Somalis, Mainers locked in 'strange marriage'

LEWISTON, Maine -- A prank in which a middle-schooler tossed a piece of leftover Easter ham onto a table surrounded by Somalian Muslim youngsters has exposed -- yet again -- the cultural divide in this struggling former mill town.

The widely reported episode left some residents wondering whether the student committed a hate crime. Others complained that the whole thing was overblown.

It is all part of what one Somali activist calls "a strange marriage" between refugees fleeing a war-torn homeland on the Horn of Africa and a nearly all-white mill city of 36,000 trying to bounce back from decades of economic stagnation.

More than 3,000 of the refugees have settled in Lewiston over the past six years, giving it the highest concentration of Somalis anywhere in the country.

Along Lisbon Street, the main downtown thoroughfare, the latest newcomers to a city built by waves of hard-working immigrants have created a mosque, the Red Sea restaurant, and a couple of halal grocery stores as they try to adapt to their strange new world.

Women in colorful head scarves or ankle length hijabs can be seen walking together on downtown streets, not far from the canals, once-bustling mills and twin towers of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the Catholic bastion built with mill hands' dollars.

Stores feature Somali food, clothing, and phone cards that keep buyers in touch with family members in Somalia or refugee camps in Kenya. The most popular card offers eight minutes for $2.

But beneath the surface, simmering tensions were underscored by the school prank that made front-page headlines, recalling an incident last summer when a local man rolled a pig's head into the Somali mosque. Pork is considered unclean by Muslims.

Haaruan Sheekhey, a 27-year-old Somali who moved to Lewiston from Denver two years ago, said he's ready to try his luck elsewhere. His restaurant failed after it was hit by vandals who scratched a swastika on a window, and employers are reluctant to hire Somalis, he said.

"If somebody says 'I'm happy in Lewiston,' they're lying," he said. "We're having a hard time in this city. We're struggling. We're trying so hard to be part of this community, trying so hard to find a job, but nobody gives us a chance."

Others, however, say that the Somalis are assimilating well and that a handful of racial incidents do not reflect the way the newcomers have been accepted by the public at large.

"Yes, there is some friction every once in a while, but that often gets blown out of proportion," said Pierrot Rugaba, program director for refugee and immigration services of Catholic Charities Maine. "Things have improved, but like everything else it takes time."

At the 94-unit Hillview public housing project, black and white children play basketball on the outdoor courts. In the activity rooms, Somali children take part in computer lessons or music and art classes, while students from nearby Bates College provide help with school work.

The project is now 70 percent Somali, but the manager said that the change in racial makeup doesn't seem to have triggered friction and that residents pretty much get along.

"There are 500 people living here, and you're always going to have neighbor problems. But they're no different and no more frequent than before," Carla Harris said.

Many Somalis have found housing at Hillview and at a larger project in another part of town. Many more are clustered in the downtown area, in aging three- and four-story tenements formerly occupied by French-Canadian immigrants who could walk to their jobs at the textile mills in the city's industrial heyday.

By most accounts, language problems and lack of job opportunities have proven to be the biggest hurdle to Lewiston's Somalis as they try to move up the economic ladder, leading many to shift their hopes and dreams to the next generation.

"Their children are the only assets they have. They left everything else in Somalia," said Said Mohamud, manager of the Mogadishu Store. Mohamud, 46, who taught chemistry at a university in the Somalian capital, has a daughter studying at Smith College who plans to go on to medical school and another child studying accounting at Barry University in Florida. His six other children also plan to go to college, he said.

No one seems to remember, if they ever knew, the name of the first Somali to arrive in this riverfront city, known to sports fans as the site of the 1965 heavyweight championship bout between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay.

But it was in the dead of winter -- February 2001 -- and it marked a turning point in the ethnic makeup of a largely Franco-American city that the census showed was 97 percent white.

Six years later, Lewiston's Somalis now number an estimated 3,000 to 3,500, close to 10 percent of the overall population, with an additional 30 or so arriving each month. Because of the Somalis' large families, the percentage in the schools is even greater.

Lewiston's emergence as the city with the nation's largest percentage of Somalis happened by chance. Many had been placed in the Atlanta area .

But dismay at high crime levels and concern about a culture of drug use, alcohol, and gang activity prompted the community to look elsewhere, Mohamud said.