Mufalo Chitam knows what it’s like to start over in a new place. Born and raised in Zambia, she’s lived in Maine for going on two decades. Now she’s helping others start their new lives in the state, too. Executive director of the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition, Chitam is among the leaders and volunteers assisting asylum-seekers who have recently arrived at an emergency shelter in Portland.
“Most of the new asylum seekers, who started arriving in the city from the Mexican border this week, are from Congo and Angola in central Africa,” Bangor Daily News reports, and with the area already having “sizable communities from those places who know the language, the culture and the food,” it’s the community members stepping forward to help.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said. “People are just ready to help.” While local food programs are providing basics like sandwiches, MIRC “is also organizing local immigrants to cook familiar food at the shelter. The asylum seekers are also volunteering to help with the cooking, further cementing bonds between the established community and the new Mainers.”
It’s having positive effects. “People are opening up more to people who are speaking their language, explaining what they’ve been through, what they need,” Chitam said. “It’s been really great to see those dynamics. Without the volunteers, this would be hard to do.”
We hear a lot of demonization directed at asylum-seekers and other vulnerable people by the Trump administration, but that is fringe-talk: the majority of Americans support legalization of undocumented immigrants , support asylum-seekers, and oppose mass deportation. In Texas, ordinary Americans have also stepped forward to assist vulnerable families waiting for their turn to ask for asylum, crossing from Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico, with food and other supplies.
Ann Finch, “who is active in her United Methodist Church in Austin, brought dozens of pairs of shoes that were donated to her, and several pair she had purchased herself,” the Corpus Christi Caller Times reported. Aided by a bilingual man named Carlos Cisneros, Finch set up a table that had a line forming in no time. "Just about everyone here needs shoes," she said.
Back in Maine, Chitam said that “It’s been thrilling just to see the response” from the community. Bangor Daily News reports that she’s organizing another community meeting to recruit more volunteers and discuss longer-term plans, including helping these families integrate to their new lives in the state. “When it comes to helping our neighbors, we do, we just come around,” she said.