Bushmen recruited by Frontier Culture Museum denied visas

STAUNTON — Three West African bushmen recruited to build an authentic mud-hut village at the Frontier Culture Museum were denied visas because they are too poor and inarticulate.
In a letter to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Debra Heien, chief of the consular section for the U.S. in Nigeria, said one applicant “could not articulate anything about the project. ... The only thing he said was that he built his own house.”
A second applicant, she said, “had not filled out his form properly. He was told to correct the errors and return before the morning intake was completed at 10:30 a.m. He did not come back.”
She advised: “Should the applicants decide to apply again, they must make appointments using our online appointment system.”
John Avoli, director of the museum in Staunton, said Wednesday, “After a monumental effort, we identified three bush people who actually lived in mud huts. You can’t imagine how difficult it was to get them out of the bush and bring them to Lagos. We were heartbroken.”
The museum has been planning to build a mid-1700s West African Igbo compound to illustrate the history of the slave trade as well as the early American frontier. Many slaves brought to America and to Virginia came from Nigeria in West Africa.
“They were denied because they were considered poor dirt-farmers who lived in mud huts and can’t speak English and supposedly have no business in America,” Avoli said. “They couldn’t articulate fully why they were coming here.”
But Avoli said the whole point of recruiting the bushmen — who would, of course, be poor farmers with no English skills — was that they built and lived in mud huts and so possessed the skills to construct a real Igbo compound.
At the American consulate in Lagos on June 17 the three bushmen — Thomas Chukwujekwu Ikegbunam, Pius Chukwunwike Anigbogu and Ambrose Nwancho Nkwuda — failed to convince an examiner that they only wanted to stay temporarily in the U.S.
Despite efforts by Warner’s staff, the decision was not reversed. In her letter last week to Warner, Heien wrote that Ikegbunam “has no regular income” and that Nkwuda “is a farmer who ekes out a marginal living” while Anigbogu didn’t fill out the application forms properly.
Material to construct the Igbo village is currently on its way to Virginia via ship, Avoli said. The material includes raffia palms for roofing and landscaping as well as pottery, tools and wood carvings that will decorate the mud huts.
An Igbo compound of the mid-1700s usually contained several houses enclosed by a fence of closely planted trees or a wall of compacted earth. Igbo houses were generally rectangular to square in shape, with walls of either solid earth or wattle and daub, and with roofs of palm or grass thatch, according to the museum.
Historically, the Igbo were yam farmers, and the compound of every successful Igbo included a yam barn where the harvested root crop was stored.
Avoli said that despite the setback, the West African village will be built. Umembe Onyejekwe, a former Nigerian government museum curator, will spend four months helping to build the village. She helped recruit the three bushmen.
Two other Nigerians, including an architecture professor from the university in Lagos, will also come to Staunton to help.
“The project will go on,” said Avoli, who expects the work to begin the middle of this month and to continue through the fall. “We’re elated that at least we can get those folks here.”
Carlos Santos is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.