Aye Aye Nu- Juniper Gardens

In her native Thailand, where the weather stays warm all year long, Aye Aye Nu grew cucumbers, peppers, coconuts and bananas.

Now, she must clear away rocks, pipes, wires and glass before growing lettuce, tomatoes and a sour Burmese sorrel called chaibong.

She sells the produce at local farmers markets, but saves the chaibong for members of her community, fellow refugees, who can’t find the unique vegetable anywhere else in the United States.

“Because we have food, no problem,” she said. “We can spread it, for market, for money, no problem. For friends, we share. More people are happy. We say, ‘Hey, my friend, take it home!’”

Aye Aye works at Juniper Gardens, where 125 units of public housing stood only five years ago. She is one of about 120,000 displaced Karen, an embattled Southeast Asian ethnic group, who fled their home countries last year to refugee camps on the border of Burma and Thailand. Thanks to a program called New Roots for Refugees, she now lives in Kansas City with her husband and her 9-year-old son, Nito.

She and 30 other refugees from countries as diverse as Burundi, Somalia and Sudan farm plots on three-quarters of an acre of urban land, near the train tracks, in a seemingly abandoned area of Kansas City, Ks. They keep 80 percent of the profits and save 20 percent for the next year, all while taking classes in English and business development provided by Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas.

Rachel Bonar, who works for Catholic Charities, said her goal was to give refugees like Aye Aye the tools needed to live and farm on their own, while contributing to the local community. “The neighborhood here is kind of a food desert,” she said. “There’s no grocery store within walking distance. It’s kind of a way to give back to the neighborhood we’re working in.”

But for Aye Aye, the garden means much more. It is a relief from her winter job, where she works second and third shift for a pork processing plant called Triumph Foods, Inc. in St. Joseph, MO. She said the job at the plant took away from her time with her son Nito, who was born while she was in the refugee camp.

“Company was not easy,” she said. “I come home, never see my son, he never see me. Because, at home, he is by himself, no one take care of him. He was not happy. He said he would take out his hair, and I saw his hair. I think it’s not good for him. Oh, Nito.”

“‘Ma when are you done with this job? When do you quit?’ he asked me one time. And I say ‘Nito, I will quit this job, okay?’ And he say, ‘Okay, Ma.’”

During the summer, Aye Aye cooks for her family with food that she grows at the farm. Her son Nito is nine years old and in the first grade at a Kansas City public school. Because he has spent most of his life in the United States, Aye Aye said he speaks very good English, and that sometimes he helps her with her language.

She likes to plant flowers and eggplants in her garden for fun. Although she knew the climate wasn’t perfect for it, she planted a banana tree last year. During the hot, humid summer, the plant flourished, but as the Kansas winter approached, the plant suffered.

She dug up little banana tree and moved it to her house. She insists to this day that her little banana tree flourished.

“They [plants] make my heart happy,” she said. “You know, sometimes. Not sometimes, always.”

When asked about her hopes for the future, she said that everything she did, she did for her son.

“Future?” she said. “I think only about my son, I don’t… future… because only my son. Because, he grow up, he’ll go out, be interested in something, college maybe.”

Like the other refugees at Juniper Gardens, Aye Aye Nu has been afforded a new lease on life. Despite being thrust into an alien culture, she has bonded with fellow farmers and reconnected with the Karen culture she lost three years ago. She said she’d like to continue farming, and perhaps go to school in the coming winter.

–Justin Leverett