Airman struggles to save her family

Airman, August, 2004 by Kerry Johnson

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. -- Soon, Airman 1st Class Ayaan Nduli hopes to sleep well at night. It would mean years of worrying and waiting were over. It would mean her family is safe.

Her story begins in Somalia during 1981, when her mother, Sahra Cali Sherwac, asked a South African woman named Zandile Nduli to adopt her third child. She wanted to give her child what she couldn't give her other two--a chance to have a different life by escaping the confines and limitations of a Third World country.

Ms. Nduli was with the United Nations working in Somalia teaching students the skills to become midwives. She agreed to adopt the child and made plans to leave for Kenya. She also made plans for the Sherwac family to join them in Kenya, that's when things began to unravel.

"I'll never forget the day we tried to leave," Airman Nduli said. "We were thrown in jail."

Rumors that Mrs. Sherwac had sold her daughter to Ms. Nduli circulated to Somali soldiers. When Ms. Nduli and the child attempted to leave the country, they, along with Mrs. Sherwac, were arrested and thrown in jail.

After several weeks, Ms. Nduli was able to substantiate the adoption, and the three were released. Ms. Nduli took the child and left for Kenya, but the Sherwac family, which included new baby sister Ikran, never came. Fighting broke out in Somalia, and Ms. Nduli lost contact with the family Contacts in the U.N. office in Somalia tried to locate them, but they found nothing. The Sherwac family was gone.

Ms. Nduli took Airman Nduli to England where she was legally adopted and became a British citizen. They eventually moved to Nashville, Tenn. Years passed, but they never forgot the Airman's family.

"We never stopped looking," Airman Nduli said. "Not a day went by when my [adoptive mother and I didn't think of them. Not a week went by without us looking for them."

On New Year's Eve 1999, a friend located the lost family. Soon Airman Nduli was talking to her biological mother for the first time in 13 years.

Ms. Nduli chartered a plane so she and the teenager could finally see her biological family in Kenya. She learned that her brother was killed during Somalia's civil war, and she had a second younger sister, Ifrah. Ms. Nduli found a house for the family to stay in, but after she and Airman Nduli returned to the United States Kenyan soldiers burned the Sherwac family's house and beat them because they were Somali, she said.

"They had no choice but to go to a refugee camp," Airman Nduli said. "My mother and I went to visit them in the winter of 2002, and all I could do was cry."

The Nduli family has desperately been trying to move what's left of the Sherwac family to the United States, but problems keep plaguing the process.

"I know there are horrible things that go on in those camps. I just want to get them out of there," Airman Nduli said. "I wish I was there with them, but I know everything happens for a reason--and my being adopted will make it possible for them to have a better life. It would mean for the first time in years, I could sleep peacefully knowing my family was safe."

--Airman 1st Class Kerry Johnson 1st Fighter Wing Public Affairs