NEW YORK (USA TODAY) — Once a week, Winnie Aye digs into the dirt,
breathes in the smell of fresh vegetables and feels the satisfaction of
growing something.
The surroundings remind Aye of her native Burma, also known as
Myanmar, and of her later home in Malaysia, where she gardened
regularly. But she is far from those places, at a hidden oasis in the
Bronx called Drew Gardens, half a block from the elevated train, a
stone's throw from McDonald's and not far from the Bronx Zoo.
"It is very relaxed here, under the sky, the fresh air," says Aye, 49. "The mind is relaxed. I love gardens."
Aye is one of about 400 refugees brought to the United States with
the help of the International Rescue Committee who are taking part in
the organization's New Roots program. The 6-year-old effort aims to help
refugees get used to their new countries by allowing them to do
something that is familiar and empowering: growing things.
At 17 farms in nine cities, refugees and other immigrants aided by
the IRC tend vegetables at community gardens and either take them home
or sell them at farmers' markets.
New Roots helps people who feel disoriented by their new surroundings
remember some of the foundation of home, says Ellie Igoe, New Roots'
national coordinator in San Diego.
"Food is one of the most significant, visceral ways we are connected
to culture," Igoe says. "Refugees have been disconnected from those
kinds of rituals. When that happens, we suffer emotionally. And so when
we're able to get back to those things, it enlivens us."
The program also addresses the lack of fresh foods in some urban
communities, says James Lenton, executive director of the IRC's New
York office.]
Many of the refugees came from agrarian cultures where growing and
planting was an important part of their lives, says Lisa Brochet, the
group's literacy coordinator.
"What this means to them, one of the most often-repeated words, is 'home,' " she says.
For Koffi Ogou, making the 43-mile drive from his home in Phoenix to
the IRC's Gila Farm Cooperative in neighboring Pinal County, Ariz.,
sometimes twice a day, is a necessity for his mental well-being.
Ogou is from Atakpame, Togo, off the West Coast shoulder of
Africa. He is president of the cooperative. The former soldier in his
native country left because the military was coming under attack. He
escaped a murder attempt, but had to leave behind his wife and six of
his seven children. He says he has a "passion" for the farm, where he
grows okra, peppers and melon.
"Farming is something you like or you don't like. If you like it, you
feel the need to be on the farm all the time," says Ogou, 60. "If I
could get a shelter on the farm, I would be the happiest guy in
Phoenix."
For Winnie Aye, who arrived in April, New York City represents something quite different than a bustling city that never sleeps.
In Burma and Malaysia, where she was a social worker, she says, she
was always tense, fearing she could be arrested at any moment for
something she'd said or done that the government did not like.
But in New York and especially at Drew Gardens, people smile and seem happy, she says.
"I love this IRC farm," Aye says.
Drew Gardens is a 2.5-acre site owned by the city transportation
department and loaned to the IRC. The lot, intersected by the Bronx
River, was once a crime-ridden spot that neighbors called "Night of the
Living Dead" because of the drug deals that happened there and bodies
that turned up, Brochet says.
Now, it feels like a peaceful escape. There are carp and swans in the river. Birds chirp. Everything is green and smells fresh.
For Ah Lun, 29, Drew Gardens also represents an escape from the
stress of life. Like Aye, Lun is from Burma by way of Malaysia. In his
former life, he says, it was impossible to work hard enough to make a
living.
In Malaysia, he was a respected chef. Here, he has a job making deli
sandwiches. But the New Roots space in the Bronx is a happy place for
him, and he recently cooked there with two master chefs at an IRC event.
"Every place is green color and the trees," Lun says. "I like it very much."
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