“Where are my kids?”-The Plight Of Africans In The Western World... United States Of America

 

Isata Jalloh did not stop to remove the yellow rubber gloves he used for cleaning.  The Dulles International Airport overseer heard the children flying from Sierra Leone, the country he had left years earlier, and he needed to see them.  When they arrived, their bodies spoke about the brutality she had escaped: A 4-year-old girl loses her right arm at the bottom of the elbow. A 4-year-old boy loses his left leg beyond his knees. A 15-year-old girl arm stopped her wrist.  Jalloh does not know any of them, but he rushes in their direction, pulling them in a hug and crying.  That emotional hug was taken by a Washington Post reporter and photographer at the airport to cover the arrival of the children in 2000.  Jalloh's impromptu reaction is detailed in the last few paragraphs of the article, and a picture shows his ill-fated face. Jalloh was not seen. He did not need the newspaper clip to remind him that day.  Almost 18 years later, he recalled the detailed details of what the airline brought to the group, Air France, and why he cried so much when he saw them.  The tears are for the kids in front of him, he says. But they are also for four children who are not there - himself. He left them in Sierra Leone and during the civil war of the country, he could not easily reach them by phone.
“Where are my kids?” she recalled thinking often. “At that time, I felt so confused, crying and crying.”

Jalloh came to the United States in 1996 when her children were 14, 12, 10 and 9, with the promise that she would send her mother enough money to give them a better life until Jalloh could secure visas for them to join her in the United States.

For nearly two decades, her work at Dulles Airport helped her keep that promise, and in recent years, she has sent them as much as $500 a month.

Then last month, she had to tell them she couldn’t send anything.

This month, she will also have nothing to spare.

For 20 years, Jalloh has worked at Dulles, and for the last 14 of those, she had held two jobs there, cleaning the airport at night and pushing people in wheelchairs through its terminals during the day.

Both jobs have meant spending all but 7½ hours most days at the airport. But it also meant she could afford to pay the rent for an apartment in Herndon she shares with three people and still send money to Sierra Leone.

That changed in May, when she was fired from the wheelchair job.

Her supposed offense: Asking for a tip.

 Jalloh declined to work but said that it was not important because he was not allowed to defend himself and no investigation was made.  The convenience in which it comes speaks to the weakness of a low-migrant worker who can stand on the seemingly solid ground for many years, or even decades, and with the smallest kick, feels that it has collapsed beneath them .  Agents of rig, which many do not know publicly, are paid on the basis that they may have tips, and yet they are not allowed to inform those passengers. Many of these workers gained $ 7.25 an hour before the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority started in January requiring companies doing business at Dulles and Reagan National airports to pay contract workers a base hourly salary of $ 11.55. Jalloh said he earned $ 10.45 an hour, with the understanding that $ 1.10 was subtracted due to the tips.  These workers are also not protected by a union, despite nearly three years of organizing and multiple workers' strikes, the last one that took place in December. Jalloh believes his activism in support of a union is the real reason for his firing.  At least four immigrant women have been fired at the airport in recent months, according to union organizers. They all worked for the same company based in Texas, Huntleigh USA, and they all said they were not given the opportunity to defend themselves.

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