New roots in NM
Refugees resettling in Albuquerque cultivate food and community at Tres Hermanas Farm
Refugees in Albuquerque cultivate food and community
On a late summer morning, Syed Muhmmad, a resettling refugee from Afghanistan, carefully sows radish seeds into rows of rich North Valley soil.
Nearby, stalks of maroon and golden amaranth, or linga linga in Swahili, sway like feathers in the breeze.
Handfuls of tomatoes and white eggplant are harvested weekly while the cabbage plants double in size. Squash bugs are squished. And a giant butternut squash, almost ready, hangs on a metal trellis.
Music from another side of the world plays out of tiny speakers from someone’s phone.
A variety of plants and languages are both abundant in Tres Hermanas Farm on Saturday mornings, when Zoey Fink, program coordinator for the Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program and farm manager, along with others from her office, work side-byside with resettling refugees from the Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains to cultivate food and community.
“There is something healing for both the body and mind that comes from working in the soil, and for many of our clients who have gone through violence and trauma, the garden is a place of safety and a form of therapy,” Fink says. “It takes a lot of courage to plant a seed and believe it will not only live but thrive!”
Income and sustenance
About 30 of Albuquerque’s resettling refugees worked together to grow a variety of crops, including butternut squash, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, cucumbers, zinnias, collard greens, kale, dill, basil and summer squash.
Some families brought seeds from their homelands in Chad, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC.
Those who worked at Tres Hermanas Farm harvested some of the vegetables to take home. Sango, a teenager who works in the garden, says she cooks soup for her family using white eggplant, tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes.
The other part of the harvest is sold at the Nob Hill Growers’ Market on Thursday afternoons.
“This gives clients the opportunity to sell their produce and make extra income,” Fink says.
This was the first year for Tres Hermanas Farm at the
I THINK EVERYTHING WILL COME OK. THOUGH I AM STILL NEW TO ALBUQUERQUE, I HOPE THAT THINGS WILL BECOME BETTER. MTENDJI JACKSON WILONDJA WHO SPEAKS SWAHILI, THROUGH JULES HASSAN, AN INTERPRETER
Rio Grande Community Farm on the far end of the farm’s community garden in Albuquerque’s North Valley near Los Poblanos Open Space. There are two other garden plots: One is located at La Mesa Presbyterian Church; the other is in the parking lot of an apartment in the International District. All three plots make up Tres Hermanas Farm.
Fink recruited gardeners, especially those who come from agrarian backgrounds, from ESL classes and other refugee programs.
“I’ve done a lot of recruitment accompanying case managers on home visits, visiting with families, hearing their stories, and offering them a place to grow and develop roots,” Fink says.
Impact of refugee ban
In 2016, Lutheran Family Services resettled about 323 refugees in Albuquerque, with about 30 more as secondary migrants. In 2017, at the beginning of September, Lutheran Family Services resettled 133 refugees, plus about 15 as secondary migrants, according to Fink.
“The numbers of refugee arrivals this year are dramatically lower than we had expected, due to the president’s decision to cut refugee arrivals and ban travel from certain countries,” Fink explains.
Mtendji Jackson Wilondja, 53, works regularly, several days a week, in the garden. He arrived in Albuquerque early this summer with his wife and their six children.
Wilondja and his wife were from DRC, but due to atrocities and war, they moved to a refugee camp in Tanzania, where they lived for 20 years and raised a family.
“I think everything will come OK. Though I am still new to Albuquerque, I hope that things will become better,” says Wilondja, who speaks Swahili, through Jules Hassan, an interpreter.
Tomatoes, vegetables, onion, cabbage and linga linga are the most important foods grown at the garden for Wilondja and his family.
Wisungata Mukubilwa, 15, is a freshman at Highland High School. He moved to Albuquerque, with his parents and his six sisters, from the refugee camp where he grew up in Tanzania.
He is learning how to irrigate, use the lawn mower and cultivate food. He says that after he moved to Albuquerque, the main difference between what he ate at the refugee camp and what he eats now in Albuquerque is pizza.
“At camp there is no pizza,” Wisungata says in Swahili through interpreter Jules Hassan.
Nabi Yosufzai, who is from Afghanistan where he was a shopkeeper, has been in Albuquerque since Sept. 15, 2015.
His wife and two of his four children live in Albuquerque. His other two older children live in different cities in the United States.
He also tends the garden every week, wrangling watermelons into cages and pulling weeds. He is a night stocker at Wal-Mart.
“I come here for teaching how I can make a garden,” he says. “The people coming to this place have job experience. I need their experience. This garden is okra, eggplant, cabbage, tomato.”