People from countries along Africa's north east coast make up one of Minnesota's fastest growing populations. Most are from Somalia, but a small percentage is from Ethiopia. The newcomers depend on Ethiopians who've been here for a while for traditional goods and services. One place they often go first is a grocery store on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The Merkato African and American Grocery is not particularly busy on this Tuesday morning. Customers straggle in a few at a time.
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Some head to a teller machine for cash, others to the counter for lottery tickets. A few wander through the aisles stocked with the usual grocery store goods, like baby diapers and cooking oil. But then there are items essential to Ethiopian cooking.
ENUYE FANETA: OK. The main business, the main business is teff flour.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Enuye Faneta owns and operates the Merkato.
ENUYE FANETA: We call it teff flour.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Teff, a wild grass grown for its tiny, tiny grain, is believed to have originated in ancient Ethiopia possibly 4,000 years ago. This is the flour used to make--
ENUYE FANETA: Injera. We use to make injera. The main business, injera, business and flour-- we sell flour plus injera. So the main flour is teff. Without this, it's not injera.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Injera is to Ethiopians as white bread is to Americans. This flatbread is also the Ethiopians' traditional utensil for eating. Like a giant, soft, and spongy pancake, its texture makes it perfect for scooping lentils, an Ethiopian staple. On any given weekend, Enuye might sell more than 1,000 pieces of injera.
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Enuye joined her husband in the United States in 1987. [INAUDIBLE] had arrived as a refugee five years earlier. Back home, he was in the Ethiopian military during the country's 17-year civil war. Enuye was a language and math teacher during that time. Here she's a businesswoman. She started with a home business out of a need to make money while caring for her infant sons.
ENUYE FANETA: [SPEAKING AMHARIC]
LYNETTE NYMAN: On this Saturday, Enuye cooks injera over the stove for the day's customers while talking on the phone. She speaks in her native Amharic. Amharic is the language of the Amhara people, one of more than 80 ethnic groups in Ethiopia and one of several here in Minnesota.
Enuye's husband stuffs the injera into plastic bags and takes them to a shelf out front for shoppers. One woman walks in wearing a long skirt and head scarf. Enuye comes out from the back kitchen to answer her questions.
ENUYE FANETA: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
LYNETTE NYMAN: The woman asks about a particular flour she bought a few days earlier, then declines to talk for this story. After she leaves, Enuye explains, many of the Ethiopian newcomers are shy. And they're Oromo, the most numerous of Ethiopia's ethnic groups. Unlike the politically dominant and mostly Christian Amhara, the Oromo are mostly Muslim and rural. A third is the Tigrayans, who comprise much of Northern Ethiopia and breakaway Eritrea.
Enuye points to two local concert flyers on the wall. One advertises an Amhara band. The other shows an Eritrean group dressed in fatigues, expressing its support for Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia. As far as Enuye is concerned, both flyers are welcome in her store.
ENUYE FANETA: No matter what everybody's coming, I treat them like a customer. I don't care he's Ethiopian, he's Eritrean or Oromo or American or Kenya or Uganda, Zaire, South Africa. Everybody's a customer. Everybody bring green money, right? So I treat them like that.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Enuye speaks several languages, but she says it's her ability to communicate with new arrivals that transcends ethnic and political differences among her customers.
ENUYE FANETA: The new immigrant, if it's very hard to speak English and then first stop by-- we speak the same language, whatever they want and then whatever information they asked me. And then I told them, some people, where is the Social Security office? Where is welfare office? Where is the Ethiopian community office?
LYNETTE NYMAN: Enuye's other major clientele is Somali. Her greatest concern now is staying competitive as the Somali population continues to blossom and the Twin Cities. As they've gotten their feet on the ground, they've opened their own stores. And Enuye says she can't carry everything people want from the Horn of Africa. Her next venture-- an Ethiopian restaurant adjacent to the grocery store in the same building she now owns. I'm Lynette Nyman, Minnesota Public Radio.
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