LSS Refugee Services:
Refugee Success Story
Ali Elmi’s journey from the U.S has been a long one. As a young man struggling to find work within his turbulent home country of Somalia, Ali traveled in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s to search for employment. Though he found a wife and began a family in Saudi Arabia, the prospects of making a living there were grim. Ali was once again forced to move, this time to Nairobi, Kenya, in another effort to find a better life. He left his wife and his young children in Somalia, where his wife’s family could provide for them. Two years went by before Ali’s family could join him in Kenya.
Throughout his seven years in Kenya, Ali found occasional work in an international call center, and spent much of the rest of his time in a refugee camp. Conditions in the camp were harsh; Ali and his fellow refugees lived without heat or electricity and water was often scarce. Ali and the other Somalis in the camp formed a strong community to help one another survive.
Finally in late 2006 – over twenty years since Ali first left Somalia to search for work – Ali and his family came over to the United States through the United States Refugee Program. Reaching the United States was only the first step for the Elmi family, however; they still needed home, work, and a community. A neighbor referred them to Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota. LSS assisted the family with their urgent needs of clothing and housing as well as their long-term need to secure a job for Ali. LSS job counselors helped Ali to evaluate his own strengths, fill out applications, obtain references, and navigate the bus system.
Today the Elmi family is doing well. Through his own efforts combined with those of LSS, Ali now holds a job at an adult education center, where he tutors students and helps with office work. He hopes to advance in his work. All five of his children are enrolled in Minneapolis public schools, and according to Ali, don’t want to miss a day of school even when they are sick. Ali says that the weather has been a more daunting adjustment. He has told his brothers and mother back home how strange it is to park your car in the evening only to find it covered in white the next morning. “It is a dream to them,” he says, “but it is real to me.”
