Mfaume Lawi has already lost his home several times. The first was during an attack on his village in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war in the late 1990s. After fleeing to Tanzania, he lived in a precarious hut in a refugee camp for almost two decades. When he was accepted for resettlement in the United States in 2017, Lawi moved with his wife and five children to Abilene, Texas, into a home that had room for everyone. Within a year, an electrical issue caused a house fire that burned it to the ground; though everyone survived, they once again lost everything. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when Lawi worries about losing his home if he cannot pay his rent, his fear is very real.
Lawi is a stacker at AbiMar Foods, a processing plant that makes cookies and crackers and employs almost 600 people, 130 of whom are former refugees. Abilene is home to refugees from 27 countries, according to Susanna Lubanga, the director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a resettlement agency with an office in Abilene. Lawi’s family is part of a small but thriving diaspora of new arrivals from Congo that enjoy support from local churches and the city government. Until the COVID-19 crisis, Abilene seemed like the kind of place where Lawi and his family could enjoy security at last.
