward unity, Kante’s group and ARINO’s board president both said they felt somewhat slighted. Kante said he will not actively participate in Africa House unless he feels that IRCO is approaching his group, the African Community Coalition of Oregon, as an equal partner.

"We will go to any meeting and listen to what they have to say," Kante said. "But we are not going to be on some advisory group just so we can advise you and you can decide not to take our advice."
Kpetike-Kokouda Ketevi, a native of Togo and Kante’s fellow board member, said their group plays a unique role in the community, taking cell-phone calls at all hours to help Africans one on one with everything from registering a child in school to accompanying someone to court.

"IRCO can’t do things on that level," Ketevi said. "We do things the way people did in Africa. You find the individual who can stand by your side."

Rolia Manyongai-Jones, board co-president of the African Women’s Coalition, said nearly everyone in the community shares the goal of a united, independent Africa House. But she thinks some leaders’ desire to break free of IRCO is premature.

"A baby has to crawl before it walks," the Liberian native said. "And IRCO is the place that baby will crawl until it walks."

Now, Dogo has practical concerns to deal with, such as finding Africa House a permanent home, preferably in North or Northeast Portland. For now, it’s in IRCO’s Employment Skills Training Center on Northeast 102nd Avenue.

He hopes someday soon, the Africa House will prove perceptions of his community wrong.

"If you are a real community leader, someone who is really working for the welfare of the community, then people can come together around that. People can get along."

Angie Chuang:503-221-8219; angiechuang@news.oregonian.com.

Last Modified : October 26th, 2006 Filed under : Uncategorized Navigate : Previous post /