Years ago I served as a lay missionary in the Kibera slums of Nairobi. I lived and worked among some of the poorest of the urban poor in East Africa. I lived with a Pallottine priest from Ireland who was one of 18 children and the son of a working blacksmith. It is not hard to imagine that household finances were stretched very thin, yet the father had a great compassion for the “travelers” a group of Irish people with their own traditions, language, stories and more. Known as “travelers” (lucht siúil, meaning the walking people) their history is filled with stories of discrimination, mistrust, and poverty.

Fr. Noel easily had a great compassion for the Rwandan refugees that lived within our parish boundaries. The genocidal killing in Rwanda had transformed successful people into penniless refugees living in a foreign land among the poor Kenya of Kibera. At first the Kenyan were welcoming and assisted them as best they could. Meanwhile, the world gradually came to know the horror that had occurred and the understanding that they had stood by for the 100 days while 500,000-800,000 people were murdered and a similar number escaped or simply disappeared.

The pastor’s compassion led to action that was able to funnel funds from Irish, Italian and German aid agencies. There were funds for housing, food, and small business loans. Funds that were not available to their Kenyan neighbors. Slowly the animosity grew, not aimed at the Rwandans, but aimed at the Kenyan government, the aid agencies, fate, and the unfairness of it. It seemed that the whole world wanted to help these refugees, but no one would help the internal Kenyan refugees – people that moved to the city in search of work as they were slowly being dispossessed of their traditional farming lands and way of life.

My work in the slum parish was primarily with the Kenyans, but I was also the primary point of contact with the Rwandan community. It was easy to see and understand all the perspectives. It was frustrating there was no rational, equitable solution.

This all comes to mind because of events in modern day Chicago, a city that has recently welcomed 35,000 migrants that have been relocated from the border. The city has provided $15,000 per person in funding for food, housing, and other expenses.  One the areas of the city, Amundsen Park in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, is becoming the center of a growing confrontation – not between the black residents and the refugee, but between the community and the city. As much as 30% of the black residents live below the poverty line, the only recreation center is being converted to a refugee center and shelter.

The city of Chicago is now facing seven lawsuits, at least three of them filed by people of color, all bound by a concern that their leaders would rather serve the migrants than their own vulnerable citizens. The Amundsen Park suit has five plaintiffs, all of whom are black. A second suit, in the South Side, has two black plaintiffs. A third, in Chicago’s Brighton Park, is led by five Hispanic residents and one Asian American. In a public statement, one of the plaintiffs remarked: “They’re giving the migrants all the things we’ve been asking for since we came here in chains.” This was when the city announced to the South Shore neighborhood, where 94 percent of his neighbors are black, that an abandoned high school would not become a community center like his neighbors had long been pushing for. Instead, it would become the city’s latest migrant shelter.

The story is a work in progress that brought back for me. Memories of the same story being played out halfway around the world and a quarter century ago. Eventually the aid funding ran dry and Kibera was left with poverty that did not discriminate between citizen and refugee. In the end it was only the Catholic Church that continued to help at the margins.

Image credit: Colin Crowley – Flickr: kibera_photoshow01 | CC-BY 2.0