Refugees with names and stories

Martha Rafuto (not her real name) is a single mother of 5 children, ages 5-20. She is a refugee from the Congo. She is also a “political widow.”

In the Congo, she married a man who already had one wife. Polygamy is a legal custom in her culture. As his second wife, Martha gave Mr. Rafuto five children over two decades of marriage. They lived on a family farm, growing maze and raising chickens. When war broke out, the whole family was ripped from their homeland. 

She and her husband, and his other wife, and all their children, had to flee for their lives – literally dodging bullets. They found safety in a UN Refugee camp in neighboring Tanzania.

When the family registered as legal refugees, the UN told Mr. Rafuto that he had to choose one wife, that he couldn't have two wives and be a legal UN supported refugee. So, he chose wife #1. And Martha became a single mom. She lost her home. She lost her farm. And she lost her husband. 

We met Martha and her family at the Jacksonville airport last year. They had been sent here by the US Department of State in partnership with World Relief. They had waited 5 years in that UN refugee camp. They arrived in America, each carrying a school backpack stuffed with a change a clothes. Those were their only possessions. And we were their first American friends. So began a journey into a new world for the Rafutos. And for us. 

Over the weeks to come, I will share stories about what we experience with this refugee family from the Congo. The purpose is to put a face and a name on the label “Refugee.”  

These are people who lost their homes – their homeland – in the midst of war and death.

They would have preferred to stay in the Congo, with their dad and his Congolese families.

The children miss their dad. He is still stuck in Tanzania, unable to reunite with them. 

But the UN and the US sent the Rafutos to Jacksonville, ironically because of Martha’s status as a single mom.

And “for such a time as this,” we are their friends, and are helping them resettle here in the American south, at the beginning of a new era of “America First.”