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Thread ID: 4742 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-02-01
2003-02-01 23:42 | User Profile
Make no assumptions about Delicia Kawolo, with her stylish glasses, maroon hair twists and sweatpants printed with "Baby Girl" across the rear.
One of thousands of West Africans now putting a new stamp on Philadelphia, Kawolo fled home under gunfire at 10. By 12, she had been kidnapped and sold into indentured labor. Until she was 13, when she escaped and was reunited with her family, she lived on scraps and fading memories of family, all the time surrounded by warfare and death in her beloved Liberia.
Few people took note of that after the 13-year-old landed with her family in Philadelphia in 1995, joining an immigrant community that is transforming neighborhoods and facing challenges that range from schooling, to homesickness, to relations with black Americans. At Olney High School, Kawolo was misleadingly counted as African American, the district's only term for black children. She got no counseling or language help, even though Liberian English may be indecipherable to American ears. As her mother struggled to support four battle-scarred children, Kawolo retreated into a stoic silence.
"I didn't think they'd understand," Kawolo, now 21, says of her early contact with Philadelphians. "I thought, 'You're worrying about what you're going to wear next week?'... I made friends, but I didn't get close."
Fitting in, getting by, yearning for home. Despite the obstacles, African immigrants such as Kawolo have made Philadelphia one of their prime U.S. destinations. **While still lower here than in other major cities, the African population (excluding North African Arabs) quadrupled to 45,045 during the 1990s, faster growth than that of almost every other immigrant group, the 2000 Census found.
Community leaders say they think the real number is much higher, perhaps double. **Increasingly, newcomers are uneducated peasants and traumatized children, most from West Africa. They gravitate to melting-pot corners of West Philadelphia, Upper Darby, Northeast Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia. Communities are blossoming: Bala Cynwyd-based WNWR-AM 1540 is the home of one of the country's few Africa-focused daily radio programs, Radio Tam Tam.
[url=http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5061381.htm]http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5061381.htm[/url]
2003-02-02 05:01 | User Profile
Yes, black African immigration will soon join hispanic immigration in terms of massive, unchecked numbers flowing into this country. Of course, they'll all get preferential treatment over whites, they'll all drag down our civilization, and whites will take all the blame for all the problems they create. It's going to get crowded here.
2003-02-02 22:02 | User Profile
**Kawolo fled home under gunfire at 10. By 12, she had been kidnapped and sold into indentured labor. **
Indentured labor? Oh they mean her fellow negroes enslaved her.
I feel for these poor Africans. Dont they know that America is a racist country. They ought to stay in their native land. Gunfire and kidnapping are nothing compared to white racism.