Edmonton woman struggles to bring six orphaned family members to Canada
CBC
Faduma Hassan dreams of bringing her six orphaned family members to Edmonton but a maze of government bureaucracy means she'll once again be leaving the Somali teenagers to fend for themselves in Uganda when she flies back to Canada — alone — later this week.
Hassan is the legal guardian for the teen boys, who include four half-brothers and two nephews, and has support from a group of private-refugee sponsors in Edmonton.
However, the teens' very status as orphans, without a clear head-of-household, has mired the immigration process and a rejection from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) earlier this month leaves the group wondering what to do next.
"We are separated and being separated is not easy for me," Hassan told CBC's Radio Active from Kampla, Uganda, where she was spending time with her family before flying back to Edmonton on Sept. 15.
"I'm a hard-working lady. I'm working to help the children to live, sending them money for school fees, groceries, medication. I want my brothers to come to a safe place, to live with me, and my nephews."
The young men were born into the midst of the decades-long civil war in Somalia.
In 2009, Hassan's father was fatally shot, while she was shot in her leg and back.
"My dad passed away in front of me," Hassan said.
Her father is also the father to half-brothers Ahmed, 18, Mohamed, 17, Yusuf, 16 and Nur, 15. The teens' mothers were also killed, one of them shot, one died in a bombing.
In 2013, Hassan and her daughter came to Edmonton as refugees. Hassan now works as a caretaker for Right at Home Housing Society and her 16-year-old daughter attends high school.
From the safety of Canada, Hassan watched helplessly at the toll the war was taking on family members back home. Her brother, father to nephews Hussein, 18, and Abdihafid, 17, was among more than 500 people killed in a massive 2017 bombing in downtown Mogadishu.
In 2019, Hassan got more awful news. Two of her half-brothers were kidnapped by the Islamist extremist group al-Shabaab while on their way to the mosque. They escaped after a month of captivity by climbing over a fence while their kidnappers were sleeping.
Hassan travelled to Somalia and moved the boys to Uganda, where she hoped they would be safer. She hired someone to help the boys with cooking and cleaning, checks in with daily phone calls, sends money and visits when she can.
"I worry about them," Hassan said. "Even at night time, I'm not sleeping. I organize by phone, then I go to bed at three o'clock in the morning and I wake up at six o'clock to go to work."
