Posted on 07/03/2008 12:51:49 PM PDT by buccaneer81
West African bushmen are denied U.S. visas They'd been recruited to build a mud-hut village at a Staunton museum
Thursday, Jul 03, 2008 - 12:55 AM
By CARLOS SANTOS TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER • PDF: Letter
STAUNTON -- Three West African bushmen recruited to build an authentic mud-hut village at the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia were denied visas because they are too poor and inarticulate.
In a letter to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Debra Heien, chief of the consular section for the U.S. in Nigeria, said one applicant "could not articulate anything about the project. . . . The only thing he said was that he built his own house."
A second applicant, she said, "had not filled out his form properly. He was told to correct the errors and return before the morning intake was completed at 10:30 a.m. He did not come back."
She advised: "Should the applicants decide to apply again, they must make appointments using our on-line appointment system."
John Avoli, director of the museum in Staunton, said yesterday, "After a monumental effort, we identified three bush people who actually lived in mud huts. You can't imagine how difficult it was to get them out of the bush and bring them to Lagos. We were heartbroken."
The museum has been planning to build a mid-1700s West African Igbo compound to illustrate the history of the slave trade as well as the early American frontier. Many slaves brought to America and to Virginia came from Nigeria in West Africa.
"They were denied because they were considered poor dirt farmers who lived in mud huts and can't speak English and supposedly have no business in America," Avoli said. "They couldn't articulate fully why they were coming here."
But Avoli said the whole point of recruiting the bushmen -- who would of course be poor farmers with no English skills -- was that they built and lived in mud huts and so possessed the skills to construct a real Igbo compound.
At the American consulate in Lagos on June 17, the three bushmen -- Thomas Chukwujekwu Ikegbunam, Pius Chukwunwike Anigbogu and Ambrose Nwancho Nkwuda -- failed to convince an examiner that they only wanted to stay temporarily in the U.S.
Despite efforts by the Warner's staff, the decision was not reversed. In her letter last week to Warner, Heien, wrote that Ikegbunam "has no regular income" and that Nkwuda "is a farmer who ekes out a marginal living" while Anigbogu didn't fill out the application forms properly.
Material to construct the Igbo village is currently on its way to Virginia via ship, Avoli said. The material includes raffia palms for roofing and landscaping as well as pottery, tools and wood carvings that will decorate the mud huts.
An Igbo compound of the mid-1700s usually contained several houses enclosed by a fence of closely planted trees or a wall of compacted earth. Igbo houses were generally rectangular to square in shape, with walls of either solid earth or wattle and daub, and with roofs of palm or grass thatch, according to the museum.
Historically, the Igbo were yam farmers, and the compound of every successful Igbo included a yam barn where the harvested root crop was stored.
Avoli said that despite the setback, the West African village will be built. Umembe Onyejekwe, a former Nigerian government museum curator, will spend four months helping to build the village. She helped recruit the three bushmen.
Two other Nigerians, including an architecture professor from the university in Lagos, will also come to Staunton to help.
"The project will go on," said Avoli, who expects the work to begin the middle of this month and to continue on through the fall. "We're elated that at least we can get those folks here." Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or csantos@timesdispatch.com.
They should just fly to Mexico and come on in with the gang.
Ted Kennedy will find a way to get them in.
(Building mud-huts is a talent that’s going to come in handy soon in this country.)
The laws must be crazy.
Don’t we have enough immigrants here already who can build entire mud-hut villages complete with “infrastructure”?
Did Joe Biden screen them?
But they let illiterates like Pelosi and Reid, and murderers like Ted Kennedy hold public office? What a travesty.
Why is it that I suspect if we let them leave Nigeria and come here it would improve the IQ of both countries?
“Three West African bushmen...were denied visas because they are too poor and inarticulate.”
That covers about 99% of the mutts that cross and have crossed the Rio Grande in the last 25 years.
The Museum should have sent a representative to help these folks thru the system. They’re the ones who should get the blame!
If I am reading this correctly, someone wanted to bring them over so they could create mud huts and a little farm and be some sort of ‘exhibit’? If this is true, that is sick. IF you (individual, not government) are going to sponsor to bring them over, how about give them a Western education so they can take the knowledge back and help future generations not have to live in a mud hut.
Post of the day and you never typed a word!! LMAO
LMAO, after all the multi-cultural clap-trap, these three men who have a valid reason to come here short term for a few weeks or months, and will probably be suppoorted by the concern who has asked for the visas, are denied. At the same time, folks who can’t articulate poop from refried beans and have no business here, will never be able to support themselves, pour across our borders by the millions. And we’ve allowed that for close to two decades.
We have a government that should answer to the public at the end of a... well nevermind. More lunacy from W., D.C.
Best answer
Instead of having them teach us how to build a mud hut, why don't we teach them how to build an actual Western house?
They are from Nigeria - The only computers with internet access there are lined up with people trying to email me the entire wealth of their nation to split 50/50.
But they send me emails all the time asking for my bank account numbers so that they can send me unclaimed $$millions.
Great line. :-) The problem is geography. The bushmen don't share a border with us. Otherwise, 12 million could walk right in.
They should apply for pastor’s visa and get a job in Chicago.
A rare piece of good news.
Too simple I suppose....
L
In other words.....they didn’t have the moola to grease the hands of corrupt pols.....and refused to vote for Democrats.
More assimilation needed. You’d never know if being seen by them wearing a tiger-striped shirt would get you a poisoned dart in the neck. Ffffffffft!
Lock them in a hotel room in Nigeria for two days with a dead zebra, Internet connection and a laptop and see if they had taken up scamming at the end of the period.
Not to worry, they’ll be assigned to Obama’s security staff.
They are known goat rustlers and have been observed littering and failing to return for deposit glass bottles .
It seems like they could. Still, I think it’s reasoned to bring people over who make them all the time. It lends authenticity in that setting.
The museum that is sponsoring this should have, first, explained the project to the suits at the embassy and then, secondly, they should have helped the bushmen fill out the forms, walked it through with the embassy helping to correct any errors, accompanied these guys to their interviews.
They basically needed to baby-sit and expedite this thing every step of the way. It was unfair for the museum to expect these guys to navigate a system that most educated people have trouble navigating. They embarrassed these guys and the embassy folks unnecessarily. They owe all parties an apology, and then they should start over and do it right this time.
Thats if we really, really need a mud hut museum in Virginia.
Ah...but those little bow and arrows are so cute.
That could explain the high crime rate of amongst America's blacks ---- it's in the DNA.
Nowhere in Africa - is crime or corruption raised to such a "fine art" as in Nigeria.
THAT'S WHY THEY WON'T LET THEM IN!............
Not to put to fine a point on it, but, I'd like to see Ms Heien survive for a week or 10 days out in the Bushmen's territory. As Will Rogers once said, "We are all ignorant, just on different subjects."
Immigrants doing the jobs American's won't do...
Exactly... ever fill out immigration forms etcetera, what a friggin headache.
been there & done that!
I’d like to see the examiner track an oryx 50 miles without
shoes and see how inarticulate he becomes!
What a bizarre story. If Mr. Avoli wanted them to come over and build huts for his museum, why didn’t he accompany them here or pay someone to accompany them and translate for them? Did he really expect peasants from rural Africa to be able to navigate an airport and customs on their own? Or did he just assume the airport would have a translator for some obscure Bushman language on hand?
The whole project is patronizing and offensive. Educated elitists with money to burn trying to spend it to have dirt-poor African peasants build a curiosity in Virginia for other educated elitists to gawk at. They should have interviewed these guys in their mud huts (presumably with the help of an interpreter) and gotten detailed building instructions, then handed the poor guys cash in the amount that the proposed travel and lodging expenses would cost. That would make the dirt poor peasants wealthier than their wildest dreams, instead of exposing them a view of wealth they would otherwise never have dreamed of and then sending sending them back home with virtually nothing. Let some middle class liberal college kids in Virginia do the actual building for credit towards their silly anthropology classes.
The word is also used in Australia, to mean natives of the outback, but these Nigerians probably aren't "bushmen."
Bushmen teaching us to build wattle-and-daub huts? I know real estate has gotten real expensive-like, but this...
LOL!
Because that's the dreaded "Western Imperialism"!
Hah! Very good. I had to even think about that one a minute.
Explaination to others: Twotone was a character who lived next door to Randy Bragg, the hero of the book. Twotone’s father, Preacher Henry, of the local AME church, would thunderouosly preach “Alas! Alas Babylon! Thy doom is come in one hour!!!” The book is about the USA and the USSR having a full nuclear war, and the local inhabitants of a small Florida town, who survived—but cut off from the rest of the world.
Yeah. Twotone was a character, alright...
That sucks. We don’t have nearly enough inarticulate African bushmen building mud huts where I live.
Maybe, maybe not. Every year the Smithsonian holds the Folklife Festival on the Mall. I remember one year they brought over Indian villagers who had to be told how to use a toilet, among other things. The villagers were to demonstrate Indian crafts. Another year, they brought Mongolians to show Mongolian crafts.
I don't see anything intrinscically wrong with brinig over people to show their way of life. If this was for an authorized museum or folk festival, the planners should have done a better job at getting the bushmen their visas.
I love that book. First read it in 1979, and with Carter at the helm, it sure scared me. Hard to believe Orlando was once considered a small city.
IIRC early on in the book the USSR bombed Havana.
Cuba was still a US ally when it was written...
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