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Lyon County, Kansas

Somali Farewell

Photo by Joey Berlin

Musem Salamam, left, and an unidentified man chat outside the Ayan Cafe on Thursday afternoon. The cafe was to serve customers for the final time today before owner Mohamed Jama moves to Sioux City, Iowa.

The Ayan Cafe, the popular restaurant hangout for Emporia’s Somali community, was scheduled to close today.

Owner Mohamed Jama said Thursday that the cafe had been losing money since the announcement last month that Tyson Foods was shutting down its Emporia slaughter operations and laying off thousands of workers. Tyson employed about 400 Somalis in Emporia. Shortly after Tyson’s announcement, the majority of the Somali community decided to leave.

Next week, Jama is moving to Sioux City, Iowa, where he will work at the Ayan Cafe in Norfolk, Neb. Some Somalis came to Emporia from Norfolk after Tyson closed down its beef plant there.

Jama and two partners opened the cafe in 2006 at 728 E. 12th Ave., not long after Somalis began to move to Emporia to work at Tyson Fresh Meat.

Ethel Carter, who runs the Eastwood Lake apartments across the street from the Ayan Cafe, said she was losing a number of tenants as a result of the Somalis leaving Emporia. Carter said she had had most of her Somali tenants for two years; they call her “Mama.” She said that in losing the Somali community, Carter was losing some honest people.

“They’re good for their word,” she said. “Their word is good. When they care for somebody, they truly care for somebody.”

Carter thought that if the Somalis had stayed in Emporia, they eventually would have been more accepted.

“I had a police officer tell me once that the Vietnamese many years ago were treated about the same way,” she said. “And I think anything with difference, it’s hard to accept, and I think it’s a shortsightedness on Americans. I think if we trust like they trust, we’d be a better people.”

Jama said about 250 members of the local Somali community were moving to Sioux City. An estimated 750 Somalis lived in Emporia.
(Emporia Gazette ~ Friday, 29 Feb 2008)