My wife and I were driving around and around the Greensboro neighborhood of apartment complexes located off a busy main road. Twenty years ago there were few if any ethnic shops or restaurants around. Now western Greensboro is full of Asian and Hispanic businesses. I called Menbi again, and then I spotted her, waving us in with a big smile. The apartment complex is tidy and far better looking than the ramshackle units we're familiar with in Northeastern Greensboro, often the first stop for newly arrived refugees.
Menbi graciously invites us in and soon we're sitting in her small, comfortable living room. A friend stops by and her boy is on the computer. Menbi was recommended to me by Omer, the executive director of African Services Coalition, because of her reputation in the community as an excellent cook who aspired one day to open her own restaurant. Quickly she produced for us ingredients and foods from her homeland that she loves. We get to taste and smell. It's heavenly. Food has a language of its own. We experienced this all the time whenever we used the subject of food to engage our Montagnard adult students in conversational English. Even the shyest and least learned would figure out a way to use their limited language to communicate their thoughts and feelings about a special food, a memory of what they ate growing up, or what was growing in their garden. Menbi's English is excellent, however, and she's so eager to share her traditions with us that she offers to cook us something there and then. We're so happy to see her happy!
Menbi is an unusually well educated and articulate newcomer with a college degree and a very stable job as shift manager and chef at a prestigious private school. She and her husband appear to have made a rock solid life in America in just a short time, but from the stories she tells about arbitrary arrests, threats and killings that directly affected her family in Ethiopia, we can tell that her life has not been easy. I'm impressed by her personality, generosity, and overwhelming love of cooking of all kinds, which includes Western and American styles. She has certainly impressed her employer, who allows her the freedom to add her Ethiopian cooking traditions into familiar fare.
At the car, I lift the hatch and give her a supply of Purple Stokes, a variety she has never seen before. I snap off an end so she sees the color and her eyes light up. A sniff and a bite follows, exactly as I have seen AJ do when looking over Kwol's ingredients, exactly as I saw Adrian do when Wurood's bags of spices covered the table before us.
In a few days, we'll go with Menbi to see Trevor and Mark at Meridian. This is going to be great!
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