Coming to America

In a rundown refugee apartment complex a new world city is taking shape, and one teenage girl is at the center of it.

By Eric Scigliano

Photo: Gregg Snodgrass

Sally Webb and friends at the apartments.

Tukwila, home to Helber’s family, is in the cosmopolitan vanguard. According the 2000 census, 26 percent of its residents were born outside the United States and 32 percent spoke languages other than English at home, about twice the national averages. In 2006 the National Center for Educational Statistics and The New York Times declared Tukwila’s school district the nation’s most “ethnically diverse.” That merely means its student population is almost evenly divided among the four official “races,” white, black, Asian, and Hispanic. Other data are more telling: Two-thirds of Tukwila’s students speak languages other than English—a total of 65 languages—at home.

Tukwila district officials don’t just embrace this diversity, they flaunt it. When I called for information, they insisted on giving a tour. Two hours later, proud principals were showing me (custom press packet in hand) around their attractive new buildings. “We’re all about pictures!” joked Principal Steve Salisbury of Tukwila Elementary, which happened to be celebrating its International Day. He and assistant principal Zak Palsha (a Kenya-born Muslim) swiftly deployed nearly 150 kids wearing a rainbow of exotic outfits and hoisting the flags of their native and ancestral countries.

When the weather’s fair you could mistake the parking lot at Helber’s apartment complex for a village square in East Africa, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, or the Middle East—or all these places at once. Women in brightly dyed Somali shawls and Nepali saris hurry past, casting wary eyes at strangers. Middle Eastern men in suits and open collars stride by, deep in conversation. Lean, compact men in T-shirts and striped sarongs stretch and watch the world pass from their landings. And everywhere children of every size and color turn the parking lot into a cross between a schoolyard at recess and the UN General Assembly. They banter, wheel around on bicycles, and kick around a ball with footwork that would make a school soccer coach drool. The cars yield to them.

The tenant roster for the complex’s 48 units reads like a who’s where of star-crossed peoples, some familiar and some far from the headlines: Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Kenyans, and Iraqis, plus ethnic Nepalis driven from Bhutan and unwelcome in Nepal, the “1972 Burundians,” who grew up in Tanzanian camps after their parents fled massacres in Burundi, and the odd nonrefugee tenant from Mexico or Central America. And 15 families—Karen, Chin, Kachin, Rakhine—from Burma.

So far everyone seems to get along, save some Iraqi Kurds who clashed with the Arabs and moved out. The drab walls are free of graffiti, and Juan Martinez, the apartment manager, hasn’t seen any signs of kids joining gangs; the sheer diversity makes it impossible for any one group to claim this turf. Other apartment managers would blanch at a parking lot becoming a playground, says Martinez, a former Mexico City cop who talks like a community organizer. But he thinks it’s an outlet for young energies that might otherwise find unhealthy channels, and an equalizer. “In schools, you used to see kids all separate out into their groups. But that can change if we let them play together.”

Helber enjoys the polyglot parade, here and at school. She dug her high school’s Multicultural Day show, especially the Hawaiian hula dancers. “I want to do that,” she says laughing. “But I can’t move my butt!” Sometimes she hangs out with the Burundians downstairs and uses their computer.

Before the refugees arrived, says Martinez, “it was a nightmare to live around here as a manager.” When his company bought the apartments in 2006, it was infested with gangs and dealers: “The whole parking lot was a drug party. Once the SWAT team came with a helicopter.” Martinez suggested a new “marketing strategy”: to evict the lowlifes and rent to refugees. “They’ve brought a lot of energy, a much better culture. They’re a real asset to the community.”

Next: The trials and tribulations of being a refugee.

Pages:1234567

Published: July 2009