Robert Smith: As the children swarmed toward the glowing windows of the school, the van drivers, mostly fathers just off third shift, stepped out to admonish them to zip up coats and to listen to the teachers.
Speaking in Maay Maay, the language of the Bantu of Somalia, they reminded the children to watch out for one another until they returned to get them. Only then did the men depart, one task finished in a daily, exhausting progression of making it in America.
The van pool emerged last year, after Bantu parents realized their children were being bullied on the bus to school. Mothers, who in Africa wrapped children on their backs to carry them through risky camps, devised a plan to move them safely through Cleveland.
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