'Healing Through Harvesting': Gleaning Unwanted Fruit Helps Refugees In Need

Tilahun Liben thought he was seeing things. Surely that mound of orange orbs under those trees near his church couldn't be oranges. Could they?

It was 2010, and Liben had just arrived in Tucson, Ariz., as a refugee from Ethiopia. He had been a musician, playing saxophone in nightclubs, but that life ended abruptly in 1999 when an oppressive regime imprisoned him for three months for his political dissent. After Liben's release, further persecution forced him to flee his homeland: He ended up at the Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, where he waited 10 years to be resettled.

Liben, 46, hadn't been in the city more than a few months when he met Barbara Eiswerth, an American who had, by chance, visited Kakuma during Liben's stay. Here in Tucson, Liben learned, that helps refugees find community and purpose through gleaning backyard fruit, which they eat themselves and share with other Arizonans in need.