ABUBAKER KHAMIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abubaker Khamis, a refugee from war-torn Sudan, arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with only one bag of possessions and the suit he was wearing because it was the most important day of his life.  The first question he asked Drew Miller, his case manager from Catholic Social Services, was, “When can I start working?”

 

For Khamis, work has been one of the only constants in his life as a refugee.  Born in Darfur, Sudan, he began working on his family’s farm at around age 10 and has been working ever since.  Now in Lincoln, he works undesirably long hours in low-wage jobs but with strong vigor and motivation so that he can make money, send himself to school and better his life and that of his family.

 

Khamis’ family is part of the Zaghawa tribe, whose traditional work is growing corn, okra, peanuts and sesame and herding cattle, camels, sheep and goats.  “If you were not a farmer, you weren’t able to live,” Khamis said, “because if you grow something, you harvest it, sell it in the market and get some money.  If you don’t grow anything, you don’t get any money.”

 

His family owned no machinery to help them plant, grow or harvest their crops, so all the work was done by hand.  As a child, Khamis cleaned up messes around the farm and helped his family prepare the ground for planting.

 

Khamis and his family had many prosperous years of farming, but in 1990 a severe drought left all their livestock and crops dead. Shortly after, the government, along with rebel groups such as the Janjaweed, began an ethnic cleansing of all non-Arabs.  For these reasons, Khamis moved 84 kilometers—about 52 miles—southeast to the big city of Nyala, Sudan, where he bought and sold oil in the market to support his family.

 

But Khamis wasn’t making enough money in the market. So, three years later, at age 33, he left for Libya.

 

“I said to my family, ‘I want to travel to Libya to work. I get some money, and I send it to you to buy some food and water ... I will come back to you,’” Khamis explained.

 

The trip to Libya from Sudan was a dangerous two-week journey.  He piled onto the back of a big truck along with nearly one hundred others making the same journey.  These trucks were known for getting lost in the desert and never being heard from again and many of the people with Khamis died along the way from thirst, hunger or by falling off the back.

 

Once in Libya, he worked driving a “big tank truck,” to bring water to people. He also worked in construction and was once stationed in the Libyan Desert for four months.  His job was to build towers for Libyan police to keep out those who were trying to enter the country illegally.  Khamis and the man who served as his bodyguard were alone in the desert.  During the day, he drove the Caterpillar and his bodyguard protected their tent.  Every three or four days their supervisor would bring them food and water.

 

After six years in Libya, Khamis decided to return home to visit his family. At the end of his visit, on July 27, 2009, Khamis went back to Libya. 

 

It was the last time he has seen his family.

 

When Khamis talks about leaving his family, his voice softens and his eyes fall.  It wasn’t easy for him, but he knew he needed to work so he could send money home.

 

His mother cried when he left because she didn’t think she would ever see him again.  She was right.  On Sept. 29, 2011, she died while Khamis was away.

 

After a little more than a year, Libya began having problems of its own.  A civil war broke

out from the Arab Spring conflict, and Khamis was forced to move to Egypt where he lived

in a refugee camp.  The camp was full of people from Darfur and Chad waiting to be accepted

as refugees by countries like France, Canada and the U.S, but there was no work to do while

waiting and nothing to keep them occupied.

 

Khamis spent most of his day in his tent.  Sometimes he visited friends, played soccer or

attended simple English classes, but the people in the camp were never allowed to leave

unless they found a way to bribe the police. 

 

“We were very bored,” Khamis said. 

 

He was used to a life full of work, and he had to find something to keep him busy, so he

began to feed the stray cats.  “Some people threw the kittens, and I would collect them and

put them near my tent and feed them until they grow big,” Khamis said.  By the end of his

time in the camp he was caring for almost 10 cats.

 

After two and a half years in the camp and many interviews to determine if Khamis was fit to be a refugee, he was finally told he would be moving to America. 

 

“I was scare-excited,” Khamis said, struggling to describe how he was feeling.

 

His flights took him through Cairo, Egypt; Rome, Italy; Miami, Florida, and St. Paul, Minnesota, before he finally arrived, after one delayed flight, in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Sept. 24, 2013.  On one of the flights, he was offered a bag of peanuts.  “This is from my country,” he told the flight attendant.

 

During his first week in Lincoln, Khamis lived with a friend then moved into his own one-bedroom apartment. “I was lonely.  No one to talk to, no TV.  If I wanted to go to Abdullah’s house (a friend of his) or the Sudanese Club it cost 40 minutes, and it’s very cold.” 

 

Khamis had only a bike for transportation and moved to Lincoln in the middle of winter, so he spent much of his time in his small apartment but he made good use of his time.  Miller remembers going to check on Khamis about a month after he moved to Lincoln and finding Khamis in his apartment reviewing English words on his laptop.  He had gone to the library, gotten a library card and rented out an English learner’s DVD. 

 

“That’s astonishing.  I’ve never seen a refugee do that,” Miller said.  “Abubaker’s sense of initiative is what sets him apart from any other refugee I’ve worked with.”

 

Abad Hassan, an employment specialist at Catholic Social Services, was also impressed by Khamis’ work ethic and determination to be self-reliant.  He remembers how Kahmis refused to rely on government assistance, insisting that he could earn his own money.  Khamis told him, “I’ve been doing that for many years in Egypt and Libya, and I want to do the same thing here.”

 

For his first job in Lincoln he washed dishes at Pinnacle Bank Arena, but after one week and some issues with receiving his paycheck, he began to work the night shift as a McDonald’s cook. 

 

For his new job, Khamis needed a food handler’s permit so he and Hassan spent a day going through the online training. After a few hours online, they failed the test and Hassan told him to come back the next day so they could try again. 

 

That night Khamis spent hours copying the permit questions into Google Translate so he could read it in Arabic.  When he went into Hassan’s office the next morning, he had already completed and passed the test on his own.

 

“From that moment, I knew this guy was going to be successful,” Hassan said, later adding that Khamis is one of the best examples for people who want a better job, future and life in America.

 

For the next 11 months, Khamis worked at McDonald’s, often walking 40 minutes from his

house to work in below-freezing weather at 10 p.m., until he received a job at Molex, an

electronic parts supplier. 

 

For a while he worked both jobs.  He would be at McDonald’s from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. and

then work at Molex from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.  After, he walked to his English class at the

Center for People in Need until 9 p.m. and went home and slept until 4:40 a.m. before

going back to Molex. 

 

Khamis was working himself to exhaustion, but he was eager to work. 

 

“In my country I had to do hard work, like planting.  In Libya, I worked in a big truck and a heavy machine.”  Here in Lincoln, he continues his tradition of working hard.

 

“Despite the poor hands that Abubaker has been dealt over and over again in life, he has made the conscious decision to overlook those and to work hard in whatever environment he has been placed in,” Miller said.  “Whether it’s walking to McDonald’s at 3 o’clock in the morning, or riding his bike through the snow or simply just learning how to take care of all the paperwork in America.”

 

Lori Matzke, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student who helped tutor Khamis in English, said, “My impression of Abubaker is that he is very adaptable, and I’m guessing that translates over into the workplace as well … He won’t make excuses to not be able to make it to work.  If he has a shift, he is going to be there, and he will make it happen even if he has to bike in sub-zero temperatures.  I feel like as an employer it’s hard not to respect that.”

 

Compared to the work he has done in Sudan and Egypt the work at Molex is simple, Khamis said.

 

He dreams of refining his English so he can get his GED and attend Southeast Community College where he hopes to study to become a computer technician. But currently, he has trouble finding time to study English as much as he would like to.

 

“My vocabulary is very simple,” he said.  “I want to learn too much, but I am very busy and sometime I come from my work and I am very tired and I want to sleep.  This is my problem.” 

 

Matzke is impressed with Khamis’ work ethic and his desire to learn English.  She said he often reads English dictionaries and grammar books in his limited free time.

 

These days, Khamis’ routine begins at 4:40 a.m. He leaves around 5:20 a.m., arriving at Molex around 20 minutes later, says his

prayers and gets something to drink before he starts work at 6 a.m.  Twelve hours later, he gets off work and goes to the Center for People in Need for two and a half hours of English class.  After class he goes home to clean his clothes, cook food for his evening meal and for work the next day, finish his homework and call his family in Sudan.  Finally, at 11:30 p.m. he heads to bed exhausted before starting it all over the next day.

 

“It is very busy,” he said.  “I want to change, but it is difficult.”

 

Currently, Khamis is applying for a promotion at Molex that would raise his pay from $9 an hour to $14 an hour.  With the promotion he could send more money to his family in Sudan and have a more regular schedule so he can focus on studying.

 

“I have an outrageous amount of respect for him,” Matzke said.

 

Miller has seen a lot of changes in Khamis since he first arrived.  He now has the confidence to take care of his problems on his own and has worked his way up to driving a car rather than riding his bike around Lincoln.

 

“Abubaker took all the necessary steps to prepare himself to become the person he is today which is an affluent, English-speaking, full-time job working, beyond pleasant human being to be around,” Miller said.  “He’s looked at obstacles as ways to learn rather than things to prevent him from moving forward.”