Abdul qadir musa didn't mind the sand and dust, which blew in from the desert through the windows and parched his skin, or the 105-degree heat that lulled his four young children into a silent daze. Lurching across Kenya's rutted dirt roads on a bus crowded beyond capacity, Musa passed the stifling hours musing to himself about life in the United States. "I am so happy," he said. "This is the first time I have taken a bus. Today, I even took a shower, because in America, you have to be clean." Musa's dream of going to America may spon become reality. He and all the other passengers in the eight-bus convoy are Somali Bantus, a long-persecuted people from one of the world's most ruined countries. Two centuries ago their ancestors were taken from their homes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Malawi, and sold as slaves in Somalia. After slavery was gradually abolished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bantus remained pariahs―even though they, like most Somalis, are Muslims. Their children faced discrimination in Somali schools. Some shop owners refused to serve them. Intermarriage was not accepted. When civil war between rival Somali clans broke out in 1991, thousands of Bantus fled on foot to Kenya, where they have since lived in the grim poverty of refugee camps.
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