Antoinette Murekatete, Gorette Mukankaka and Britta Kelley model their Kamili bracelets. (Photo by Jay Paul)
For families fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eastern Henrico looks like heaven.
After decades spent in crowded camps, they have their own tidy apartments. Their children are safe, and in school. There are no armed militias to fear.
But still they run up against the same obstacles facing so many American families: How do you get ahead? How do you make your dreams reality?
Gorette Mukankaka, a single mom, works long, cold shifts at a meat-packing plant to support her five children. Antoinette Murekatete, a married mother of three, works nights at an assisted-living facility as a certified nursing assistant.
“Even though they feel so happy, and so safe, and so optimistic,” says Britta Kelley, they can’t gain a strong financial foothold.
That’s where Kelley comes in.
Kelley, a mother and part-time retail consultant, began volunteering with the Congolese community last spring through a nonprofit called ReEstablish Richmond. Kelley visited families a few times a week to help them navigate the bureaucracy of American life: school forms, teacher conferences, social services paperwork. No matter how hard the refugees worked, she saw, language and education barriers prevented them from earning higher wages.
“We’ve got to think of a creative way for them to make an income, so they can provide for themselves,” Kelley decided. She asked her Congolese friends if they had experience weaving baskets. They laughed. In the camps, they told her, “we had malaria, and we had to walk two hours every day to get water.” No time for baskets.
Kelley proposed another project: delicate bracelets made from heishi beads, which are flat, wafer-like beads sourced from Ghana and Nigeria. Kelley created some prototypes, and after consulting a friend who had done work for fashion designer Tory Burch, she selected a signature pattern: bright, contrasting colors arranged in a gradient. A pair of 24-karat gold-dipped beads “add some jush to it,” Kelley says with a smile.
Kelley orders the materials and delivers them to refugees’ apartments, so they can assemble them whenever they have time. Makers are paid for every piece they make, plus profits. The tiny beads — 192 per bracelet — are hard to manipulate, but “the more you keep doing them, the faster you go,” Murekatete says.
Five Congolese women participate; more, including men, have expressed an interest, and Kelley wants to bring in some Afghan refugees as well. Kelley receives no compensation. She has founded a company called Kamili to enable profit sharing and financial transparency, with the goal of B-corporation certification.
Some of the bracelets crafted by refugees for Kamili (Photo by Jay Paul)
Kamili’s bracelets will get a spotlight in November, when the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ gift shop begins selling them in conjunction with its new exhibit: “Congo Masks: Masterpieces from Central Africa.” The bracelets are also sold at Addison Handmade & Vintage in The Fan, Love This RVA, HAIR the Salon, and various pop-up markets. New designs are in the works.
“This is so empowering to them, being a part of this business that we created,” Kelley says.
Self-sufficiency for refugees is the goal of ReEstablish Richmond, Executive Director Kate Ayers explains. The nonprofit supports refugees in their efforts to learn English, become less dependent on social services, and pursue education and professional development.
On average, around 450 refugees settle in Richmond each year, although that number has plunged under the Trump administration. Most are from Afghanistan, though Richmond also draws significant populations of Congolese, Iraqi, Bhutanese and Burmese refugees.
Many Congolese have been refugees for decades. In the 1990s, the Tutsi ethnic group was the victim of genocide by the Hutus. Tutsis were chased from their villages and shot; many saw their relatives and friends murdered. Unable to return home, many became permanent residents of camps. Violence continues in the southeastern DRC, where various factions battle each other over ethnic hostilities and control of valuable minerals used in cell phones.
“These people are coming from such tragic and traumatic backgrounds, and they come here. … They’re safe, but the struggle is far from over,” Kelley says.
The Congolese community is unique in Richmond, Ayers says, in that it’s extremely close-knit. Many live in the Stoneyridge Apartments in Eastern Henrico. “Everybody here, they see each other almost every day,” Murekatete explains. Community members watch each other’s children, share meals, study English together (their native language is Kinyarwanda) and meet every Wednesday to take part in sessions intended to help them adjust to the American lifestyle.
It's not easy. Murekatete wants to become a pharmacy technician, but first she must pass a difficult exam. “I dream, and then I come out of it,” she says. “I really don’t want to be in apartments forever. My dream, for now, is to get in a house.”
Mukankaka, too, dreams of a better job and a house with a yard for her children. “I love Richmond,” she says. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
To learn more about Richmond’s refugee community and buy Kamili bracelets, you can attend ReEstablish Richmond’s WelcomeFest 2018 on Sept. 22 from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Steward School. You can also buy a raffle ticket to win a catered Afghan feast for eight.
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