(Photo by Stina Sieg - KJZZ)

Hussein and Shreen Alhamka came to the US from Iraq a few years ago. With the help of their 12 kids, they grow more than 20 types of fruits and vegetables to sell at local markets.

(Photo by Stina Sieg - KJZZ)

Koffi Ogou came to the US from Togo with this wife and seven kids. They settled first in Chicago, but Ogou says Phoenix feels much better.

When refugees flee their country, they don’t just leave behind a place. They give up so many familiar things, from friends to a job, to food they may have eaten every day. But there’s a Phoenix program that helps ease this leap into the unknown – from the ground up.

Koffi Ogou was hunched over rows of leafy greens — snipping with his scissors as went.

“Harvesting is something you need to do by yourself,” he said, blinking in the bright sun. “No machine can do that.”

But Ogou doesn’t mind. This is his crop of molokia, a vegetable eaten in parts of Africa, including his native Togo. He was in west Phoenix, on a plot of land leased through a program called New Roots, created by the nonprofit International Rescue Committee.

“This program help us rebuild our new life,” he said.

And it does so by connecting about 100 local refugees with land, seeds and education on farming in Arizona’s hot desert sun. Not that the weather bothers Ogou. He spends every day he can at his garden.

“Oh, I like in paradise,” he said. “I feel happy, especially when the crops are well.”

He does sell his molokia, mostly to other Africans, nostalgic for home. But this isn’t so much about money, as it is about the kind of life he wishes for him, his wife and their seven kids.

“Somebody who has, like a ranch, he is the king,” Ogou said. “He is like, in Heaven on this earth.”

That’s why, even as he spent years in the military in his home country, he was always farming on the side. Hussein Alhamka, tending to his eggplants and peppers nearby, did the same thing. Except he was in the Iraqi military. And has 12 children.

“My kids will live better than me,” he said. “It is future for my kids, this country. I like this country, yes.”

You can often see his family at the Phoenix Public Market, where they sell more than 20 types of fruits and vegetables — some you can’t easily get in this country. They’ve never experienced prejudice there, Hussein said. People know them for their produce more than anything else. 

“It blocked the name of the Iraq,” he said. “It’s just people look at what we have in front of us, on the tables.”

That kind of cross-cultural connection has been one of the goals for New Roots since it began nearly 10 years ago, and it shows up in all kinds of ways across the program.

Over at another plot in central Phoenix, farmer Tareque Tesfamaecel was joking with Anna Chotzen over how many bags of okra he should give her as a gift. He’s from Eritrea. She’s from Minnesota — and is a local foods coordinator with the program.

“The farmers are really excited to tell their story, for the most part,” Chotzen said. “And very excited to show off their produce and sell it and have people know them for their produce.”

In fact, the biggest hurdle for New Roots isn’t culture shock or funding its sliding scale for farmers — it’s land. New Roots technically only has ground Chotzen and Tesfamaecel are standing on for another year, though it’s possible the lease could get extended. But even a few more years isn’t enough to ready the soil and build infrastructure. And that worries Tesfamaecel, speaking through a translator.

“Yeah, he’s saying it should it should continue,” he said. “If you stopped this program for especially people like me, we’re going to die.”

Maybe not literally, but at 63, Tesfamaecel is convinced that if he didn’t work here, he’d waste away.

No, he doesn’t sell that much, he said.

“But the fact that I’m coming to the garden, every day, to work in it, that makes me really happy," said Tesfamaecel.

And makes his rows of bright green okra grow strong. His next goal? Onions.