LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It's been almost a year since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, and now some Afghan families are calling Louisville home.
Hoosnia and her family, who didn't share their last names due to safety, desperately escaped from their home country with only the clothes on their backs and no chance to say goodbye to many of their family and friends. They had no choice but to try to escape the country.
"With that U.S. affiliation, there was a very real threat," John Koehlinger, Executive Director of Kentucky Refugee Ministries, said. said. "Very chaotic, a desperate attempt to get evacuated."
Hoosnia came to the U.S. with her mother, Shama, and father, Muhammad, who worked for the U.S. government. When Kabul fell into the hands of Taliban rule, the family had to go or risked being killed.
"I would leave my uncle, my cousins, my aunts and my friends. That was an awful feeling," Hoosnia said to WDRB through an interpreter. "I hadn't had the chance to say goodbye to my uncle. My uncle is like my second Dad. I love him so much. I had no chance to say goodbye to him."
Hoosnia, an Afghan refugee now living in Louisville, speaks to WDRB News.
After three unsuccessful attempts to get to the airport, the family almost gave up. Then in one last U.S. evacuation attempt last August, they got the call to be ready to go.
The family first traveled to Qatar, then spent more than a month in Germany and then several more months at a U.S. military base in New Mexico.
In January, they arrived in Louisville.
Kentucky Refugee Ministries resettled over 300 Afghans, primarily between November through February, while another 140 were helped in Lexington and around 40 families in northern Kentucky.
"Our staff and our community was so passionate about serving Afghans, I think everyone was heartbroken and just wanted to support however they could," Adrienne Eisenmenger, Family and Youth Services Manager for Kentucky Refugee Ministries, said. "Everyone was working really long hours and sometimes going to the airport with a moments notice."
Hoosnia and her father are both working. Any money not needed to support their family in the U.S., they send back to their family in Afghanistan.
"We can help them because if we were there, there was no work," Hoosnia said. "We would be like starving."
The family keeps in contact with loved ones in Afghanistan via Face Time and social media. The daily described by people in their home country is one of economic collapse and food shortages.
"Lots of depression," Hoosnia said. "Scared going outside and worrying maybe some random Talib would arrest you for no reason. Everything is expensive. No incomes. They have to cover their faces with mask just (so) they can show their eyes."
Hoosnia plans to go to college in Louisville, and is grateful for her family's safety and hopeful of a bright future in the U.S.
"I know that one day I can go and meet them," Hoosnia said.
Kentucky Refugee Ministries expects to take in more Afghan refugees in the foreseeable future.
"As sizeable as the evacuation was, there are still many family members of those Afghans who we resettled in Kentucky who are trying to leave the country," Koehlinger said.
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