Minneapolis “Urban Excursions:” a Somalian Market

During our orientation in Minneapolis at Luther Seminary we went through a few different “urban immersion” experiences as small groups, but the one that really prepared me for India was when I went to a Somalian Market. Kyle Meerkins, Kate Olsen, and I were assigned to go to a Somalian Market in Minneapolis to practice “ethnography,” or researching and observing a culture as an anthropologist might. Our assignment entailed us starting conversations with different Somalian people we met, all the while observing the market and recording our reactions. As three white kids walking into what looked like a small, outdated mall’s food court, we felt as if we were walking into another world. We saw different shops featuring men’s tailoring, books, phones and phone cards, women’s clothing, jewelry, lawyer’s offices, and an immigration help office. It struck me that this one tiny mall seemed to be its own microcosm, a Somalia in the heart of Minneapolis, MN.

We walked around, looking at the shops and acting like we were just browsing, but what we really wanted to do was initiate conversations with the shop workers and others who were around. Many of the shop workers we tried to talk to would try to sell us items instead of answering our questions, but others would ask us outright why we were asking them how long they had lived in the United States. Some of them understood our curiosity when we explained we were college students and we were seeing what it would be like to immerse ourselves in a culture different from our own, but many of them would just nod and ignore us as well.

Kate, Kyle, and I further explored the market, coming across the same suspicious curiosity, and one time outright hostility when one of us accidentally touched a Koran. However, when I think back on this experience, I can understand their wariness. Most in the Somalian community are refugees so a certain amount of distrust is definitely understandable. But then something really cool happened to us–we were invited to come back and celebrate Ramadan at the market by some workers in the Halal, or small food store, Market. Though we could not come back that night, this invitation was a nice way to end our excursion to the market.

That evening at our debriefing, Kate, Kyle, and I shared how uncomfortable we felt in the market, and how because of this we felt even more inclined to try to interact as much as we could with the people there. We also agreed, as the three of us talked about our experience on the way back to Luther Seminary, that we were happy we had been in such an uncomfortable situation because we found out we could be this uncomfortable and we hadn’t even left our own state. This experience showed us that we could hand a similar situation, which is something we may be encountering in India on a daily basis.