Happy Halloween for refugees

A 4-year-old boy named Haji, with a pumpkin-shaped lollipop in one hand and a blue-spattered… A 4-year-old boy named Haji, with a pumpkin-shaped lollipop in one hand and a blue-spattered paintbrush in the other, works on creating the perfect Halloween decoration.

Pitt student Brianna Rossiter turns the mini pumpkin for him so that no surface is left uncovered. She hands the boy dressed as Superman the white paint when he points to it so that he can give his pumpkin a face. Two minutes later he reaches for the blue that matches his costume.

“Haji, why did you paint over the face?” Rossiter asks.

But Superman, lollipop in mouth, doesn’t answer, he just happily continues with his art.

Haji is one of more than 50 children of all ages who attended the Halloween Party at St. Matthew Parish’s St. Kieran church hall in Lawrenceville on Saturday for Somali Bantu refugees. The event was co-sponsored by the Pitt group “Keep It Real” and the Pitt affiliate of FORGE (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth and Empowerment).

“Keep It Real” tutors the children on a regular basis and organized this event to help assimilate them further into American culture.

“The first year they got here we took them trick-or-treating and they didn’t really know what they were doing,” “Keep It Real” co-president Aimee Nichols, who was dressed as a flower, said. “They didn’t even like candy because they weren’t used to something like that.

“Now they’re embracing their culture and it’s really great.”

“Keep It Real,” FORGE, Trader Joe’s and Big Brothers Big Sisters provided more than 60 costumes, everything from Darth Vader to a bumblebee to ninjas to clowns.

Leah Fow, co-president of FORGE, who gave the cape she was wearing to a little boy who also wanted to be Superman, said that most of the costumes came from volunteers’ home closets.

“[Keep It Real] has been great,” she said. “Tons of food has been donated and more candy than I can even eat in my entire life.”

In addition to candy, there were cookies for decorating, a book corner with an electric cauldron and billowing fire, Halloween coloring pages and smoke drifting out of the front doorway to greet participants.

Fow said the event was organized partly to help the kids fit in at school better.

“Halloween is such an American event, but they’re exposed to it in schools,” she said. “Now if they don’t get to go trick-or-treating it’s not a big deal.

“They can talk about it to their friends: ‘I did dress up as a princess or a pumpkin.’ “

Nichols also said the event was about fostering community.

“Usually the tutors and kids are working on their homework,” she said. “Events like this make our relationships grow stronger.”

This goal was further emphasized by Somali Bantu leader Ibrahim Muya when he dropped in.

“This is an interesting party because we’re from different continents. We never have Halloween parties. It’s kind of interesting.

“When we first got here we didn’t speak the language, we didn’t know the culture. But later we caught on. So I think the moral is [the kids] are actually catching up with the system of American culture.”

Muya said that 80 percent of the Somali Bantu community in Pittsburgh, which includes 27 families, doesn’t speak English, but the “Keep It Real” tutors and events like this have been a big help.

Toward the end of the party, a crowd congregated as a mummifying game began and kids encased the volunteers, and each other, in rolls of toilet paper. When they were finished, a soccer game formed among the toilet paper debris with a rolled-up plastic bag serving as the ball.

The soccer game dissolved, but the running and happy yells didn’t. Nichols and other volunteers were able to gather some of the children for a game of musical tombstones.

Paper gravestones colored the floor and music played. The children all jumped onto each other’s gravestones, not quite grasping the concept of one per kid. But even the losing contestants, who were ushered off to the side by a volunteer dressed as a blue M’M, were smiling.