(seagulls mewing) (slow beat music playing) - My name is Nyamoun Nguany Machar.

I come from the Nuer tribe of South Sudan.

If you cannot pronounce my name, you can call me Moon.

I live in Portland, Maine.

I know you're probably wondering how a person as black as myself came to live in a place as white as this.

I was born in Ethiopia and I moved here when I was five.

My father was a former child soldier in Sudan who was seeking asylum.

I remember as a child being afraid to look into white people's eyes because they reminded me of cat's eyes but the different blues and greens that I hadn't seen before.

Coming here, I came with my own trauma and I was raised with people with trauma.

I went to a very dark place growing up, but my story is a story of resilience.

Today, I worked with At-risk youth to break down stigmas around mental health.

By being open about my own mental health issues and sharing my struggles.

I hope to motivate other young people to know that their experiences will not last forever.

I wanna tell you my story, because I know today many people have fear of immigrants, immigration, and asylum seekers.

Asylum seekers, like my family.

I moved here 20 years ago and although I love being here, I still experienced pockets of hatred.

I want to share my story with you.

It's a journey of healing.

(slow beat music playing) - [Anna] Can everyone hear me?

Okay.

Welcome everyone to the first welcome feast of the summer.

Can I go up, buddy?

(audience applauding) In taking part in tonight's meal, you are recognizing the incredible power of food and conversation to strengthen bonds between us and to convey a message of acceptance and respect.

And now I'd like to introduce Moon.

She's going to do a poetry reading for you, then we'll take it away.

- Absolutely.

(audience applauding) Thank you, Anna.

So my name is Nyamoun Nguany Machar.

I come from the Nuer tribe of South Sudan.

If you can't pronounce that, you can call me Moon, like the Moon in the sky.

So my language is poetry.

It's the most potent thing that I could find.

When I came to a strange land, where they spoke a different language, I needed to find a way in a pattern to be able to penetrate the people's minds.

And poetry is the one that I found.

My first poem.

I wrote years back, it's called Scars on my daddy's back.

And it speaks to the childhood notions that we get from trauma.

You see, they are these scars on my daddy's back that once scared me as a child.

Often I was sitting trance by the randomly placed lines and markings that turned his once deep, thick black coat into a reptile like mosaic.

I would make up in my mind as often children would.

And in my mind's eye, my father took on the role of a Nobel lion hunter king, who protected the villagers and the wild cats and the lions of the jungle.

My father was involved in the previous war of formerly Sudan but now split into Sudan and South Sudan.

It was a very Arab influenced North, they had a lot of artillery that came down and attacked, very nomadic noetic people.

And he was a child soldier from the time he was eight years old.

My silly childhood notions mixed with the deep reverence and admiration I already felt for my father, immortalized him in my mind.

My own personal mixture of Superman and Shaka Zulu.

As I stood barely four feet tall.

I love to wrap my arms around his leg.

There I was a princess of a lion wrestling king protected on all sides.

You see, no one would dare.

And once they saw the scars on my daddy's back.

Yes, silly childhood notions.

But as childhood came to its inevitable end, so did the facades and comforting fairytales.

He fought to protect his village.

It was a very, it was kind of like a ethnic cleansing that was going on.

I remember that my father remember that the Arabs really, really hated their dark skin.

My father was sitting motionless with a blank stare onward as if only his physical body was in the room.

I slowly approached and I sat at his feet, wrapped my arms around his leg.

Like I love to do when I stared at his toes trying to soften the thickening mood.

I said, daddy I think I know where I get my weird toes from.

Motionless and undeterred my father softly whispered.

I wanna tell you about the scars on your daddy's back.

My father was captured a few times and they would put them into these camps where they would have to read the Quran.

At that very moment, I felt cement rise up from the ground and mould me into place.

We sat for what seemed like hours.

My mind and my heart began to race.

I hope there are lions involved I thought.

I had never in my life been so eager to hear what my father had to say.

And my father had, had a form of how some of the traumas manifested, where he reenacted certain memories that he had.

And so when I was a child, I remember I would come downstairs and my father would be in like a low crawl where he was like crawling through some sort of area.

And he'd be speaking in his language, talking to people who have died, that he lost in the wars that he was a part of.

And I then my mother trying to hide us from that and just telling us to go back upstairs.

For an hour I listened as my father took me back to his childhood.

The horror was so real, so tangible.

My once powerful king became the 12 year old boy again, fragile, frightened and lost.

Women were having their breasts cut.

Men burned alive, children, raped and tortured.

Babies thrown into wells and fed to the wild.

My father had taken me to the secret chambers of his room in the hallways of his memories where no one else was invited.

I tightened the hold around his leg, both our faces drenched with tears that formed from a heart, I asked why, why daddy?

What did the people do?

Where was the police?

Where was the army?

Where was God?

And for the first time in the conversation, my father looked at me and said, I am here and you are here.

So God was there.

I felt for my father in the deepest way, he had made himself so vulnerable to me, something very few African men are able to do.

Since that day, something began to brew inside of my soul, like a sprout I felt a change begin to Balsam inside of me.

I am a warrior princess, not only of my father, but of my father's father and his father that came before him.

I took a vow that I will protect the villagers of humanity to my dying breath from the lions and the wild cats called injustice.

And I would dedicate my life to putting an end to the wild cats of hatred.

You see, I too now have a mark.

My father's scars had been ingrained in my heart.

(audience applauding) My father is, he's a brilliant man.

He speaks seven languages.

English just happens to be the one that he has the thickest accent in.

And so he finds it difficult to be able to correspond and really share his ideas and share his knowledge and his intellect.

- I came to Portland, Maine in 1995.

Why I came here?

Sudan had a civil war.

I was in South Sudan's Guerrilla military fight against North.

- [Moon] My father was going back and forth between Ethiopia and Sudan and he would be continuously fighting.

And he would come back through the refugee programs that they had in Ethiopia, which is where, there they would try to get them schooling.

They would tried to kind of help them starting a new life, away from the war.

And that's where he met my mother.

- The U.S asked me, they say that anyone who wants to go to another country, let them choose the country which they want to go to.

- So my father was applying for asylum with, 'cause he couldn't go back into his country because he would have been a target.

- I choose USA.

I say, I would go to USA.

- And through that asylum process, Ethiopia had a partnership with the U.S. For the U.S, they were taking refugees in from that region.

And so my father was able to come through a program of, I think, I believe it was Catholic charities that was partnered in receiving us here.

- I hear the news about Portland, Maine.

They say Portland, Maine is a good state and USA peaceful state.

Also, it's a small state.

They are that very good, secure.

- This photo was taken in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.

Taking photos like this was kind of a big deal at the time.

And so this is my mom.

This is her little sister, Niggist, who still lives in Ethiopian Addis Ababa right now.

And this was her best friend.

- We don't know Portland.

The say Portland, Oregon.

They say Portland, Maine.

We don't know it's good, it was bad, cold or hot.

We don't know anything.

- They say, welcome, we will serve you.

We treat you as the Portland People who are here.

- At the time I was arrived here, this country or this state was peaceful.

There are no any race.

They don't care who you are, where you come from.

And they are loving people, they are welcoming people.

- They asked me, if you want anything you want, we will give you.

I say, okay, what I need first?

I need a job.

They say, okay, we'll give you a job.

- [Moon] My father experienced a lot of trauma because when he was in his country, he had high rank, he was a warrior.

He could go out and fight for the things that he wanted to fight against.

And he felt like he had a chance.

And he had a voice in steering the ways that his environment worked.

And when he was transitioning here, it was very, very different.

The things that he needed to do now, were very centrally focused on bills.

You know, the, the normal ways of how to survive within this, this structure, what he had was not his.

So the land did not belong to him and he would borrow and he would have to borrow from a lot of people.

I remember him constantly talking about how there's sort of borrowing in this country.

And the ways that he interacted with many in the white community was very, very, I could tell, it was very uncomfortable for him.

The first thing that both my parents did was they applied for work.

They want to find work.

He worked for Cozy Harbor.

He worked for Barbara foods.

I know there's a few more factory jobs, but he finally settled at Jordan Meats where he worked for about 15 years.

So my mom had lot, she would hold a few jobs at a time sometimes.

She worked at Nappies Bakery, was with job I remember the most 'cause she would always bring home bread.

And also I think Cozy Harbor and a Blanket, some sort of Blanket place where she would always make blankets.

I was five.

I remember having like a guide or somebody like that would come and tell my parents where we're going and what we're gonna be doing.

Later on it I realized she was like our caseworker, like our social worker that she was given.

She was black.

So, you know, it was, it was a little bit more familiar.

So I just remember her being so kind and the ways that she slowly explained things to my parents.

- I don't know what's going on.

Of course, when you go to foreign country, even I know how to speak English, even if I was a city girl, but still when you go to foreign country, you feel like, you know, no you don't know anything.

And like, trust me, like a year.

I don't know myself.

I wish to go back to my country because I feel lonely.

- My mother is Ethiopian.

And so we grew up Orthodox Catholic, which is very intense form of Catholicism.

And so when we came here, we found the Catholic Church and because we were very closely related to Catholic charities, it was just a natural transition for us and this is where my mom, most related to their ways of worship and practice.

- I found it good.

I found the father is helping.

His name is Father Jim.

He's very nice father.

- So very quickly my parents were able to get scholarships and send us to Catholic school.

So I grew up in a Catholic school from first until eighth grade.

- I'm going on the everyday after I send the kids to school, I will be in the church.

So I will be very happy.

- We were very, very warmly received by that parish, by the whole community, really, they came and did a newspaper article on us.

So we were in the Portland Press Herald when we came.

And I remember that first Christmas that we had here.

I've never in my life, seen anything like it since.

We got so many gifts, I don't even know where they came from.

They came random people would come and drop off gifts.

People at the church, every Sunday that we were going would give my parents gifts and it filled up entire room.

We couldn't even, it wouldn't even be under a tree.

Like I'm not even joking.

It filled up an entire room and it took us hours to go through all the gifts.

It was in the winter time.

So I do remember it being cold.

I remember seeing the snow on the ground and not really being sure what it was.

- Oh, the land is white.

I woke up the kids, kids what's going on come in.

What comes through the window?

Because I don't know anything.

My oldest daughter, she said, mom this is a snow.

What is snow?

What's this?

Mom we learned in the school.

This is the season.

This is a weather.

It's is, this is winter.

- [Moon] Despite the warm welcome we received Maine's population is more than 90% white and racism was inevitable.

I remember being on the playground and being called a nigger.

And I did not, for me.

I didn't know what that word was.

I did not hear it where I was from, but I do remember the, the rising anger in the kids who were saying it because of my lack of response, or they did not get any sort of satisfaction because I wasn't reacting to it in the ways that they were used to.

And when I went and asked my teacher what this word meant, and she started to explain to me, I started to understand that there was a much deeper issue here with the black community.

And there was layers to the black experience that I really needed to open my eyes to because when I walk around, people don't know if I'm African-American or African.

It's not until they really look at my name, that they could see that I'm from a different part of the world.

But if it's just at face value, I'm still just judged as a black woman.

And so I knew that I could not just section myself off to just one lens or one experience of the black community that I really needed to start to understand how it's viewed as a whole.

I served four years in the army national guard.

I wanted to serve for a country that had given me such an opportunity.

My father definitely encouraged me.

So I knew that I would definitely need to be honoring him in my, in my service.

And I would also be honoring a nation that I hold really dear.

My father, he a very proud man.

If you research the Nuer people, they're very, very proud people.

They're warrior people.

They take care of themselves.

They take care of their land.

They take care of their families.

They have like, they have multiple wives and they grow their families.

And the male is responsible for taking care of that entire group.

And so when my father came here having the background of being in the military and really using his hands, his life and his mission to make a real change, I remember watching him and how difficult it was for him to take a different job, to take factory jobs, to take, you know, positions where he really had to humble himself and be around people who were very prejudice to him.

He dealt with a lot of racism in the factories that he worked from.

I mean, I would hear the stories because my father would invite this one African-American man to a dinner.

And when I would hear what he would say, and he would ask my father, why my father didn't stand up for himself or why he, you know, didn't retaliate against the people who would kind of bully him in these factories?

My dad would answer because of us.

He couldn't risk losing a job.

And he felt like an alien already in this society that his voice would not be backed.

So he didn't want to risk causing a rift that would then cause him to not be able to provide for his family.

And I saw how hard that was and how humbling that was.

But I remember, I still remember it.

And it's still a fact that my dad holds on to these small things that really makes him feel dignified.

He wears a suit everywhere that he goes.

To check in the mail, to garden.

And for him, it is a way to be able to put a little bit of pride back in who he was and really hold on to that dignified stance that he knew when he remembered.

- Maya, what you do, they will be free.

- [Reporter] Do you feel comfortable now in Portland, Maine?

Do you feel accepted?

- Yeah.

I don't have any problem.

If there is any problem, I mean, I don't care.

You know why?

I'm no new.

I've been here.

Whatever it's happened, it's happened.

Whatever they call me the name.

I don't care.

They're calling me nigger.

So many people me and say you know what, go out to your country.

I'm not sad, I'm not mad.

I don't care.

Especially I love Portland.

It look like my hometown.

I love Portland.

I don't wanna go anywhere.

Yeah.

(slow beat music playing) - I went through an abuse when I was eight years old, a sexual assault.

And I continued to get periodically assaulted until I was about 13 years old.

I didn't tell anybody about it, but my psychology changed.

My mannerisms changed the ways that I interacted with my family and my surroundings changed.

And that was as I was also trying to transition into this culture.

And when it finally came to a boiling point and my parents knew that they needed to seek out some sort of help within the systems here in the United States.

We started getting involved with the mental health system.

(slow beat music playing) Sophie is, it's funny, when you first meet her, she looks like a meek little mouse.

She had her head down, her hair was in her face.

And I was like, ah, man, this is gonna be really awkward, being alone in this room with this girl, 'cause I'm gonna have this attitude, I'm loud.

So I was like, Oh this is gonna be interesting here.

It was a little white girl and I couldn't do.

She shocked the hell out of me.

I mean, her street smarts completely.

If there was a PhD in it, you know, as unfortunate as it is, she had to learn those things of how to maneuver and survive.

But so if he comes in the stories that I thought that I could only see in movies and when she tells them to me and then she laughs, you know, and the humor that's represented behind it because she came out of a dark situation on the other side.

It honestly shames me for the trivial things that I fit in stress about, or you know, being upset about something that I was sitting in the back of my head and this slaps it right out of me.

- I first saw her.

I was, had been in Long Creek for like almost three years.

And I was just about to get out.

And she walks in and I look at her, I'm like, whoa.

I'm like, like, she's not usually the type of girl who likes me.

Usually I'm like, like she was in like, nice.

She looked so pretty.

Her hair was done up so nice.

And like.

- [Moon] She was one of the first referrals that I got.

You're only supposed to maintain the reservation trips from six months to a year.

And me and Sophie have been really cool now for about four years.

And, you know, I've watched her go through so many different things.

I've seen her, you know, from the worst of her worst, still smile, still look up at me.

I mean, with black eyes, bruises.

I'm sorry.

You know, 'cause she has a lot of things that happened to her that aren't fair but she's still so happy and that's, yeah, that helps me.

- She came in to my life and showed me and also I wasn't like familiar.

Like, I didn't have like a lot of I'm white, a white girl from Maine.

So I didn't have like as much cultural experience.

And she took me into her family and like when mine was broken and like made me feel like I had like another family to go to and like just made me feel comfortable and loved and accepted.

So that was really nice.

And that's she taught me.

- She came from a tough situation.

There's substance abuse in her family.

There's mental health struggles that where they didn't get the right type of services.

So when she was really young, it was labeled that she had behavioral health problems and she started getting medicated at five years old through that journey, through of our interactions with the mental health system, it really caused her life to be a complete roller coaster where she was inside facilities, mental health facilities.

She was hospitalized as a child, in-house hospitalizations.

She started to gravitate towards a crowd that wasn't doing the best things that were also lost and had their own issues.

And so with that came a criminal rap sheet.

- Long Creek is Maine's juvenile institution.

It's juvie jail for kids.

- I went through my process and it took me a long time and I faked, I faked it for a long time.

I wasn't honest about the things that I was going through - Yeah.

- When I was going through it.

You know, I always wanted to upkeep this like pretty polished persona of just, I'm a basketball player, I'm a jock.

You know what I mean?

Like, and I come from this like family of just like, you know, of a really strong immigrants and that's what I wanted to upkeep.

And I didn't know how to find strength in vulnerability.

- Yeah.

You were just like, such a strong individual.

And I just like, I loved being, I felt like, I don't know, I just felt something immediately.

You made me feel welcome and you made me feel loved.

Well, Moon was more open with me.

Like she immediately, I could tell that she wanted me to feel comfortable.

Like she wanted me to feel comfortable and able to like talk to her.

She didn't want me to just, I guess, she didn't want me to just feel like she was another one trying to fix me.

Like she was trying to help me, you know what I mean?

There's a big difference between fixing and helping and I needed help.

She like saved my life a few times and made it so that I had to, I was able to have another chance to get on my feet or get out of a situation and go somewhere I needed to go.

Just I'm happier than I've been in a long time.

I don't just have nothing anymore.

I've built like a team and like, I've survived.

And now I'm, I'm gonna do good.

(slow beat music playing) - We recently found out that we lost funding.

So everything's gonna stop.

The relationships with the young people, the programs, the projects, it's all gonna stop.

And we just, we had about a month's notice.

It's really hard.

I mean, I have a daughter, I'm a single mom.

I have bills.

So, and I've been pouring a lot of myself into this work.

And so I am in the state of looking for a job, thinking about how I'm gonna give my daughter a Christmas?

How we're gonna celebrate her birthday?

That's coming up in a few weeks.

How are we gonna live?

- [TV Reporter 1] An overnight shooting in a Portland neighborhood, left a man dead and the community stunned tonight.

- [TV Reporter 2] 22 Year old Ishak Moosa was shot during an altercation and was found dead by police from two bullets in his back.

- Two weeks ago, a 22 year old young black Muslim man was murdered in a home here in Portland.

And to this day, no arrests have been made.

Even though there were people in the home to witness the murder.

(crowd chanting slogans) The immigrant and Muslim communities were outraged.

The police knew who did it they claimed.

It was the brother of a white girl Ishak Moosa was dating.

A lot of us felt like the lack of an arrest had overtones of systemic racism.

(crowd chanting slogans) About a week ago, the Mayor, this Chief of Police and the City Councilman met with immigrant and Muslim communities to discuss their hurt and the tension is still left in the community.

That city councilman is Pious Ali.

Who's not only an immigrant and a Muslim, but also a mentor of mine.

I wanted to ask Pious about what appeared to me to be a hate crime.

- [Pious] The way our system is designed is for me to work with the Muslim community and the immigrant community and calm people's nerves and say that, for now, let's trust the system.

Let's believe that a system is going to do what is right.

Do I think the system will do what is right?

I don't know.

I feel this heavy layer of responsibility on my shoulder to the system I'm constantly engaging.

Even if I'm not invited to a table, I force myself into the table and nobody can ask me to leave.

We're not gonna change everything overnight.

We are going to change, but it's not gonna be overnight.

- Your honor, the state has requested to ask.

- Finally, three weeks after the murder, Mark Cardeli was arrested by Portland police and accused of shooting Moosa in the back.

His sister indicated that Cardeli had previously made racist remarks about Muslims and was trying to get Moosa out of their home.

Even though he had permission to visit.

Adding to the tension of a racist murder in the community.

Portland's commitment to immigration, refugees and asylum seekers was soon tested in an unprecedented fashion.

- We received a call from the city of Portland, informing us the influx of asylum seekers earlier this week and more people have come since then.

- People are coming here because we can help them.

And they can help us ultimately too.

This isn't a political issue.

It's not a political problem.

It's a humanitarian issue.

- We're not certain why people have chosen Portland, Maine to come to.

That'll be one of the questions that we'll be asking.

We're not sure whether they, how much they've been vetted.

And of course, Portland has a very practical problem of trying to figure out how it's going to take care of all these families that are coming that had very little means of support and don't appear to have sponsors in the house community of Portland.

- [Reporter] What do you say to the Portland resident who says I want to help, but this is the bottomless pit.

- I actually don't agree with the concept, that it's a bottomless pit.

I do believe that this was an emergency situation that the city had to address.

We are not at the kind of city like others who just buy bus tickets and push people along their way.

We are a compassionate city, but we are also a city of 67,000 people and we do have to make sure that we live within our means.

- Over the past week, over 400 asylum seekers, escaping persecution in Congo and Angola have come here to Portland, Maine and when they got here, they are now being housed at the sports complex called The Expo.

So far, we have raised over half a million dollars and have had numerous volunteers come and give their services to aid the asylum seekers.

But this has also put a lot of tension on this city.

On how we're gonna provide services for these people and get them into stable situations and housing.

My history of being in this city and playing basketball here and watching the kids start dribbling around the basketball is a little nostalgic but even more that, that excitement that I see in the young kids of being in a new place and that, you know, they look like they're having fun.

And the fun is represented by a lot of hardship that they don't understand yet because they're so young.

And for me, that's such a familiar feeling coming here with my family, for sure.

I think when I see the pregnant women and I see how young some of these kids are and trying to imagine them navigating like rainforest terrains and having to walk without knowing what you're going into, I start to feel some of that fear.

And then when I see there, there's smiles and you know, and you see that, that there's a sense of calm and peace that they're starting to find that it's encouraging to me.

(slow beat music playing) - [Moon] 32 have signed up but I don't see 32 here.

During the day I want you to, when we're coming back, look for me.

He checking in with me, okay?

(man speaking in foreign language) (children chattering) Yep, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12... 18, 19, guys, guys, this way.

So we're taking some of the kids from the asylum seekers and we're taking them to summer slam, to play basketball with some of the inter city kids.

(children chattering) (slow beat music playing) They've started to find housing for some of the families in there.

So a lot of them are transitioning out, but now the city is giving them less than a month to vacate the area.

I asked Pious about the strain all this was putting on the city and on Maine, the second whitest state in America.

- Our city has been a place for immigrants for generations, whether it is the Armenians or the Jewish or the Italians.

Portland has been a place that has been welcoming to immigrants and the most recent other African immigrants who are coming here.

However, in the most recent years, we haven't had anything in this scale.

So we are caught off guard.

However, our city and our staff stood up to the plate and did what is right, which is provide what people need.

- What are we gonna do with the homeless community?

What are we gonna do with the shelters?

How do you confidently answer that?

How do you give them that, You know, that comfort to know that there is some sort of logistical plan to be able to handle this or transition them successfully into our community?

- They are our citizens, they are citizens of this city.

And our role is to make sure that they are safe in every definition of safety.

Place to live, food to eat and a support that they need.

And we are capable and when we reached the point that we are not, we ask for help.

So it is not just our role or it is not just a problem for me.

I see it as an opportunity for us to have more people come here.

Our school is quite recently we are talking about closing schools.

Well, these families are coming with a lot of kids.

They will educated, they will learn and will also teach our kids.

The globe, the world is becoming diverse.

What is more better than a place that is 99, 97% white.

We are looking for people to come here because we have more jobs than the number of people that can do the work.

And don't get me wrong.

These people may find themselves in a very difficult situation now.

Most of them do have two or three degrees.

They are well-educated unlike the inflow of previous refugees who were coming from either countries that have been in warfare long time or coming from refugee camp.

This specific asylum seekers are coming well-educated.

All we need to do is put in a transition plan, which will break them into, put them into our communities, into our state, to fill in the gap that we are looking for.

To give them a place that they can call home.

- [Judge] Based on what I know, somebody that came from a country here for a, who believes in liberty and freedom, I can now believe my experience.

(speaking in foreign language) (suspenseful music playingú) - [Clement] A Program here is a financial literacy where we bring our financial knowledge.

It brought the American financial system to the immigrants who are living here in Maine.

These are people who freshly arrived from, you know, the Southern border.

We will see a big chunk of them who are still in the shelters and few were already housed, but the majority of people are in shelters, waiting for a permanent housing arrangement to be made.

(indistinct chattering) - People have been very generous and all of the nonprofits and volunteers and people who have stepped up, it's just incredibly impressive and everybody deserves all of our thanks for that.

- [Alian] So we provide the language acquisition.

We provide entrepreneurship support program, and the citizenship is we can get.

- Most of these people come from the D.R.

Congo and Angola.

Most of them are educated and they want to learn English.

As you see in our class here they come and spend six hours trying to learn the language because they want to be ready by the time they start working.

(speaking foreign language) - [Damas] So he is saying when he was still in Congo he knew about Maine through YouTube.

Some people had some YouTube events here and place it on YouTube.

So he came to learn about Maine.

Say he learned that was a big African community here.

And he felt he could integrate easily because of the big the African community here in Portland.

(suspenseful music playing) - [TV Reporter] A show of might as soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo begin the offensive against tribal militia groups that have killed more than a hundred people in the past two weeks alone and displaced hundreds of thousands in the Eastern province of his Ituri.

(gunshot fired) (suspenseful music playing) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (all speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - Hi, nice to see you.

- Nice to see you too.

- Once you came to the United States, how was that journey once you finally reached here?

What was that feeling like?

- [Translator] Okay.

(speaks foreign language) (speaking foreign language) He felt safe.

- [Moon] Yeah.

(speaking foreign language) - And then coming to me, what were you feeling when you were coming up on the bus, almost to me, what was that?

With your family, what was that feeling like?

(translator speaks foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - [Moon] What do you hoped for the future?

For your children, for yourself, for the community here?

(speaking foreign language) - All right David, that was very good.

- [David] Okay, thank you.

- Absolutely.

- [Reporter] What do you say to those people who don't value the risk in this country?

- If you, if you could imagine some of the most desperate times that you've been in where the unknown was the only option and then imagine having little eyes looking at you that you created and brought into this world so now, they're also your responsibility.

What type of cruelty would you think it was for someone who is able to give you a helping hand or a comfort and they withheld that from you and they judged you for it.

People don't want to leave comfortable places.

People don't wanna leave safe places because of the issue that immigration is, I don't think that people understand how hurtful it is and what a new trauma that you create instead of healing.

(slow beat music playing) (hammer ramming) This used to be the convent of the sisterhood of the precious blood.

It is not owned by the solely family and leased by Freedom House.

We hope to make this a transitional house for asylum seekers, who are our new main communities.

We have about 40 rooms.

We're gonna be renting two singles and couples.

It's still, we're still working on models to be able to make it assessable to families, but general assistance is going to be fronting a lot of the rent until we could work on obtaining working permits for the community members so that they could start to get into the habit of being renters right here in Portland, Maine and then transition into our communities and become contributing members.

So Papi first, can you just explain who you are in the community?

- Okay.

Yeah my name is Papi Bongibo.

I am the president of the Congolese Community or Congolese that, you know, live in Maine.

So we run the all states, not only Portland, but it's actually everyone from the Congo live in the State of Maine.

- [Moon] So you are pretty involved in a lot of the transition that a lot of people coming from the Congo are going through as they transitioned into Maine, correct?

- Exactly.

This is one of our mission to better serve and welcome everyone who decide to or choosing the State of Maine as their home state.

And then we trying to have them as far as finding a place to stay, you know, getting through services, and we serving as a bridge between the city of Portland or the State of Maine and the Congolese community.

- So just because you've mentioned the city of Portland, how do you think the city of Portland has reacted to the recent influx of asylum seekers coming from the Congo?

- The response was positive and this was actually a big relief because sometime you don't know how the reaction, how the state, how the city is gonna react.

Every time you have a movement, you know, large number of people moving over if you see.

Yep.

- So now we're standing in the transitional space or what we hope to be a transitional house for asylum seekers and you're one of the partners in it.

What do you say about the response of a lot of community members that feel like asylum seekers have cut to the front of the line when it comes to resources or the negative feelings or anxieties that they have.

- We all, you know, myself or so, you know, I'm an immigrant but I served this country and I contribute, I pay my taxes and I think it's the same process.

It's a miss of communication.

Maybe the media is not telling all the truth, you know.

You know, when you just saying, oh, they are coming, they're coming without explaining the real problem, without telling why these people are here, because this is not the first immigration group that just arrived in United States.

So I think it's a miscommunication or it's, the public's not getting more info about what these people, that's why maybe, you know, some people are getting scared or they are panicking.

It's all about humanity, you know, nothing personal.

And I think if we can better explain to these small group that this is not how you thinking, it's like you don't, maybe you were misinformed about these people.

These are not criminals.

These are people are seeking better life or running from prosecution or looking for a place to feed or to provide for the families.

People don't need to fight or be against because these folks are not taking anything from what already existed.

Just wanna be a part of the contribution because they are here to work.

(child speaking in foreign language) They don't wanna depend or rely on to the workfare.

Everyone wants to get the work permit as soon as possible.

- [Moon] Yeah.

- [[Papi] So they can be Free.

(child speaking in foreign language) (slow music playing) (speaking foreign language) (Moon laughing) (slow music playing) (child speaking in foreign language) - Somolia.

(slow beat music playing) ♪ To us, to stand on our feet ♪ And with heart to heart ♪ And with hand in hand ♪ This season we'll sow ♪ You'll grow from the land ♪ And with heart to heart ♪ And with hand in hand ♪ And we shall everywhere ♪ Provide comfort and care ♪ From my heart to their hand (audience applauding) - [Claude] ProsperityME's vision is to see all immigrants and the refugees build financial stability and improve their lives.

If you are a founder, a business leader, a banker.

I know I so many business of my business friends here.

(calling out names of children) - [Janet] I cannot imagine what it is to be, to be liked to be at who made a new immigrant a new immigrant coming to stay in like this totally foreign land.

To become part of our work force that we so badly need you for.

And to all means, welcome home.

(audience cheering and applauding) - Again, that's the future of Maine.

(audience cheering) Do you agree with me?

One more time.

(audience applauding) - [Anna] Thank you everyone for coming tonight.

In a politically polarized world where traditional diplomacy often struggles to produce meaningful relationships, culinary diplomacy, the art of sharing a meal and sitting side by side reminds us of common humanity among countries and peoples.

In taking part in tonight's meal, you are recognizing the incredible power of food and conversation to strengthen bonds between us and to convey a message of acceptance and respect.

(audience applauding) - So like I mentioned, that was able to go into the Expo and meet some of our new neighbors.

And when I was looking into some of the eyes and the faces of the young children, I remember the desperate prayers that I felt moving into a new country.

So this is called, I come from away.

You see, I come from a place they call away.

I'm not sure if it's safe to say why I came, but only that I'm looking for a place to stay.

You see, I walked through many lands, desperately searching for a place I could call home, chased by a fear that my new home would only be a place called alone.

I reach for sense, tastes, something that reminds me that there was a place where it was okay to be me and all that is me in that place.

I was once free.

As I journey through miles, I came onto a stranger's lands.

It's coasts and beaconing lighthouses much different from my hot desert sands.

I feared of the natives and how they would perceive my dark tone and structured bone.

Would they accept a pilgrim who has ventured so far from her home?

What would they think of the physical and emotional scars that I held?

Would it make them shun my presence in question?

Why I could not stay in the places where my great-grandfather's dwelled?

Would they apprehend me and lock me away?

Would I succumb to devastation now that I have entered the horror and fray?

Or would they be a kind people ready to embrace my broken and shattered spirit and soul?

Would they ushered me to praise it, so again, make me feel whole?

Would they teach me their craft so that I may embark on a mission to dare to dream the American dream and bring my fantasies of a new world to fruition?

Maybe they will love the food, the spices, and the languages that I bring, or maybe they would dance in Jubilee by the songs that my ancestors sing.

Who is to know when you enter a new world, I suppose I'll just keep these words as a prayer of a young foreign girl.

Thank you.

(audience cheering and applauding) (slow beat music playing) (slow beat music continues)