D.C. Intersections

An American University journalism class explores race and culture in the Metro area

Mt. Pleasant – A “Village in the City”

Mt. Pleasant

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Heller's Bakery in Mt. Pleasant

As the District’s “Village in the City,” Mt. Pleasant is a relatively secluded spot tucked between Rock Creek Park and Columbia Heights. Originally a white, middle-class suburb, the neighborhood was incorporated into the city in the early 20th century. It saw an influx of black residents in the 1950’s and became known, several decades later, as the heart of D.C.’s Latino community.

Today, D.C. natives and transplants share this tiny neighborhood. The neighborhood’s vibrant commercial strips are home to restaurants and bars, churches and community centers, many of which function with the neighborhood’s diversity in mind.

— Mia Steinle

Mt. Pleasant Multimedia

Stories

St. Stephen’s fosters community in Mt. Pleasant
Text and photographs by Mia Steinle

Heller’s Bakery
Text and photographs by Josh Kramer

Uniting a community through micro-grants
Text and photographs by Michaela Gonzales

A neighborhood in flux
Video story and text by Kirana Bammarito

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The Raven: A neighborhood in flux

Neighborhood change

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Video and text by Kirana Bammarito

The bar, built in 1935, hides itself between the Pan American Laundry and Atonatl Condominiums. A simple dark-green rounded awning declares “3125” (Mount Pleasant Street) and a diner-esque window announces “Raven Grill” in bold, white cursive. Faint light peeks through the brown aluminum blinds, and a neon sign glows with “Cocktails” over a big wine glass. Off to the side, a chipped planter stands tribute to many past, present and future cigarette breaks, while a black and orange sticker on the side window declares that it’s N.F.T. – Not for Tourists.

Jon Roos, 27, grew up in the neighborhood, attended Wilson High School in Tenleytown, and went away to west Pennsylvania and New York City for various college and work gigs. But something always called him back to the District, and specifically back to Mount Pleasant. He worked at various neighborhood businesses before settling down as one of The Raven’s bartenders three years ago.

For many, The Raven, one of Mount Pleasant’s oldest establishments, is a mainstay of the neighborhood as they’ve known it – friendly and haphazard, eclectic and low-key. It won Washington City Paper’s “Readers’ Choice Best Dive Bar” award last year.

“I don’t care if you’re black, white, purple or Martian,” says Roos; as long as you’re friendly and have a few bucks for a beer, you’re golden.

Places like this define Mount Pleasant, which is a celebrated Washington neighborhood of racial and cultural diversity. Many people say they live in Mount Pleasant because of the diversity, which was borne of immigrants, economies and cultural demographic shifts.

From the outside, many people generally see Mount Pleasant as one of the most inclusive neighborhoods in Washington, welcoming and encouraging all racial and cultural diversity. Banners around the neighborhood read “Mount Pleasant – en la ciudad un pueblo” (a village in the city). Latino markets line the strip, Adam Express won Washington City Paper’s “Best Korean [Food] in the District” award in 2008 and the newest restaurant, Marx Café, sometimes offers live jazz music.

Even though many of these businesses have been fixtures in the neighborhood for years, within Mount Pleasant’s diversity also lie isolated groups that don’t often interact – a tossed salad rather than a melting pot.

The Raven’s clientele is mostly white and black, with the number of Latinos far smaller than their neighborhood percentage. On the flip side, Latinos mostly comprise the clientele at Don Juan’s, a restaurant owned by Salvadoran immigrant Alberto Ferrufino.

Mount Pleasant’s racial demographics have ebbed and flowed over the years. Since its founding in the 1700s, it was mostly white until the mid-1950s when it became a mix of whites and blacks. After the 1968 riots, the neighborhood was mostly black. Then in the 1980s, an influx of Latino immigrants, particularly from Central America, slowly came to the area.

In 2000, according to the U.S. Census, the neighborhood was 27 percent black, 35 percent white and 31 percent Latino. The rest of the population was mostly Asian. Foreign-born residents comprised 38 percent of the population. Today, those demographics are similar, but recent conditions have begun to change things.

Shifing politics, economies, and sociocultural trends are what have bred Mount Pleasant’s diversity, and vice versa. Each side says it is trying to preserve this richness, to let the change come naturally and help all Mount Pleasant residents interact together in a peaceful manner. However, even in a place that prides itself as so diverse, interactions between different groups seem to have bred contention.

It’s hard for business owners and residents of all races in Mount Pleasant to say exactly whether tensions in this diverse neighborhood arise from racial issues, or cultural shifts in a broader sense. The new Mount Pleasant has emerged from a jumble of class and race differences, old versus new residents, as well as gentrification.

Residents do know that the only constant in Mount Pleasant is change, and it’s not always easy as some places struggle to cope with the newest cultural, racial and economic realities.

Oliver Tunda, a commissioner on one of Mount Pleasant’s Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, has lived in the neighborhood since immigrating from Sudan in 1995. While grabbing a beer at Haydee’s restaurant, he says issues of gentrification from within nearby Columbia Heights and loss of Latino populations in the neighborhood have hurt local Latino businesses.

Owner Haydee Venegas says it’s been especially tough since a five-alarm fire destroyed a local apartment building and put out many Latinos last March. Switching fluently between Spanish and English, “We hope that they return,” she says, but in the meantime she’ll have to “learn to compete with [neighboring Columbia Heights].”

At the same time, change has proved fortunate for some of the newer businesses, such as Marx Café, whose clientele frequently consists of the newer, white population that is moving back into the neighborhood. Some see animosity between this newest demographic and Latino restaurants and markets, while Latino business owners say they feel a class and race bias that will eventually drive them out in favor of the white and the rich.

Jon Roos, The Raven bartender, has a laid-back manner to go with his dark brown beard and the intricate tattoo creeping out from underneath the left sleeve of his black Frank Zappa t-shirt. He smokes his cigarette outside on a temperate night, and muses over the sometimes racialized disputes that characterize the local dialogue about these changes.

For example, many in the neighborhood know of a legal conflict about a live-music ban involving three Latino businesses and the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance, which some outsiders perceive as a mostly white neighborhood group.

“[There were] racial undertones – it’s undeniable,” he says, but also acknowledges that the whole issue is extremely complicated.

Laurie Collins, President of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance says, “Laws don’t know race or gentrification,” and, referring to the businesses resisting the live-music ban, “nobody in that community owes them a thing.” She cites Radius Pizzeria and Tonic Restaurant and Bar as examples of two “very good businesses in our community.” She says they’re doing fine without live entertainment, which is not the Band-Aid to economic troubles.

Collins and the Neighborhood Alliance envisioned a “different type of neighborhood,” says Claudia Schlosberg of Hear Mount Pleasant, and wanted to “shut everything down.” She says Mount Pleasant has always been a working-class neighborhood of immigrants, and if some people do not want to embrace the kind of diversity such neighborhoods bring, they shouldn’t live there.

Coupled with the collapsing economy, the conflicts harm more than they help the struggling businesses of Mount Pleasant, according to Damien Ober, Marx Café general manager..

He says he’s sick of seeing Mount Pleasant business owners “caught in between this political turf war.” It’s “self-reinforcing,” and “doesn’t have to do with race at all.”

Mount Pleasant has always been a complex neighborhood, filled with diversity and at times, strife. Its future as a place with a proud multicultural identity – en la cuidad un pueblo – will depend on increasing cooperation and support from everyone, regardless of past wrongdoings, Ober says.

Roos listens to the back-and-forth with amusement. In 20 years, The Raven will still be the same, he says.

It has no live entertainment, but it’s a “place for everybody,” according to patron Keith Walker, who first went to The Raven in 1972. For some places, changing with the times is the wrong thing to do. Walker says he starting going to The Raven because it was a “comfortable bar. It still is.”

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Uniting a community through micro-grants

Micro-grants

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By Michaela Gonzales

Micro-grants, given out in Mount Pleasant this April, inspire and support budding grassroots programs and bring one of D.C.’s most diverse neighborhoods closer together.

The Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) of Mt. Pleasant awarded the grants, inspired by the micro-loan programs used in the developing world, to 22 small and newly formed organizations, as well regular neighborhood people with ideas to improve their community. The proposal ranked first by an impartial review panel received $500, and the following twenty-one received $200.

“Frankly, I was skeptical,” said Janelle Treibitz, one of the grantees. “I was skeptical because it wasn’t a very big amount of money and I was afraid it wouldn’t be worth the effort of getting it. But what ended up happening was that it supported a lot of sort of grass roots ideas which is a really beautiful side effect.”

In November of last year, proposals written by young and old, homeowners and apartment renters, Mount Pleasant natives and newly arrived people, came to the ANC commissioners. Applicants proposed to organize and create programs ranging from movie nights to bike cooperatives to classes teaching survival English to Latina stay-at-home moms.

Commissioner Gregg Edwards, the vice-chair of Mt. Pleasant’s ANC and the man behind the micro-grants said that this program, which mixes grassroots organizing and small amounts of money given by local government, was the first of its kind.

Edwards worked at the National Science Foundation for 13 years where he wrote and read many grants. He is using his expertise and this program as a way to teach the driven and inspired of Mt. Pleasant to navigate the grant-writing world.

“I’m hopeful that even if this [project] fails several groups will stick with it and within the next couple years get their own grants,” he said.

On April 15, Mt. Pleasant residents gathered at La Casa Community Center to pick up their grant letters and packages. Neighbors Consejo, “a community based, social service agency specializing in homelessness and homelessness prevention,” received the largest grant for its “Nuevas Raices- New Roots Program” proposal. They intend to start a gardening program that will help homeless Latino men in the D.C. area.

Urban gardening was popular among the grantees while others worried more about security in the area. Still others were concerned about renovations at the local public library. All had to do with building and maintaining community.

One of the most visible excited grantees at the April meeting was Treibitz, who let everyone know that she was eager and willing to work with anyone who might need her services as an artist.

Treibitz who has been active in the Mt Pleasant community since she moved there three years ago found out about the micro-grant program through word of mouth.

“I just started getting phone calls and emails and people like running to me in the streets saying, ‘Janelle, you hear about the micro-grants program?’ ” she said. “Like everybody was like, ‘Janelle, micro-grants!’ so I was like, ‘OK, OK, I’ll apply.’”

Treibitz got a grant to start an artist co-op called “We Are Mount Pleasant,” but has since opted to use the money towards an already established organization called Puppet Underground. Still, her basic purpose remains the same—to bring people together though art.

Of all the places in D.C., it seems most natural that all this creative community bonding comes out of Mt Pleasant. Community activism and involvement has traditionally been a part of the neighborhood identity.

“The idea of community is really strong here and it is sort of what sucked me into being part of the neighborhood and working with neighborhood groups,” Treibitz said.

Of course, this type of involvement is not unique to Mt. Pleasant, but it does seem more pronounced. What is it about this neighborhood that makes it so different? What is it that makes its residents so dedicated? Treibitz suggested that it was because Mt. Pleasant, bordered by Rock Creek Park on two sides, is so nestled.

“We are not actually a thruway to any place,” she said. “We are our own destination. You don’t accidently pass through Mount Pleasant usually, so to get here you actually have to want to.”

Commissioner Edwards’ answer had to do with the diversity of the neighborhood that boasts mansions and row houses, alongside apartment buildings, and a population made up of African Americans, whites and a number of immigrants from Central America. He noted that Mount Pleasant has “the most extreme of demographics living side by side.”

But not everything in Mount Pleasant is pleasant. Having people so different, living so close, does cause some friction. A desire to heal tensions came out in many of the grant proposals.

“There’s different kinds of communities here and people want different things, things that to them mean community, or mean safety, or mean home,” said Treibitz. “And there are tensions about different visions but, it’s like, what a beautiful struggle too.”

The movie night proposed by Neighbors Consejo was meant as a space where the neighborhood’s Spanish speakers and English speakers could mingle. And the bike co-op wasn’t just about bikes. It was about getting people from all segments of the population to share in something they had in common.

Commissioner Edwards said that as people start getting more into their projects the “necessity of groups working together is coming out.”

But for Commissioner Edwards and the granters it wasn’t just about the individual projects that emerged with the incentive of a couple hundred dollars.

Commissioner Edwards has high hopes for the micro-grant program and would like to see the funding for it go into the millions and for it to become a model for the rest of the city.

“I think we could use it as a first, to get a community of people savvy about the grants industry who will be able to support one another and also be able to critique each other,” he said.  “This program could demonstrate that with a chance, there is an immense interest and creativity at the grassroots level.”

And for the grantees it wasn’t just about the money.

“The most exciting thing to me — over getting the grant — is just getting to meet all these people in the neighborhood who care enough to actually apply for a grant who have all these nascent ideas or large ideas,” she said. “My deepest of hopes is that it will connect the different people in the neighborhood more.”

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St. Stephen’s fosters community in Mt. Pleasant

Church

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By Mia Steinle

On a recent Sunday, the service inside St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church looked a lot like the scenes playing out many other places of worship that morning. An attentive congregation watched and listened as a clear-voiced clergyman led them through readings, songs and prayers.

But the Rev. Frank Dunn was urging the group not to be passive, suggesting they act a bit more like shepherds than like sheep.

In doing so, Dunn was reiterating the philosophy that makes St. Stephen’s an inextricable part of Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights’ history and neighborhood life – from the Civil Rights movement to current demographic shifts.

“It’s not your garden variety top-down decision-making organization,” he said.

Rather than entrusting all power to a head clergy person, several clergy people and a committee of laypeople share the responsibilities of leadership and decision-making. This untraditional model is one of the reasons people come back to St. Stephen’s, according to Dunn.

“People do better with a sense of ownership,” Dunn said.

St. Stephen’s was founded in 1925, but its location near the District’s Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights neighborhoods didn’t start to play a big role in the church’s development until the 1950s, according to the church’s Web site. It was then that it became the first integrated Episcopal church in the city. In the 1960s, the church began to tackle civil rights issues.

“When things happen in the neighborhood, the parish tends to respond,” Dunn said. “The neighborhood sometimes writes the church’s agenda.”

It was this sort of community involvement that caught the attention of G.T. Hunt, who has been attending St. Stephen’s for eight years.

Hunt, who has lived in the metro area his whole life, said, “I always heard about it, especially during the Civil Rights Movement. People would say, ‘Meeting at St. Stephen’s.’ ”

Today, Dunn estimates that about 40 percent of the congregation is not white, reflecting the demographic shifts in the area. For example, Caribbean immigrants, who came to D.C. in the 1970s from their local Anglican churches, make up a “small but very significant” section of the congregation.

Since 2006, the church has held a Spanish-language mass – Misa Alegria, or “Joyful Mass” – on Sunday evenings. While many members of the Spanish-language congregation come from outside the neighborhood, Dunn said this mass is one way the church addresses the Latino community in Mt. Pleasant.

Dunn estimates that about 60 percent of its members live more than one mile away from the church. Many of these members had histories in the neighborhood that originally drew them to St. Stephen’s, he said.

Jane Bishop first came to St. Stephen’s in 1975 when she moved to nearby Adam’s Morgan. She moved away from D.C. three years later and returned in 2003. She is now a lay member of the church’s decision-making body.

“I could have chosen any place in the world to live,” she said. “I felt that I had a church community here – perhaps. And I did.”

Bishop now travels a bit farther to get to St. Stephen’s, since she was priced out of the area – a development of the last few decades that influences the church’s demographics, according to Dunn.

Still, the church works to keep housing prices in the area low. St. Stephen’s was involved in the creation of Urban Village, low-priced apartments near the church. While Dunn said he doesn’t like to use the word “gentrification,” he admits the neighborhood is much different from what it was in the 1980s, when a drug shoot-out left someone dead on the church’s front steps.

“The economic rise in the neighborhood has brought in people,” he said, especially socially conscious young people.

One big draw for these new members is the church’s support of progressive local organizations. The church building, which Dunn calls a “community space,” houses offices for over a dozen groups, including those geared toward immigrants, youth, social justice and the homeless.

Their rent contributes between one-third and one-half of the church’s budget, which allows St. Stephen’s to be “economically viable,” according to Dunn. They also help the church in its mission.

“These organizations extend the ministry in ways we couldn’t do ourselves,” Dunn said.

Cam Crockett, a lay leader who has been coming to St. Stephen’s for a total of 15 years, compared the church’s influence to a “bull’s-eye.” At the center are the church and its regular members, and each successive ring is their impact moving out through the community.

“I’ve been moved by the embracing of everyone who comes through the door,” she said. “People seem to find this church and never leave.”

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Rediscovering a neighborhood bakery in Mt. Pleasant

Heller's Bakery

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By Josh Kramer

Lambros Duni wakes every morning well before 5 a.m. Sometimes, Duni, who owns Heller’s Bakery with his brother Aleks, must wake up at midnight or 1 a.m. if a baker cannot come into work. Duni must know how to make everything that his bakery sells, from doughnuts to brownies, (with the exception of the bagels, which they buy wholesale) in case someone is sick.

The Dunis, a Greek family who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, maintains this commitment to tradition, and to doing it right at Heller’s Bakery – a Mt. Pleasant neighborhood icon started by post-World War I German immigrants. This Old World institution serves as a neighborhood bakery for Mt. Pleasant, one of the most diverse small neighborhoods in Northwest Washington, D.C., wedged between the the larger, higher-profile Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan. Mt. Pleasant has, in recent years, become home to a large Latino population, immigrants Central America, mostly El Salvador.
The area also attracts younger white residents who enjoy Mt. Pleasant’s lower rents, its central location and the eclectic strip of restaurants and stores on Mt. Pleasant Avenue that includes Heller’s.

“What makes it nice is the diverse neighborhood,” says Duni. “Everybody knows everybody. People care about each other.”

The Heller brothers — German immigrants themselves — bought the bakery in Mt. Pleasant in the 1930s. By 1954, the family-run business had expanded to six stores all over the District. After the 1968 riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the other stores were closed, and the Mt. Pleasant bakery traded hands until the Duni brothers bought it four years ago.

Kirstra Otto moved to Mt. Pleasant seven years ago, in the beginning of the neighborhood’s current wave of gentrification. Otto has been patronizing Heller’s since she moved, and she enjoys their baked goods, especially the doughnuts. Otto remembers little difference before the Dunis bought Heller’s and after.

“Everything I’ve ever had here is excellent,” Otto says.

Though they did not know anything about operating a bakery, the Dunis retained much of the staff and made an effort to not make too many changes to the store. However, Lambros Duni noted that it is important to keep one’s business “up with the times,” while embracing tradition.

“It should change because nothing stays the same,” he, adding that he strives to keep his business cleaner and safer, while improving the quality of theingredients.

Local competitors such as Cake Love on U Street – which has been featured on Oprah Winfrey’s television show – attract customers with new specialty cakes like “Cynthia’s Sin,” a cake that the shop’s Web site describes as being “like a candy hurricane ripped through the bakery and left a present behind.”

To that, Lambros Duni answers, “If I worked in Georgetown [or an up and coming area like U Street], I’d probably make fancier cakes. But fancier is not necessarily better.”

Ann Amernick, an assistant pastry chef at the White House from 1980 to 1981 and owner of bakeries in Wheaton, Md., and Cleveland Park, agrees with Duni.

“It’s not about the fancy,” says Amernick, “It’s about what’s in the cake.”

According to Amernick, extremely high rents, competition from chains and customer unfamiliarity with quality baked goods make it extremely difficult to operate a true neighborhood bakery.

Erica Sanford, manager of Cowgirl Creamery, a local cheese store, thinks that neighborhood bakeries are important and needed in D.C. Sanford first saw the success of local bakeries while living in Napa Valley, Calif., and earning a degree in Baking and Pastry Arts at the Culinary Institute of America’s California Campus.

Sanford says that at a good neighborhood bakery, “they stick to more of what they know … Safeway won’t do that.”

Duni stressed that Mt. Pleasant is good place to a have a bakery because there is a strong sense of community through diversity. Duni says that he knows most of the business owners on Mt. Pleasant Avenue, and that he meets with them once a month where he represents Heller’s and Marx Cafe, which the Dunis also co-own.

Heller’s makes cakes to order, including cakes shaped like cars and animals. However, Duni says that the most popular cake is his Bavarian Food Cake, which has fresh fruit and custard.

Amernick remembers making a similar cake in her Wheaton bakery, and though she said she disliked making it, she said that she made it anyway because it was so popular with her Latino customers. Duni attributes that to the cake’s lightness, a contrast to similar confections.

Though Amernick hasn’t been to Heller’s since Duni and his brother took it over, she says that it sounds like it qualifies as one of the “truly old-fashioned bakeries.”

“It’s just the giant cookie now…the giant muffin,” she says. “Neighborhood bakeries are the real deal.”

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Alexandria, Va. – Not just Old Town

Alexandria

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Many identify Alexandria, Va., with Mount Vernon and its historic Old Town. However, right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the city is home to many immigrant groups. 2000 Census data indicates more than 25 percent of the city’s population was not born in the United States or any of its territories.

Some immigrants visit ethnic groceries as one way to remain connected to their cultural identities. These markets typically not only provide a place to locate familiar food, but also become a place to network with other immigrants, through ethnic media, community postings, and familiar faces.

— Abby Wihl

Alexandria

Stories

Miles from home, two blocks from a meal that tastes like home
Text and picture by Kai McConnell

Russian grocery employee finds English a challenge
Text and photographs by Abby Wihl

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Miles from home, two blocks from a meal that tastes like home

Afghan Market

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By Kai McConnell

Beautifully stitched velvet wall hangings priced for sale.

Beautifully stitched velvet wall hangings priced for sale.

Deep in the suburbs of Alexandria, on the corner of Van Dorn and Edsall roads, is an 18-year-old institution with a story. Filled with treasures and secrets, it hints of a place an entire ocean and continent away. The Afghan Market and Kabob house is home to some of the most unique flavors and products this side of the Atlantic, and its diverse cliental make the market a cultural and community hot spot.

One regular patron said he shopped at the Afghan Market because the store sold products he was unable to find anywhere else.

“It’s an Afghan grocery shop, you can’t find something at another shop, [like] herbs and meat. For that reason, I come here,” said Sabar Aslangar, a 50-year old Afghan  immigrant and patron of the Afghan Market.

“We have many things here,” said 40-year-old Jawed Abrahim, one of the men working behind the butchers counter. “Foods, spices, Halal meat, and a café in the back serving Afghani foods. It’s the whole nine yards.”

And it’s true – the store shelves are crammed with spices, fruits, nuts, assorted canned foods, and the occasional Afghan DVD. From hand-sewn and beaded clothing, to beautifully painted glass hookahs, the Afghan Market sells more than just the fixings for a traditional meal. It sells remnants of a home nearly 7,000 miles away.

“When I come here, I speak in my language,” Aslangar said with a smile, his sharp blue eyes almost buried beneath wrinkles. “With these people,” He added a few moments later, pointing to Abrahim and the other men preparing raw chicken behind the butcher’s counter.

“Everyone you see here has higher education,” Aslangar continued, as he moved away from the butchers counter and toward rows of nuts, candied fruits, and grains. “But they need to work, to eat, so …” He trailed off, waving his hand around the store vaguely.

“Sometimes, you know, the English skills, computer skills, they are not so good, and for that reason you can’t get a good job,” he said, mentioning that he worked at Total Wine and More, a local liquor store walking distance from the market.

“30 percent of our customers are from Afghanistan,” Abrahim said, by far the largest proportion. After that it is a mix of “ethnic people from all over the world,” he said, listing Pakistan, West Africa, Iran, and Morocco as other countries of origin.

“I would say 80 percent are returning customers,” said Rafi Habibi, the owner of the Afghan Market. “You can’t find most of these products at local grocery stores.”

“Some people, they come from as far as North Carolina,” Aslangar said. “They drive five hours, there to here, to get halal meat.”

Halal literally translates to “permissible,” and is used to mean lawful. Halal meat,is prepared in accordance with the rulings of the Quran. Aslangar likens driving several hours for halal meat to searching for a little piece of home in the form of food.

“When you go to Afghanistan for a long time, you want to go find something to eat, something American, say pizza” Aslangar began, “you take the newspaper and — Oh! New York pizza,” he said gesturing wildly, “So you drive five hours to eat that.”

Many Afghan immigrants find themselves living in America for the same reasons, opportunity, education, and freedoms unavailable to them in Afghanistan. But a growing number of Afghans are driven to America by something much less aspirational.

Abrahim came to America “for the same reason as everyone else: War.” Abrahim left Afghanistan over 20 years ago, hoping to escape the hardships caused by the Soviet occupation.

“Everyone wanted to go somewhere else, you can ask any man, and he will tell you that,” said Abrahim. He cited Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as countries people fled to, and then from, on their journeys to safety.

“You want to save your life,” said Aslangar. “So you run, walk, move at night, go over mountains, don’t eat, don’t sleep.”
Aslangar went on to say that many Afghans choose America because of the comparative safety. “They come here, and now they have health care,” Aslangar said, “everyone wants to leave, to be safe. Here, they have safety.”

Like Abrahim, Aslangar was born in Afghanistan, but after graduating from Kabul University in 1982, Aslangar moved to Bulgaria where he received his masters degree in civil engineering. Fearing the political and social turmoil engulfing Afghanistan, Aslangar opted to try his luck in America.

“I came to the United States to see my mother,” Aslangar said, “I hadn’t seen her for 10 years because of the bad situation in Afghanistan.”

“I filed for a work visa as soon as the allowed amount of time pass,” he said. And then Aslangar waited. And waited. And then waited some more.

“My wife, she won the lottery just a few weeks ago.” The lottery, Aslangar explained, is scoring a green card. A few days after his wife’s application was approved, Aslangar received notice that he too, had “won the lottery.” He had been waiting since the mid 1990s.

The rich smell of spices, and the clamor of customers as they move through the cramped aisles brings Aslangar back to his original mission:”I came in today to get something from the café,” he said. Aslangar had been waiting for about half-an-hour because the man responsible for running the café had been called in to help behind the butcher’s counter.

“When we get busy, everyone helps each other, sometimes we are running from the register to cut meat, and then to serve customers,” Habibi said, hands opened wide.

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Russian grocery employee finds English a challenge

Russian Market

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By Abby Wihl

“Russia way better for me,” said Sayed Qanit, “Here is very hard life.”

Qanit, 38, works at Russian Gourmet, a chain of five Russian groceries in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.  The chain serves an almost exclusively Slavic clientele.

“It is just a small Moscow. Everything you want to buy is here,” Qanit said.

Qanit said he lived in Russia for almost 20 years, but is from Afghanistan and still has Afghan citizenship.

In Russia he worked at a business that bought products from China and sold them within Russia, he said. Before he imported goods from China, he studied in Russia because the Soviet Union had an agreement with some of its satellites to provide education.

Qanit said he moved to here almost two years ago from Russia to be with his wife and 4-year-old son.

His wife moved to the United States in 2000 and has U.S. citizenship, and his son was born on American soil.  Qanit has a green card, and would like to obtain U.S. citizenship too.

He has worked at Russian Gourmet for almost all of the two years he has been in America.

When he first moved to the United States, he was taking an English as a second language, or ESL, course at a church in Springfield on Sundays. His ESL teacher found a listing for an open position at the grocery chain on the Internet and wrote Qanit a recommendation.

When Qanit interviewed for the position, Qanit said the managers were surprised by his Russian fluency, and hired him.
He spends three days a week at the Alexandria, Va. location, and two days at the store in Herndon, Va.

At the store in Alexandria, Qanit said he runs the cash register, stocks merchandise, cleans the building and assists customers.

Nina Borisyuk, the manager, said, translated from Russian, “He is a nice man.”

Borisyuk is in charge of  Alexandria location and has worked there for three years. She is from Brest, Belarus, and when asked her age she said in Russian, “I am old enough to have sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters.”

Qanit said he prepares fresh food items for the deli counter and for catered events at the Herndon location. He said he makes all kinds of Russian items from pirozhki (flaky pastries stuffed with meat, potato, cabbage, or cream cheese and raisins) to traditional Russian salads and soups.

“He is a marvelous worker,” said Ira Savekova, translated from Russian.

Savekova, 50, has worked at the Herndon store for about five years and is originally from Moscow.

Qanit said he is still taking an ESL course two nights a week, but the four hours a week are not enough to master his third language, after Pashto and Russian.

Qanit said he is not able to speak enough English to make progress, and he hardly hears native English speakers.

“At work: Russian. At home: watch Afghan TV,” said Qanit. “English conversation: Challenge.”

Kenneth Dreesen, coordinator of English programs at the International Center for Language Studies, which does intensive language immersion programs for the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. State Department, said adult learners have a particularly tough time adapting to the language.

“It is a struggle,” Dreesen said, “They do not use it, therefore they do not retain it, and they get fossilized language errors, which makes learning even more difficult.”

Dreesen said it is possible for an individual, like Qanit, to need 600 to 700 hours of personalized instruction before becoming truly conversant.

Qanit recently bought a computer to run ESL computer programs, but has not found someone to show him how to use the machine.

“All I need is one time show, maybe two time, but then I will be able to do,” he said. “I want to find job where I can speak English.”

He said it would be even better if he could find a night job, where he would be able to speak English, and go to college during the day.

Until then, Qanit savors the few times a day non-Slavic speakers trickle into Russian Gourmet. He listens to their conversations, and sometimes tries to sneak in a few words.

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