Friday, March 05, 2010

SOMALIS IN GRAND FORKS: Dueling centers, shared objectives

These two centers must work together to help all Somali immigrants and also other Africans in their city. - - Donna Poisl

By: Chuck Haga, Grand Forks Herald

Two centers have opened in Grand Forks for recent immigrants - most of them refugees from war and the breakdown of civil authority in Somalia. Many spent years in crowded camps in neighboring Kenya before winning permission to come to America. Some came to Grand Forks as refugees from violence in Minneapolis and other large American cities. But even here, divisions seem to hamper the Somali people.

With the urgent intensity of a general in the field, Mohamed Ismail maneuvers easily from Somali to English and back to Somali as he reviews the day’s assignments: nouns, common (as in “city” and “country”), and nouns, proper (as in “Grand Forks” and “United States”).

He runs through the intricacies of English pronouns, too, and their baffling verbs. “I am, you are, he is …”
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