By Patrick L. Delabrue

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – After arriving in the United States two years ago, 64-year-old Sudanese refugee Adam Yahya found work at the Morrell meat packing plant. He worked with sausage casings.

Though he is no stranger to animals or hard work, Yahya was disappointed that he couldn’t use his education and professional expertise as a doctor of veterinary medicine. He needs to be a U.S. citizen to work as a veterinarian. But citizenship is still three years away.

Worse, he developed a fungus under his fingernails while working at Morrell, he said.

“They told me I would either have to change where I worked in the plant or leave,” he said. “For me, I decided to leave the place.”

Yahya’s life as a refugee has its beginnings in a coup in 1989. He had been a high-ranking government minister, he said, when the National Congress Party took over the government. Yahya calls the government he worked for Sudan’s “last democracy.”

He believed in his work in Sudan, knowing that caring for animals mattered in a nation that so depended on livestock.

“My main choice in life was to go into the medical line,” Yahya said. “I chose veterinary medicine because we have a wealth of animal resources in Sudan, millions.”

Yahya put aside practicing veterinary medicine in 1987, he said, when he became a deputy governor of the Darfur region of Sudan and then held the position of Minister of Health and Education.

When the NCS came to power in 1989, Yahya’s situation became perilous.

“They told me I was an opponent to the regime,” he said. “A lot of political leaders were imprisoned. They followed us and harassed us.”

Yahya said before agents of the new government took him to prison and subjected him to interrogation. It was a kind of psychological torture, he said, taking him from his cell to repeat the interrogation only to be put back into his cell.

“It was political persecution,” he said.

Though he was not physically tortured, many others from the former government were, Yahya said.

“So either I join them, or go to prison,” he said.
After being released from prison, Yahya applied for a visa to visit Cyprus. “After the wars they discovered I left the country and started asking questions about where I was,” he said.

After that, Yahya said, the new Sudanese govenrment couldn’t get him. “I was already outside the country.”

Yahya said he applied for refugee status in Cairo, Egypt in 2003. The United Nations processed his application to come to the U.S. in 2004. When he received permission to come to the U.S., he wasn’t allowed to choose the city or state. He arrived in Sioux Falls on May 31, 2006.

“Back in Sudan, we know a lot about America in general, but I had no idea what life was like in Sioux Falls,” he said. “My first impression of the city was that it was very quiet and peaceful, especially in the time of year when it is very green.”

Happy to have finally arrived, Yahya still suffered culture shock.

“The way of life here is very different,” he said.

One of the biggest differences is how families relate to one another. He said that in Sudan extended family matters.

“Here, everybody is independent,” he said. “We may not know our neighbors, but in Sudan you know all of your friends and neighbors very well.”

Especially, he said, for those who live in small villages and towns. They know as many people as possible. Drivers will offer rides to strangers.

Since his departure from the Morrell plant, Yahya has found work at Bell Inc., a maker of cardboard boxes. He also works as a part-time interpreter with the Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, giving advice to recent arrivals on how best to assimilate.

He said one of the biggest challenges for recently arrived refugees is the different values that Americans apply to raising children.

In Sudan, Yahya said, “you can lash your child or beat him if the child does wrong or shows disrespect,” he said. “When they come here, the parents find difficulty when they beat their children.”

In schools, he said, teachers and social workers ask children if they are treated this way and sometimes call the police. “In this case, when the police come and take away the child, for being beaten by their father or mother, we find it very difficult to accept that situation,” he said.

In addition, Yahya said, girls can’t have boyfriends.

“The girls should stay in the house until they are 18 and married,” he said. “So I wish they would take our cultural norms into consideration.”

He said he knows four families who have lost their children to government social service agencies. It affects the parents psychologically when they are not allowed to raise their children as they did in Sudan.

Despite the cultural differences, Yahya encourages families to assimilate by working hard, getting a good education and being good citizens, he said.

“When they learn American values,” he said, “then they can make their own lives, productive lives.”

For now, Yahya’s productive life means work in the box factory. And he looks forward to the day he can once again practice veterinary medicine.