Fleeing Darfur, finding Indiana

These refugees from the fighting in Darfur have made new homes in Indiana. They found the big cities on the east coast too big and busy and enjoy the slower pace. DP

Refugees skip coasts for lives in Midwest

By Susan Saulny, New York Times News Service

chicagotribune.com: FT. WAYNE, Ind. -- Looking at old photos taken in the desert sand in the Darfur region of Sudan, Fawzia Suliman pointed to one after the other: mother-in-law, sister, sister-in-law, cousin and so on.

"Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead," she said. "All dead."

The last place that Suliman called home was a grass-topped hut that janjaweed militiamen burned to the ground. She offers the scars on her feet as testament to how fast she ran to escape them almost two years ago, the beginning of an unlikely journey that led to an apartment here on the north side of town.

"If I talk to people from Darfur, I say come here," said Suliman, 24, who works in a plastics factory. "It's too nice. Everybody knows New York City. But my God, all this is America too."

Up to 300 people originally from Darfur are living in Ft. Wayne, with others scattered across small Indiana towns like Elkhart, South Bend and Goshen. Together, they form one of the largest concentrations of Darfuri in the United States.
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