Somali family spicing up southern Minnesota

[Muhammad]

Somali family adding spice to the melting pot

Chuck Haga, Star Tribune

August 2, 2005 SOM

MARSHALL, MINN. -- At 24, Ahmed Omar retains the sleek, muscular frame he carried on the basketball court at Marshall High School.

 

"First Somali graduate at Marshall," he says proudly, and his T-shirt echoes the pride: an orange-and-black celebration of the Marshall Tigers' Southwest Conference basketball championship the year he graduated.

 

Omar holds aloft one of his three sons as he inspects shelves at the Somali grocery he has just opened in downtown Marshall. The son leans toward the tea biscuits from India and date cookies from Saudi Arabia, but Omar measures space on other shelves.

 

This was inventory day, which meant driving two hours to Mankato to see his supplier -- his father, Abdi Hinda, 62, who opened a grocery there in 2002 -- and then hauling the merchandise home.

Ahmed Omar stands outside his Marshall store.

Marlin Levison

Star Tribune

 

Omar operates his store with his wife, Sadia Salah, from late morning to 9 p.m., seven days a week. He also works part time at one of the area farm processing plants.

 

The plants employ many of the hundreds of other Somali immigrants who have arrived in recent years.

 

"Many of the Somali people living here were driving to Minneapolis to buy the foods they want," Omar said. "It costs them time and money for gas, and in the winter it is not safe."

 

In addition to Somalis, his customers include people from other East African countries as well as India and Pakistan -- and Hispanics, also drawn here to work in the agricultural factories.

 

Descendants of German, Norwegian and other earlier immigrants have been slower to find Omar's shelves laden with cumin and turmeric powders from India, cinnamon sticks from Indonesia and dizzying varieties of rice, flour and oil.

 

"They're going to learn," he said, smiling confidently, "and then everyone will come."

 

Missing an ocean

 

His parents and much of the extended family fled Somalia in 1991 and spent six years in refugee camps.

 

"I was a little kid, and it was war," Omar said, explaining why he remembers little from his homeland. "I remember it was bad, and then it was worse.

 

"But where we lived, it was four blocks to the ocean," he said, his eyes brightening. "Every day, I would go to the ocean and swim."

 

The family came to the United States late in 1997, settling first in Sioux Falls, S.D., but soon moving to the Mankato area. Hinda worked as a tailor and took other jobs to help relatives reach Minnesota.

 

He has children living now in Mankato, Marshall and North Dakota, as well as some still in Africa, and there are many grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

 

"When I came here, there were only two Somali families here," Hinda said. "Now there are 150 members of my family in Mankato."

 

They include son Yasin, 11, who helps at the little Mankato store and acts as translator for his father, and Kassim Busuri, 18, a nephew who also spends time at the store, a sort of ginger-scented back porch for the Somali community.

 

"He's one of the hardest-working men in Mankato, I think," Busuri said of his uncle.

 

Busuri will be a senior at Mankato East High School this fall. He plans to attend Minnesota State University, Mankato.

 

"I think I want to be an immigration officer," he said. "I'd like that -- helping people. Like a social worker, only bigger."

 

Look to the future

 

Like his cousin, Busuri misses the ocean. "I remember going to the beach with my father," he said.

 

"And there are not so many Muslims around here, so I miss hearing the call to prayer. I think that is the thing I miss the most."

 

At 11, Yasin Omar has no memory of Somalia. But he has many ambitions.

 

"Maybe engineer," he said, contemplating his future, and he seemed to savor the thought.

 

"Or drive a truck!" he added.

 

He glanced at his father, working the till as he sold a package of frozen goat meat.

 

"Or have a small business," the boy said.

 

Life in Minnesota has its challenges, Busuri said, but memories of war and lawlessness remain fresh, as do memories of the hardness and uncertainty of life in the camps.

 

"We made soccer balls out of bags and rocks" to have something to do, he said. "The United Nations helped us a lot with food, but our houses were made of palm leaves.

 

"When we first came here, nobody knew us. But they have been welcoming -- especially the young people -- and now they are getting to know us."

 

It was well into evening of a long day when Ahmed Omar returned to Marshall and his wife, his mother and his boys waited to see the shelves in the new store fill with plantain flour and ginger coffee, garbanzo beans from Turkey and sandbag-size sacks of rice from India and Pakistan.

 

"We came here to learn something and work and keep our families and be safe," he said. "I'm ready. Work. Work."

 

Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com.

 

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