“It’s just a mess,” said Evelyn Curry, 75, a retired social worker who has lived in the neighborhood since 1971.

Agnes Johnson (left), a Highbridge resident, and Nadine Foster (right), the principal of Public School 126, have a discussion after the public hearing at P.S. 126 on Dec. 8, 2009. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

The city’s proposal is aimed at making all 10-year-olds start middle school on the same level. In Highbridge, there is no middle school and only one K-6, Public School 126, which will be truncated to a K-5 if the proposal is approved. About 125 children will be sixth-graders next September, according to the principal, Nadine Foster. She added that the pupils would have to travel outside the neighborhood for their next classes. Anxious parents say bullying and other problems are likely to occur on these long trips.

“I’m not ready for my 9-year-old granddaughter to take the bus by herself,” said Yvonne Montague, a 47–year-old nurse and Highbridge resident whose grandchildren attend P.S. 126.

Montague and Curry were among about 150 people who attended a public hearing at the school on Dec. 8. Community leaders, parents, pupils and residents asked Dolores Esposito, the community district superintendent, to convert the school into a K-8.

“This would be a wonderful opportunity for the kids,” said Foster.

It would also go against the standardization wanted by the education department.
But the Highbridge community is growing. Even though a new middle school is slated to open in 2013, it will only offer 389 seats when 2,000 are needed, said Chauncey Young, a community activist who volunteers for United Parents of Highbridge.

“Having a K-8 would give more space,” Young said. “P.S. 126, as a K-6, has always been a refuge for kids who would otherwise have to travel outside the neighborhood.”

Highbridge is bordered by the Cross Bronx Expressway to the north and the Grand Concourse on its eastern side. The pupils cannot reach their schools outside the neighborhood without taking the bus. The impact assessment made by the education department for the K-5 proposal concluded that middle schools like the Science and Technology Academy, three blocks east from the Grand Concourse, should be able to host Highbridge sixth-graders.

Some residents parallel the decision to reduce P.S. 126 activities to the general lack of resources in Highbridge: a year and a half ago, the public library was closed, and it has been years since they could walk to the post office or to a bank. Today, they need to drive there.

Agnes Johnson, a teacher and activist who used to live in Harlem, said the clock was ticking and the community had to work as one.

“You have to tell the people: ‘We cannot afford to live like this anymore,’” she said. “The community has to make their issues a priority for politicians, and not an afterthought.”

Nancy Santiago, parent coordinator at P.S. 126, said the school’s principal could be trusted to raise people’s awareness about the proposal, especially since the fight to get a new middle school has gathered a lot of interest over the past years.

“People are here even if they don’t fully understand,” said Santiago.

Ted Garcia, president of the Community Education Council of District 9, which comprises Highbridge, is confident that people will oppose the city’s proposal with their own.

“If parents don’t stand up for their kids and their rights, the city will do what they want,” he said. “And parents are organizing right now.”

The city’s decision will be made public on Dec.17.

“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.

Around 40 Muslims from five mosques in the Bronx will make the pilgrimage to Mecca as a group in mid-November, in an attempt to lower travel and accommodation costs and allow more people to afford the trip.

“It’s even cheaper this year,” said Abdul Muhaimin Ladan, one of the imam’s assistants at Mount Hope Masjid, a mosque in the southwest of the borough.

Abdul Muhaimin Ladan counts the passports his fellow Muslims will need for the journey to the Mecca on Nov. 15. Photo: Delphine Reuter

Ladan, 42, will supervise the pilgrimage with Mousa Wage, an imam from Highbridge. He said that while the Mount Hope mosque has 400 members, only 12 of them will join the 40-member group traveling to Saudi Arabia for the hajj.

There, they will perform century-old rites like walking seven times around the Kaaba, a shrine covered in a black cloth, located in Mecca, one of the three spiritual capitals of Islam along with Jerusalem and Medina. The Saudi Embassy Web site stated on Nov. 3 that around 250,000 pilgrims had already reached Mecca. Around four million of them are expected from all over the world. The Bronx delegation will gather Muslims from Highbridge, White Plains, and from one mosque in Chicago – headed by Ladan’s cousin.

Ladan said he and Wage will offer three packages this year with the cheapest one costing $4,000, whereas last year the same basic trip would have cost up to $4,500. The price covers the flight, transportation, food and special pilgrimage clothes for the three-week stay.

It is difficult to find a hajj for less than $4,000 on the Internet, and one California organizer even offered a $12,000 package. Ladan explained that the closer the hotel is to Mecca, the higher the cost. This means that the pilgrims who pay the least have to travel the most every day. Ladan was able to offer a cheaper package this year by booking a hotel further away from the center of Mecca.

For Hajie Tunkara, a member of the Islamic Cultural Center in the South Bronx, who already made the pilgrimage in 2006 and plans to join the group this year, the journey is worth it. Tunkara said he convinced the imam of Highbridge to organize the hajj with Ladan, who studied Islam and used to work as a tour organizer in Saudi Arabia.

“I told him that it is better to go with Abdul,” said Tunkara, 37. “He’s been doing the hajj for the past eight years.”

He added that during the hajj, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. Issah Lamin Yusif, 33, a Quran teacher at Mount Hope mosque, said that the last time he went to Mecca, he spent hours locating his tent among thousands of settlements.

“I would not let my wife go alone,” said Yusif.

Fortunately, while the pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam, attendance is not required. One thirty-four-year-old woman from the Mount Hope mosque, Hawa Jagana, is not planning to make the trip this year because she cannot afford it. Instead, she is saving about $100 a week to do the trip next year.

“You go if you have the money,” she said.

On a Tuesday morning in October, Aura Sotomayor sat up in a hospital bed, stared open-mouthed at the ceiling and let a friend carefully brush her teeth. It had nothing to do with the 39-year-old being sick, though she wants to help people who are.

Melissa Rodney (center) and Carmen Rivera (right) check Treshornor Bell’s blood pressure at the Highbridge Community Life Center on Oct. 6, 2009. The six-month-long training requires all future nurse aides to perform basic tasks under the supervision of higher trained nurses. Photo: Delphine Reuter

Sotomayor was playing the role of the patient in a free skills class she takes in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. The class will help Sotomayor study for a state exam she plans to take in January to hopefully earn her certification as a nursing assistant.

“It’s intense,” said Lislliam Rivera, 24, who also attends the six-month-long nursing program at the Highbridge Community Life Center. “You have to learn bit-by-bit how to help patients.”

A survey published on Oct. 5 by U.S. News and World Report showed that certified nursing assistants typically spend more time with nursing homes residents than more experienced nurses or doctors. Subsequently, they create closer bonds with the patients and play a larger role in making sure they stay healthy and happy. As a result, programs like the one at the Highbridge Community Life Center are trying to give these professionals more training to help them navigate the demands of the stressful job.

“CNA’s should be able to make the everyday life of the residents better,” said Mildred Dace, 68, a nurse aide instructor at the Highbridge Community Life Center. “That’s exactly what they do.”

The survey ranked the Jeanne Jugan Residence, opened four years ago in the southeast Bronx, among the nation’s top 34 nursing homes out of 15,500 homes nationwide. There, the certified nursing assistants spend almost 45 minutes more per resident than the average of two hours and 15 minutes reported on the state and national level.

“The quality of care is closely linked to the quality and quantity of staffing,” said Mark Miller, the long-term care ombudsman at the New York State Office for the Aging.

While six residents per nurse is an ideal ratio, according to Dace, it is also unusual. No specific ratio exists to determine how many nurses are needed per facility because of rapidly-changing needs, said Miller. The homes also care for a wide variety of patients, with some addressing chronically ill or disabled residents’ needs and others serving senior citizens.

Miller pointed out that as the baby boomer generation ages, the need for well-trained nurses will only grow, and this shortage will affect all types of facilities. According to the Administration on Aging, a federal agency that compiles data on senior citizens, the population ages 60 and older will increase from 16 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2030.

“There are generally not enough nurses for all beds,” said Ami Rodriguez, assistant to the administrator of the Highbridge Woodycrest Center.

The free classes at the Highbridge Community Life Center are trying to respond to this real demand for nurses, who can watch out for patients’ health and hygiene as well as their happiness.

“You have to love helping people,” said Kee Chen, 50, who commutes from his Brooklyn home to Highbridge – an hour-and-a-half journey –to attend the nursing classes.