MPR’s Lynette Nyman reports on how Somali immigrants are adjusting and taking on the many challenges in creating a new home in the United States. Nyman speaks with local Somali residents about adapting while keeping culture and tradition intact.
Somalis make up one of the fastest growing minority groups in Minnesota. Most live in Minneapolis and St. Paul, with Rochester close behind. Somali leaders say the Somali people are doing well, finding jobs and opening businesses, but they also say there's work to do as they begin to feel the stress of assimilation while rebuilding their lives.
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LYNETTE NYMAN: At the intersection of Chicago and Franklin in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Halal Market bustles with activity, filling a niche that didn't exist in this neighborhood 10 years ago. An historic map of Somalia hangs on the wall behind shop owner Abdi [? Jmah, ?] a slender man with a dark beard who barely has time to talk as he rings up purchases. [? Jmah ?] says the market attracts several hundred customers a day.
SPEAKER 1: Our customer is mostly in Somalia. And we have also American, Asian, and everybody. We're doing good.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The best-selling items are basmati rice and halal meats, killed according to Muslim dietary law. One man spends $20 for about 8 pounds of goat meat to feed his family of four for three days. Fartun, a young woman in her 20s, gets a phone card, a very popular item that's one way to keep calls to her East African homeland within a tight budget.
SPEAKER 2: I stay here, and my parents in Somalia. Then I have to call them-- or neighbor countries and anywhere in the world. If you use [INAUDIBLE] phone bill in your home, they charge you a lot.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The mother of one, Fartun came to the United States in 1996. Since then, she's developed two different personas-- one a working American woman who leaves her Somali headdress at home, the other as a Somali woman who wears her traditional clothes to pray at a mosque.
Is it hard for you to be two different kinds of people?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, no. No. Not at all. Not at all.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Fartun is one of thousands of people from Somalia who are making Minnesota home. An exact count is hard to come by. But the state's demographer's office estimates there are 6,000 Somalis here, while the state refugee office estimates twice that number live in the state.
Since 1993, several thousand arrived in Minnesota directly from refugee camps in Kenya after fleeing civil war in their homeland. And the others are part of an ongoing secondary migration, or movement, from states around the country to Minnesota for jobs and family. Regardless of the number or the purpose, the Somali people are experiencing the challenges that come with making a new life in unfamiliar territory.
SPEAKER 2: The American culture is influencing us. And it's changing a lot. And I hope we keep our culture and our identity.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Huda Farah is the child care coordinator with the Somali Community of Minnesota, a Minneapolis-based social service agency. She spoke recently as part of a panel on issues facing the Somali community.
HUDA FARAH: The environment here is different from the environment in Somalia. So how can we adapt to this culture? How can we take the good things from this culture and not the bad things? How can we keep our good things?
LYNETTE NYMAN: Farah fears the loss of strong Somali families. And in her desire to make her point, she turned to her first language.
HUDA FARAH: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
LYNETTE NYMAN: Farah says the Somali mother is the pillar of the hut, raising the children, while the father is the provider helping his wife. To make it in the US, both wives and husbands work outside the home. Meanwhile, extended family members who might otherwise be around to care for children work, too. Farah says mothers are forced to leave their children with people they don't trust or who don't teach the Somali language or know the Islamic faith. So she wants to establish a kind of Somali preschool, or dugsi.
HUDA FARAH: Back home in Somalia, that was the base of the education in Somalia. And the children, the Somali children-- wherever they go, wherever they have been, in education, they were at the top. Why? I believe because they were prepared with the Quran with the beginning of their lives.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Somali community leaders name the lack of culturally sensitive childcare, the need for education and training, especially to create teachers who are Somali, and the shortage in affordable housing as the major problems before them. Then there's emerging problems which are difficult to discuss, such as single Somali women with children suffering breakdowns or depression within a culture that doesn't have a word for "stress."
Despite these challenges, Osman Sahardeed, assistant executive director of the Somali Community of Minnesota, says there's a lot to be thankful for.
OSMAN SAHARDEED: To God and to Americans and-- all in all, people are struggling. And they are learning their ways around. But they are doing fine, working and providing for their families.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Many of the elders and those who held prominent positions back home hold on to the hope Somalia will find peace so they can return. But with no effective government or peace accord, going back anytime soon seems unlikely. I'm Lynette Nyman, Minnesota Public Radio.