Furaha Nyirarukundo organizes a monthly women’s group for Swahili speakers at the International Institute of New England in Manchester, one of the biggest refugee resettlement agencies in the region. Her official title is health promotion specialist, but one of the women jokingly calls her “Mama Furaha,” which seems a little more apt.
Nyirarukundo is pretty reserved, but the level of care she has for this group is obvious as she picks up a fussy kid or two so that their moms can fill out a form. Nyirarukundo is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and speaks Swahili as her native language. She said this group is a chance for women to connect.
“She will not feel like she's alone here in the United States,” Nyirarukundo said. “Even if you don't have a family, but when you find other people, you will say, ‘Oh, I have a friend. And then, in a community, it can be good.’”
These kinds of programs are under threat from the Trump administration, which has paused the federal refugee program and implemented funding cuts, forcing furloughs and layoffs in organizations across the country, including New Hampshire.
Refugee resettlement agency Ascentria has laid off 19 staff members. But the work of building community for people who came as refugees in recent years continues despite those pressures.
Since 2011, New Hampshire has resettled about 3,600 refugees from 27 countries; more than half of them from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Just last year, 160 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo resettled in New Hampshire. Many are still adapting, getting used to living here.
As someone with recent firsthand experience with the process, Nyirarukundo has quickly become a leader in the community. She started applying for refugee status in 2013 from a Ugandan refugee camp before finally being approved to come to Manchester in 2019.
Nyirarukundo said learning English was hard, especially since she had to take classes on Zoom once the pandemic started. She’s still learning English and taking advanced classes so she can be more effective at her job, more independent in her life, and help her four kids.
“I need to learn English – I will not quit. I will continue even if the kids, or [the] job, is not easy for me. But I will continue,” she said.
After 30 years of conflict in the Congo, the country is now at the center of confrontation with several armed groups over control of mineral resources, like gold and coltan, which is essential to making cell phones.
About 7 million people are internally displaced and over a million people are seeking refugee status in other countries. This included Miriam Ndirira, who is part of the women’s group in Manchester.
Ndirira is a nurse, a midwife, a mom, and a refugee. She’s been living in the U.S. for a little over a year with her six kids, after her husband was killed by rebels in Goma.
“Back in our country, they took our future,” Ndirira said. “But when we came here, we get our future. We get education. We get peace.”
She’s come to the women’s group a couple of times since she resettled in New Hampshire. She said they discuss different topics related to raising a family and being a woman in this country; like breastfeeding, screening for cancer, how to enroll in summer school, how to find a job, and how to navigate medical appointments.
But more than that, she echoed the importance of being together with people who get it.
“Here, we can find the community and we can support each other,” she said. “Any woman who is coming from our country has a different story and a different problem [with] what happened back in our country. So here, when they joined us together, we can share everything together as a community.”
Manchester IINE director Henry Harris explained that this kind of community-building is a central part of making sure that families are finding ways to belong in their new country. He says it’s easy for refugees to become isolated when they move here, especially for stay-at-home moms who are still learning English.
“Men need to get jobs right away,” Harris said. “But because of that, women tend to get isolated easier. So having a women's group like this with someone from the community, like Furaha, to help facilitate it, they're able to really build community together.”
For newcomers, those friendships and bonds can make adapting to a new place a little easier, and support from institutions like IINE help make the process – and dream – of becoming a U.S. citizen a little less daunting.
Nyirarukundo just got her citizenship a few months ago, which was a big win after she spent years completing this expensive, complicated, and document-intensive process.
Her advice? Be patient and have faith.
“I can tell everyone to be patient and pray [to] God, because God is the one who knows our future,” she said. “Our mission is [for] everyone to be in a good life.”
