Airman struggles to save her family

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kerry Johnson
  • 1st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (AFPN) --  Soon, Airman 1st Class Ayaan Nduli hopes to sleep well at night.

It would mean 15 years of worrying and waiting were over.

It would mean her family is safe.

The story of Airman Nduli, an honor guard member here, begins in Somalia in 1981, when her mother, Sahra Cali Sherwac, was pregnant with her, the third child. Mrs. Sherwac wanted to give her third child what she could not give her other two: A chance to have a different life, to escape the confines and limitations of a Third World country.

That same year, a South African woman named Zandile Nduli was with the United Nations working in Somalia, teaching students the skills to become midwives.

Through a mutual friend, Ms. Nduli and Mrs. Sherwac became acquainted and Mrs. Sherwac saw the opportunity she craved for her child.

She approached Ms. Nduli and asked her to adopt her baby. Ms. Nduli agreed.

Ms. Nduli stayed in Somalia with the child and continued to work there in case Mrs. Sherwac changed her mind.

Even after four years of watching her own daughter grow up in Ms. Nduli’s care, Mrs. Sherwac’s staunch resolve remained, so Ms. Nduli began making plans to leave for Kenya. Ms. Nduli also made plans for the Sherwac family to join them in Kenya.

That was when things began to unravel.

“I’ll never forget the day we tried to leave,” Airman Nduli said. “We were thrown in jail.”

Rumors had been circulating that Mrs. Sherwac had sold her daughter to Ms. Nduli -- rumors which Somali soldiers heard. When Ms. Nduli and the child attempted to leave the country, they, along with Mrs. Sherwac, were arrested and thrown in jail.

Airman Nduli said she does not remember much of the time they spent in jail, as Ms. Nduli attempted to explain the situation and prove her intention was to adopt the child.

“I remember we couldn’t have any visitors. The soldiers wouldn’t let any one in,” Airman Nduli said. “We had a small window we could look out of and my brother would come to see us there. That was the last time I saw him.”

After several weeks, Ms. Nduli was able to substantiate the adoption, and the three were released.

Ms. Nduli took the child and left for Kenya with plans for the Sherwac family, which included a new baby sister, Ikran, to join them.

But the family never came.

Fighting broke out in Somalia, and Ms. Nduli lost contact with the Sherwac family.

Ms. Nduli had contacts in the U.N. office in Somalia, and at her request, they went to look for the family. They found nothing. The Sherwac family was gone.

Ms. Nduli took the child to England, where she was legally adopted and became a British citizen.

Ms. Nduli and her adopted daughter eventually moved to Nashville, Tenn.

Years passed and the girl forgot how to speak Somali, and she learned her adoptive mother’s native language of Zulu and perfected her English.

But, she never forgot her family.

“We never stopped looking,” Airman Nduli said. “Not a day went by when my (adoptive) mother and I didn’t think of them, not a week went by without us looking for them.”

While in Nashville, they went into a Somalian restaurant. Amazingly, a customer recognized Ms. Nduli.

“He walked up to her and said he remembered her from Somalia, and all the great things she had done while she was there,” Airman Nduli said.

The chance meeting proved instrumental in the search for Airman Nduli’s family. They became friends with the man, who they call “Baba Saed.”

“On New Year’s Eve of 1999, I stayed home with my mother. I had fallen asleep when we got a call from Baba,” Airman Nduli said. “He was saying, ‘Ayaan, Ayaan, we’ve found your family!’ I hung up on him because I thought I was dreaming.”

Airman Nduli woke Ms. Nduli up, and together they drove to Baba Saed’s house where Airman Nduli was able to speak to her mother on the phone.

“It was the first time I’d talked to my (biological) mother in 13 years,” Airman Nduli said. “We had some trouble communicating because of the language barrier, but it was amazing.”

With Baba Saed translating, Airman Nduli found out her brother, Mohammed, was killed during Somalia’s civil war. Her older sister had wed a Kenyan and was no longer living with her mother. She also found out she had a second younger sister in her mother’s care, Ifrah.

Ms. Nduli and the teenager made plans to go to the Sherwac family at the end of the school year, and Ms. Nduli chartered a plane for the family to finally leave for Kenya, which is where they would meet.

“When I stepped off the plane in Kenya, my mother knew me right away -- she began to call my name,” said Airman Nduli.

While in Kenya, Ms. Nduli found a house for the family.

But after Airman Nduli returned to the United States and joined the Air Force, things for her biological family fell apart.

Soon after the Ndulis returned to the United States, the Sherwac family was pulled from their home by Kenyan soldiers.

Airman Nduli’s mother and sisters were beaten, and the house burned to ashes -- simply because they were Somali, she said.

All the way from the United States, Ms. Nduli was able to get an apartment for the family in Kenya.

But again, the family’s home was taken, this time by thieves.

“They had no choice but to go to a refugee camp,” said Airman Nduli. “My mother and I went to visit them in the winter of 2002, and all I could do was cry because of the situation they were in.”

Life in the Kenyan refugee camp had not been kind to what remained of Airman Nduli’s family. After initially moving into the camp, which was home for Sudanese, Kenyans, Somalis, Ethiopians and Tanzanians, her mother and sisters were mistakenly placed in the Sudanese section of camp -- a dangerous situation for three Somali women.

“During their first month in camp, my two sisters were beaten, my mother was beaten and their tent was burned. It took that whole first month, before (camp officials) moved them,” said Airman Nduli.

While in Kenya, Airman Nduli went to check on the status of her family’s permission to leave for the United States. They were in a refugee program, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to help them leave the country. According to the organization’s Web site, in Africa alone, more than 4.5-million people fall under the program’s mandate. Its purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees and ensure that each refugee can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge, locally or somewhere else.

Airman Nduli’s family’s plan was to come to the United States. Once they arrived in the United States, Ms. Nduli planned to open up her home to them in New York, where she lives now.

But the organization lost the family’s paperwork.

“When we went to their office to confront them, the head of the office actually left out the back door -- that’s how badly they had messed up,” Airman Nduli said.

The family was put in a new refugee program, the International Organization for Migration, with the hope that they would soon have a way out of Kenya.

In the meantime, Airman Nduli made sure her two sisters and mother began preparing for a life in the United States.

The Ndulis enrolled the mother and sisters in English schools -- Ikran went to a boarding school outside of camp, while Ifrah and Mrs. Sherwac attended school inside the camp.

Though it was a step toward a better future, they still could not escape the violence around them.

Airman Nduli’s sister Ifrah was raped in the camp. Nine months later, she gave birth to a son.

“I know there are horrible things that go on in those camps. I just want to get them out of there,” Airman Nduli said. “I wish I was there with them, but I know everything happens for a reason -- and my being adopted will make it possible for them to have a better life.”

But for now, the new refugee program is proving to be as ineffective as the first, she said.

Officials told the Ndulis in July 2003 that the family would be arriving in October, but it did not happen.

Chris Lom, an information officer at organization’s headquarters in Switzerland, offered the explanation that the delay was due to the “incredibly complicated” process for getting refugees into the United States since Sept. 11.

“There have been huge delays and many people who have been in (in the camp) have been there for several years,” he said. He did not elaborate further.

Airman Nduli still waits.

“It’s been almost a year. I just wish I knew how much longer we have to wait,” she said. “There would be no more middle-of-the-night calls from my mother, where I don’t understand her and don’t understand if anything is wrong or not. It would mean my sisters and my nephew could have some of the opportunities I have had. It would mean for the first time in years, I could sleep peacefully knowing my family was safe.” (Courtesy of Air Combat Command News Service)