Family calls Lincoln home after fleeing Sudan
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By ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
Like so many refugees and immigrants, Khamisa Abdalla and her seven children fled the Sudan for America with a single hope: To make their lives better.
“American people need to know why we came here and hear our struggle,” 46-year-old Khamisa says. “We fled for our lives.”
Their story is similar to those of other refugees and immigrants who call Lincoln home.
It’s a story that will be artistically told through Stories of Home, the Lincoln Arts Council’s community art project.
Khamisa Abdalla and Mohamed Kambal grew up together in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. They married in 1980.
He was the chief air traffic controller at Khartoum Airport. She taught math, science and art.
They had a beautiful home in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city. They had six children and a seventh on the way. They were a happy, close-knit family.
But Sudan was not a happy place. Civil war plagued the country. Arab Muslims held the power, African Muslims like Mohamed and Khamisa faced oppression and violence. Mohamed was labeled a “rebel.”
“My life was threatened because I refused to join the Islam party,” he says.
And his children …
“Even if my children are raised in Sudan, what future awaits them?”
In 1993, Mohamed and Khamisa sat down and talked about leaving Sudan.
“She did not agree at the beginning,” he recalls. “Then she realized what was going on. We are citizens, but we don’t have every right.”
Mohamed tried, but was prevented from taking his whole family out of Sudan. As the situation worsened, he went to Egypt alone, and joined the Sudanese rebel movement.
He spent two years in Egypt, then moved on to Kenya and eventually returned to the Nuba Mountains with the rebels. He was given a gun to protect himself. But instead of fighting with bullets, Mohamed fought with words and pictures, serving as a freelance journalist, getting the word out to the world about the plight of his people.
He tried repeatedly to contact Khamisa. Letters never got to her. Phone calls never went through. Friends did not or could not answer him.
“I don’t hear anything,” he says.
“For almost six years I didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” Khamisa says.
“I always had hope. I feel he is alive,” she said putting a hand to her heart.
Without her husband, life was difficult. People were afraid to visit her, knowing they could be watched. Her family lived in isolation.
She worked three teaching jobs to support the children.
“In the schools, I found that even my students had been spying on me,” Khamisa says.
“I stood with my ideas. I fought for them, but the price is a lot — they destroyed my house,” she said.
She worried her sons would be drafted into the Sudanese army.
“If they take them to war they will die, or lose an arm or a leg. I saw this is the future for my kids if we stay in Sudan,” Khamisa said.
So she sold their land, and used the money to buy passage to Egypt, where life was just as difficult.
Eventually, she moved the family to Kenya and applied for refugee status.
In 2000, Khamisa learned her husband was alive. He visited her in Kenya on a one-month visa.
When the family was told they were being relocated to Lincoln, Mohamed stayed behind.
“I was obliged to stay there (Sudan),” he said. “My people needed me.”
Explains Khamisa: “In my family we believe in God. We believe we are supposed to do good things for other people. When you do that, you will get a reward (from God) and with that reward you will be happy. When you give yourself to the people and work with them, this is the gift for God.”
Khamisa and the children arrived in Lincoln in September 2000. They neither spoke nor read English. Everything was alien.
It took three sons and three separate trips to the grocery store looking for salt. Only later did they find out it comes in cartons, instead of clear tubes.
In school, the children learned English quickly. Khamisa worked full time in a factory and learned English through a Lincoln Literacy Council tutor. She then decided to go to school and work part-time jobs at Lincoln Public Schools and the African Community Center.
Mohamed joined his family in May 2004. A student at Southeast Community College, he is working to perfect his English and find a new career.
“I would like to make a good model for my children to see,” Mohamed says.
Despite their 11 years apart, Khamisa and Mohamed say it has not been hard to become a family again.
“We sometimes argue,” Khamisa says. “He says, ‘You have changed.’ I say, ‘You have changed.’ In 11 years, we have both changed. But it is fine, we are finally together.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
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