In a Time of Fear, a Garden Grows at Iskashitaa, where Refugees Find Solace and Solidarity

Lucy Carrigan is the author of Dispatches newsletter, found at https://lucycarrigan.substack.com/

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It is 8.30 on a Wednesday morning and the sun is already throwing down some heat on what is set to be another hot day in Tucson, Arizona.

Tucked away next to a parking lot about a twenty-minute drive from downtown Tucson, a group of people are already hard at work, tilling the land at a small and unassuming community garden. The earth here looks arid and dusty, and yet the gardeners – asylum seekers and refugees all – are making fertile use of it.

The winter harvest is upon them – they will reap Hopi corn, squash, root vegetables, watermelon, cantaloupe – and then “skip over Spring,” as Cora, the farm manager, puts it, “We are already in 100 degree days.” And so, they will head straight into summer planting, going hyperlocal, using arid-adapted seeds.

“We are really, really excited about that,” Cora says.

Every plot in the garden is named after a country where a refugee gardener is from. Burundi. Ukraine. Somalia. Afghanistan. Eritrea.

“There’s one bed that we just rehabilitated,” Cora points out. “Previously it was the composting bed, but we needed more space for production, so we turned it back into a garden, and we’re gonna name it after Zing’s home country…”

Zing is the refugee coordinator, and she is walking in the garden with us.

“I’m from Myanmar,” she says. “Oh, my goodness,” I say. “Yes,” Zing answers and asks me, “Have you been there?”

“No…,” I reply. “Better not go there now,” she laughs.

Zing points Barbara Eiswerth out to me. She is the executive director of the Iskashitaa Refugee Network, which she founded in 2003, and she is over by the entrance, greeting all around her.

I go over to say hello, and we find our way to the shade outside the garden tool shed to start to talk.

The organization is named for the first group of refugees they assisted, the Somali Bantu. Their language is Maay Maay. “Iskashitaa” in Maay Maay means “working cooperatively together.”

“I thought, ‘well, it doesn’t sum it up more than that,’” Barbara says.

Working cooperatively together is exactly what they do. Refugees, asylum seekers, locals, all together on the land harvesting and sharing. They spread out across Tucson to harvest the local produce in gardens and farms that would otherwise go to waste.

“Thousands of pounds of fruit,” Barbara tells me, in a process called “gleaning,” an agricultural practice with an ancient history. Fifty percent of what they gather goes to food banks, soup kitchens, local tribes, and shelters, Barbara says, and “therefore the refugees are giving back to the community immediately.”

Refugee Garden Art Program

On Wednesdays, they gather at the Refugee Garden Art Program. Here, refugees and asylum seekers plant their own produce, tend it, and harvest it. Each week, they are joined by community artists, healers and educators for workshops, art classes, body movement, and meditation.

Music plays here. Gentle in the breeze. Laughter is heard here, too. And banter. Maybe even a flirtation or two. One refugee cajoles another that he still hasn’t given her his phone number.”

“That time, I didn’t give it to you?” he asks, and laughs.

It is, in this time of great terror, when people presenting for their asylum hearings are being hauled off by masked and violent men, a place of solace.

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This morning, a body movement workshop is on the program. A local professor has gathered with refugees under the shade of a mesquite tree, and they are dancing. They are going low, shaking and moving, teasing and laughing. The music is mellow, and the sounds and scents awakened by the heat of this morning are a balm for the soul.

“Salam Alaikum,” someone calls to Barbara, a refugee arriving in the garden, (peace be upon you.)

“Alaikum Salam,” Barbara calls back, (and upon you peace), and then to me: “Darfur.” As in, this refugee is from Darfur.

“Have you looked at the news?” she asks me. “Darfur is blowing up.” I say that I haven’t recently, and she says, “Yeah, it’s really, really bad. They have started fleeing the refugee camps.”

A refugee comes over and tells her off because she thinks her skirt is too short.

“Wait until she sees what I wear next week,” she makes a face, “it will be down to the floor,” she chuckles.

“Where’s your water bottle?” she calls to another refugee, and the refugee replies that she has one. “We’ve given them water bottles,” Barbara says, “maybe more than one.”

Fear, uncertainty, dread

Trying to keep Barbara still for a conversation is like trying to net a butterfly. She is here, she is there, she is joining in and coming back.

I say that I’ve seen a lot of fear and sadness since I’ve been in Southern Arizona. “Fear, uncertainty, dread,” Barbara replies, and she points to two refugees in her view.

“These two are good examples…” and starts to talk about their stories when someone interrupts her, looking for sugar.

“Yes, yes,” she says, “that’s sugar, sort of, Stevia…,” and to me, “it doesn’t matter if I’m engaged in a conversation…”

Again, the chuckle.

One of those two refugees comes to say good morning. I will say his name is Saleh, for it is too volatile now to say his real name. He is from Chad. A young man. A kind and beautiful face. He traveled from Chad to Burundi to Turkey to Latin America. He walked through Colombia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador to get here. He is seeking asylum in the United States. His court date is set for May.

“We will accompany him to his court date,” Barbara says, “and if he doesn’t get asylum, we’ll be on national news. I’m going to kick and scream.”

Saleh spoke no English when he arrived here three years ago. He knew no one. He met the volunteers of Iskashitaa on the soccer field and has called the Iskashitaa community his family ever since.

“I have no family, no friends here except Iskashitaa,” Saleh says. “I’m very happy.”

The Iskashitaa team helped Saleh get his Arizona ID, his driver’s license and his work authorization. And they are now, all hands on deck, trying to help him find a job.

“He’s an expert painter and he is a baker, and a very good worker,” Barbara says. “We’ve helped him with housing and immigration services, and food and community and engagement, building his resume and [we are] trying to use our connections to get him work.”

“I’m not saying I’m successful yet, but I sent his information to every car person I know, and am sending his baker information out to chefs because we are connected there,” she says.

This is extraordinary cruelty

On someone’s phone, nearby, the news is blaring. One of the headlines is about “migrants” burning people alive on the subway.

I ask Barbara how she is feeling about the current state of affairs.

“I think this is extraordinary cruelty,” she says. “I think it’s upending humanity. I think we’ve lost humanness. I think we need to take back ‘We the People.’ As one of my friends, an immigration lawyer, says,” and she imitates his voice, “we need to take that back. ‘We the People.’ I think we’re not abiding by the Constitution, which is unbelievable. I think the politicians are not standing up. They’re not saying no, they’re passing everything the executive branch says, they’re going for it. So we’re going to be in real trouble.

“Refugee resettlement is being completely dismantled. It took years to build it up, the network that we have, the practitioners that we have, the programs that we have, are shrinking, disappearing. Small offices will disappear completely.

“We’ve done this before, and we had to build it up, but this is coming at us faster, harder, and again, the point is cruelty, the point is uncertainty, the point is fear. The point is ethnocentricity, and discrimination against the other, whoever that might be at the time.”

I ask her what she means by ethnocentricity.

“I mean that there are people in the country and following the present administration that think of whatever right Christian space they’re in that that is what America is, because that is [what] their neighborhood is surrounded by, or their city is predominantly made up of, but the reality of our country, for a very long time, including my ancestors that came from Austria and many, many others – except for the many indigenous populations that we have here – are immigrants, and,” she poses the question with disbelief in her voice, “we just ignore that?”

“Frankly,” she continues, “Ellis Island, nobody was arriving with papers, okay?! So think it back. Ask your grandma – quickly – because that history is ours, and we should own it.”

She talks about the immigration process.

“Oh, you bet ‘you should do it the legal way,’” she says, frustratedly. “The legal way is broken, and we have people seeking asylum who are fearing for their lives and TPS (temporary protected status) is being taken away from people.”

Rosine approaches us. (Again, I am not using her real name.) She is from Brazzaville, the capital city of Congo. Her journey here was long and arduous. She flew from Brazzaville to Brazil. From Brazil, she used every form of transport she could to get to the US/Mexico border – she walked, she took buses, she rode bicycles. When she ran out of money, she worked. It took her two months to get from Brazil to Arizona.

Barbara tells Rosine that she is fearful for her safety. She asks her how comfortable she is when she leaves the house. Rosine shrugs and says that she is okay.

“What is my telephone number?” Barbara asks her before turning to me and saying, “This is a test.”

Rosine is tentative at first, but with a little coaching, she gets the number right. “Yes, now!” she laughs. “Whoohoo!”

“I just thought if she loses her phone,” Barbara says dryly, “I want her to have one phone number in her head that isn’t Brazzaville.”

One of the first things an ICE officer will do is take a person’s phone. “Can I ask you,” I say to Rosine, “what was your reason for leaving Congo?”

“Yeah,” she says softly, “A lot of reasons for leaving Congo.” “A lot of reasons …?” Barbara says. “Yeah,” Rosine says. “A lot of reasons…” Her voice fades, and she looks away. She doesn’t want to continue.

Dana looks it up too, so she can write it out in English.

Two kids arrive with their grandmother. They had picked Seville oranges in their garden that morning – enough to fill a box – and they thought to bring them here. The children, encouraged by their grandmother, extend the intrepid arm of friendship to some of the refugee kids, who then offer to show them around. Off they go. The child’s gift of uninhibited connection.

Did Dana think it would be this bad?

“I did,” she says, “I was very involved in helping with the election. So I was very involved on the front end. And I knew what Project 2025 said. That was part of the training we got. I think people didn’t fully understand what Project 2025 was. I believed it fully. I mean, they were training us on it. Like, you guys, this is the playbook.

“I look within my own family. We’re Japanese, we’re Mexican, we’re Jewish, we’re gay, we’re . . I mean, I’m not sure who this government is helping,” she says, “well, except I do know. Rich white men.”

And then another beautiful interruption.

“Hey, sir,” Dana exclaims. “You got a job at the University of Arizona!”

A refugee has just arrived, an asylum seeker from Burundi, and yes indeed, he has been awarded an adjunct professorship at UA. He is visibly delighted.

It’s clear he feels welcome here in the embrace of this place. He, too, is in the midst of his asylum process. I ask him how he is feeling.

“Lonely,” he says, “Uncertain, but I have some hope that things will work out.”

The morning is drawing to an end here in the garden. Refugees are gathering their produce and heading back out into the midday heat.

I get a chance to sit with the garden manager, Cora, for a few minutes.

She is former military. She herself was homeless for a time. She cannot understand how, in the world we live in, with such abundance, people can still go hungry. She speaks both Persian Farsi and Afghan Dari, although she didn’t mention either in her interview for this job.

She is dismayed by what she sees as the silence around the Trump Administration’s current actions. “My family, my friends, are not talking about what is going on,” she says to me. “This is a life-or-death situation. It is so dystopian.”

“How can people be so complacent on this?” she asks.

She tells me she used to work on the local military base, and she cannot bear that military jets are taking off from there and being used to patrol and terrorize people along the border. She becomes emotional.

“This is not the America I pay taxes to,” she says. And then, “I am just wondering when someone in the Republican Party is going to grow a backbone.”

Back in the organized chaos that is the Iskashitaa Refugee Network’s office, Barbara shows me some of the products they make and sell, using produce from the gardens, to raise money for the organization. Amongst the overflowing shelves, I see jars of jellies, jams, and marmalades. On Barbara’s desk is a bottle of date vinegar.

“We are gonna continue our services, no matter what they say,” she says.

The solace and the solidarity at the garden is a beautiful thing to behold. A chance to see how the local community can show up and stand with refugees and asylum seekers. To give them a sense that they are not alone.

But it doesn’t take too long to remember that these refugees and asylum seekers are making their way in a fraught and divisive world.

Outside the Iskashitaa Refugee Network’s office, the team has made the difficult decision to remove the word “refugee” from their front entrance.