Word: hassanal
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...loss, perhaps, but not alone. Gradually, Hassan integrated himself into the close-knit community of 84 Somali refugees living in Nepal, the largest nationality of some 300 United Nations-recognized urban refugees now living in Kathmandu. The Somalis began to arrive in Nepal in early 2006. Most of them are from Mogadishu, and nearly all of them are victims of trafficking. Many say they, like Hassan, were promised passage to Europe; some claim that they were supposed to go to Naples, Italy, but ended up in Nepal because of the similar-sounding names...
...hunger at home, Somali refugees are scattered all over the world. The vast majority have escaped to neighboring African countries. After surviving death threats, kidnappings and the murders of their loved ones back home, the relatively few Somalis in Nepal are just whiling away their time, waiting for what Hassan calls a "durable solution" - repatriation to Somalia, resettlement in another country or local integration in Nepal. As in Hassan's case, they help each other out and also celebrate festivals like Eid together. But they also complain angrily about what they see as the indifference of the Nepalese government...
...Sayeed Hassan Olow, 41, the patriarch of his family of nine, each day begins with the household chores. Olow wakes up early at 4 a.m., prepares food for his kids and sends them to school. By 8 a.m. he's already at the Lazimpat café meeting his countrymen, and he returns home only in the evening. Without the legal right to work and a monthly allowance of $55 handed out by the UNHCR, keeping food on the table can be a challenge, and the sense of isolation is strong. As Muslims living in a Hindu-majority nation, they have...
...government's policy of designating Somalis like Olow, Ahmed and Hassan as illegal immigrants places them in a precarious situation. Every day they stay in the country, they accumulate a fee of $6 a day. According to Bhattarai, only a handful of families in Nepal have been accepted through the UNHCR for third-country resettlement and are slated to leave for Western countries. "The resettlement countries should pay for their exit fines," says Bhattarai...
...apartment Hassan shares with an Iraqi refugee and a fellow Somali, he shows pictures of his wife, son and daughter in Mogadishu. A calendar hangs on the wall as the sole decoration in an otherwise spartan room with two beds and a lonely CD player. Had he made it to Sweden, Hassan says he would have had his wife and children travel to meet him there. Now, he thinks he made a mistake in leaving. "Given a choice," he says, "I would love to go back home...