When a fire killed 10 Africans in their Bronx home in March 2007, a local immigrant from Mali was reunited with his activist roots.

“I saw how many people came to help the family. They didn’t care about their religion, where they came from or what their name was,” said Bourema Niambele, 47, who was a political activist in his homeland.

Niambele, who left Mali in 1998 and has been living in the Bronx ever since, was then volunteering for the High Council of Malians, an association that promotes Africans’ rights and businesses in New York City. After the fire, he organized a news conference that brought together local officials, the police, firefighters and the rest of the community.

Naby – Life of a Bronx activist from Delphine Reuter on Vimeo.

Today, Niambele, aka Naby by his friends, sees that the role he took on then has expanded, since he will be part of the Bronx borough president office’s new African Advisory Council. The council will meet monthly with representatives from the borough president’s office to discuss West Africans’ issues including immigration rights, education, and unemployment. In total, 27 African immigrants from 16 different countries will volunteer for the council, which Niambele will coordinate. He said one of his priorities is to get an African on each of the 12 community boards in the Bronx.

Ololade Toba LaCrown, the vice chairman of the council, agreed more political representation is needed. “We’re not saying we’re not black, we are black; but the difference is that we have language issues, we have different clothes, etc. People need to know that,” said LaCrown, a 37-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran originally from Nigeria, who owns a recruitment company for people based in Africa.

According to the Bronx borough president, the creation of the council is recognition of the growing political importance of West Africans in the borough, which is mainly populated by Hispanics (45.8 percent) and African-Americans (33.8 percent), according to the 2006-2008 American Community Survey.

“There are 1.4 million people in this borough, and that includes the Africans that have chosen the Bronx to be their home,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

According to U.S. Census data, the number of Africans living in the borough has grown 66 percent from 36,361 in 2000 to 55,000 in 2007. LaCrown said the 2010 Census would better capture this reality. But many Africans fear this government-sponsored initiative would put their immigration status at risk. Niambele, betting on people’s trust, said he wants at least 70% of Bronx Africans to be counted.

“If I go tell people why it is important, maybe people will do it because ‘Naby said so,’” he said.

Activism as a way of life

Niambele became an activist when he left his homeland to study in Ivory Coast. In 1977, at 15, he was elected to head a secret student organization opposed to the government. Seven years later, he joined a more radical organization, Front Populaire Ivoirien, a grassroots association devoted to creating a democracy in the country. He started wearing fake mustaches or glasses to move around discreetly. He quit law school three years later, in 1987, and traveled frequently between Ivory Coast, Mali and Burkina Faso on behalf of the FPI. In 1988, he got married but kept hiding to pursue his political activities. His first son was born in 1991 in Mali, the same year it became a democracy. He moved to the U.S. in 1998 and started to send money to his family – his wife and son, a 4-year-old daughter, and newborn twins. Every year, he visits them for seven or eight weeks.

“The worst part of my life is for me not to be with them,” he said.

But, he said he would probably not be able to financially support them if they immigrated to the U.S. because his earnings have significantly diminished from a year ago. In 2007, after the house fire, he quit his job managing a car service company – where, on a good week, he could make as much as $3,000 – to work for his community. In 2008, he joined AmeriCorps, a national program that comprises community service projects across the U.S. As an AmeriCorps VISTA worker, Niambele is paid a little above poverty level – around $14,000 a year and cannot have any other earnings, according to Karen Talbot, state program specialist at AmeriCorps. He sends home about $6,000 a year to pay for his four kids’ private school education.

“Once they receive the money, it’s theirs to use,” said Talbot about AmeriCorps workers.

Niambele said he would rather not know how much his former colleagues earn so that he can concentrate on his grassroots activism without resenting his low salary.

The growing population brings tensions

“Naby” is known across the Bronx’s burgeoning African population. He usually wears a suit with two badges pinned to his jacket: “Peace On Earth” and AmeriCorps. Around his neck is a medal with the Twin Towers. He walks with a cane because of recent knee surgery and sports a leather cowboy hat, when other African Muslims prefer a traditional white cap. He is proud to say he has applied for U.S. citizenship.

Although he mainly works with the Highbridge Community Life Center in the southwest of the Bronx, where he has been living since 2007, he also reaches out to his community in other ways. During the past four months, he has worked more closely with police of from the 42nd and 44th precincts. In June, a few African immigrants were randomly assaulted on their way to a Claremont mosque, on Webster Avenue. Some of them were seriously wounded. The police set a temporary surveillance unit in front of the entrance.

Haja Hydara, a Gambian immigrant, cooking in her kitchen in Morrisania on Nov. 22, 2009. A bullet shot from the outside wounded her last June. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

The same month, a Gambian native, who has been living with her family in a housing complex on East 163rd Street in Morrisania for the past 11 years, was hit by a bullet shot through her kitchen window. Haja Hydara, 33, spent eight days in the hospital and came home with a patch on her left eye. Today, she can hardly open it. Hydara said she would rather not wander out of her apartment even to cross the street to buy groceries.

“I don’t like it here anymore,” she said, sitting in her living room with the curtains drawn.

When her husband, Dembo Jawara, was absent, she heard people knocking on her door and shouting she should go away.

“This is discrimination, because we are getting larger and we have to live with them,” said Jawara, 42, referring to other residents of the South Bronx.

Jawara said Niambele helped to bring the media’s and the borough president’s attention on the shooting. The police at 42nd Precinct are still investigating and so far have no suspect.

“I’ve been here since 1989 and never had problems,” Jawara said. “The only thing is that we need security.”

Nii Lante, 35, a construction contractor from Ghana who is Christian, said African Muslims are known for not being aggressive.

“They’re an easy target. They’re not running around carrying guns and stuff,” he said.

For Niambele, dissuading the attackers is only the start of a long campaign to improve living standards in the South Bronx.

“I think that my duty is to talk to everybody because these people are not just enemies of my community, but of all communities,” he said.

Clashes also happen within the African immigrant community.

Last August, Niambele mediated disputes at a mosque on Southern Boulevard, not far from the Cross Bronx Expressway. Tribal tensions forced a Muslim congregation to split, leaving its imam, Mohammed Sefou, with the task of creating another mosque. He said about 30 people gather every day for the 5 p.m. prayer at the new mosque, which opened on Nov. 8 and is located two blocks away from the other one.

“We have so many projects to achieve,” said Bawa Abrourazakou, a member of the new mosque. He has known Niambele since the 2007 blaze. “Naby can help us because we saw him helping so many people before.”

The family center, his own project

In the future, Niambele will have to juggle between his duties for different organizations.

Niambele lives on the house to the left. It is the same building that partially burned in 2007 and where ten Malians were killed. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

In Highbridge, he plans to create a family center to offer language classes and after-school programs to Africans. According to Nurah Amat’ullah, executive director of the Muslim Women Institute for Research and Development, based in Highbridge, more and more immigrants who now move to the U.S. never lived in their capital cities and only speak their mother language. Once here, they struggle to fit in their new neighborhoods.

“This can be very traumatizing,” said Amat’ullah, 46, whose own origins are in Trinidad and Tobago.

Niambele credits the idea of the family center to Moussa Magassa, a Malian immigrant who lost five children in the 2007 fire. Today, Magassa’s family and Niambele share the same house that was partially burnt. There, after his long days, Niambele plays the balafon, a Malian xylophone, or reads books on politics.

“I’m just this African guy who happened to do a lot in his life,” he said.