Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008

Eyes on the Future

After coming here as teen in 1990, Ivory Coast woman achieves independence from Modesto family, finds love

Every night, throughout the summer and fall of last year, Juliette whispered the same prayer.

"Please, God, let my passport arrive."

Not to travel, but to leave behind a life anchored by a lack of power and freedom most in this country take for granted.

In 1990, Juliette came to Modesto as a wide-eyed teenager from Africa, eager to spend three months in a country she had dreamed of visiting.

Instead, she spent the next 14 years in the home of a Modesto family as their "domestic," cleaning house, washing laundry and baby-sitting the children, feeling helpless to do anything about her situation out of fear of deportation.

Her years often were "lonely" -- a naive teenager, living with a family she didn't know, listening to a language she didn't speak. She said she sought help from the family to gain independence, but got none.

The family, the Farrans, who came to the United States from Lebanon in 1981, said they welcomed Juliette into their home as their own daughter and treated her no differently from their other four children.

But all of that is behind Juliette, who harbors no ill will toward the Farrans. Her long, black hair is weaved into thin braids. She speaks English fluently, but with an accent tinged by French and Arabic.

She's 34. It's the summer of 2007, three years after she left the Farrans. A former Muslim from Africa who knew nothing of the Bible is now a devout Christian, rooted in Modesto. She's deeply in love, about to be married.

She sits down and writes a letter, addressed to the Washington, D.C., office of the ambassador of the Ivory Coast.

It's her only hope to get the passport that will serve as her identification, that will allow her to marry, begin the process of becoming an American citizen and finally step out of the shadows.

TO THE AMBASSADOR:

My name is Juliette. I came to the United States when I was sixteen years of age. I came with the Farran family as a domestic. I was their baby-sitter.

Juliette's hometown of Abidjan is a congested metropolis of about 5 million people, the largest city in the Ivory Coast, a former French colony in west Africa.

The city is a mesh of poverty and culture, known as the "Paris of West Africa" because of its cosmopolitan atmosphere and large French and Lebanese communities. It's also home to thousands of refugees from nearby war-torn Libya.

This is where Juliette was born.

It's 1974. Juliette's mother is Muslim, 18, and pregnant out of wedlock. If she keeps the baby, it will make her an undesirable candidate for marriage in the largely Muslim region.

So Juliette is given to her grandparents to raise. No one tells her about her birth parents.

She speaks Arabic at home and learns French at school. As a child, she shares her grandparents' one-bedroom home in Abidjan with other cousins, aunts and uncles.

One of her aunts, Diallo Fatomata, pays more attention to Juliette than the rest. She dotes on her niece, bringing soup when she's sick, wrapping her in a blanket on chilly nights.

When Juliette is 10, someone tells her a secret: her favorite aunt isn't really her aunt. She's her mother.

Juliette is shocked. She wants a relationship with her mother, so she visits Fatomata's house.

But her mother's husband is outraged, saying he doesn't want a "bastard child" in his house.

He beats his wife in front of Juliette each time she visits.

"Why does he hit you every time I'm here?" Juliette finally asks her mother.

"Because you are not his child," Fatomata replies.