She Dreamed Of A New Motherland

Loubabatou Harris rose by 5 a.m. First she prayed; then she hit the road to Hartford to pick up a delivery of meat. It was time to stock up for the holidays on food that many of her African-born customers remember from the motherland — and can find only at Motherland Market.

By 10 a.m., Motherland Market was open. At 7 p.m., she was still there — tired, nonetheless greeting each customer with a wistful smile and a warm ​“Hi sister” or ​“Hi brother.”

Harris, who goes by the nickname Aida, is the force behind Hamden’s thriving Motherland Market. The store, 897 Dixwell Ave., sells grocery and other products from all over Africa. Everything is imported. Most of it is very hard to find anywhere else in the area.

Harris stood among the colorful rows of bagged black-eyed peas and millet, cans of palm cream, jars of seasonings and powdered shrimp, and jugs of palm oil. The door swung open periodically, jangling the tangled wind chime that hangs from it, and letting in a blast of cold, damp air.

Ghiralla Saed stood by the door with his daughters Fatma and Lian. Saed lives next door, and was waiting to pick up his third daughter. He is originally from Libya.

Fatma, no older than 10, had just been talking about politics. She added a last thought: ​“Donald Trump is bad.”

Harris looked down at her with a playful smile. ​“Don’t say that,” she told the girl. ​“He’ll come in and kick you out.”

“Then I’ll give him a taste of his own medicine!” Fatma replied. She bundled her hands into fists, held them to her chest, and kicked the air.

Harris watched.

“Because [this] is a free country, does not mean you can say everything,” she warned. In my country, she told Fatma, you could go to jail for saying something like that about the president. To attain ​“freedom, you have to learn how to talk about big people.”

From The Motherland To ​“Motherland”

When Harris lived in Togo, she wanted to run a business, but the political situation and the lack of opportunities made it too difficult. One night, she had a dream that she was in a different country, she recalled, and she realized it was the U.S. She woke up —and got her passport.

She arrived at JFK in 1995 at the age of 34, with nothing. She began life in America pumping gas, first at a gas station in the Bronx, then at a Mobil off of Interstate 95 in Milford.

She stayed there for eight years until she got a job as a care taker for seniors. Each time one of her clients passed away, she would get a bonus. Finally, by 2007, she had saved up enough money to start Motherland Market.

At the beginning, she looked around the 1,000-odd-square-foot store and wondered how she could possibly pay the rent.

“But I said this is my American dream. Everyone has their American dream. This is my American dream,” she said.

Moin Moin

Twelve years later, Harris has built a loyal customer base.

Sandra Anyoha (pictured above) came from Sandy Hook, as she does every three weeks or so, to stock up before her kids come home from school for the holidays. One item at a time, she unloaded the contents of her cart onto the counter.

She planned to mix the two bags of moin moin (powdered black-eyed peas) mix with onions, peppers, fish, chicken cubes, and either palm oil or tomatoes, then bake. She said it’s a common dish in her native Nigeria: ​“You can’t have a Nigerian wedding without moin moin.”

The bag of large chunks of frozen lamb and the plastic jar of suya powder were for suya, spicy seasoned meat on a skewer, similar to a kebab. Anyoha said Cardi B had tried it and liked it when she was in Nigeria recently. Anyoha’s kids, who are now graduate students, like it too; she planned to make it for them.

Harris runs the store with her son, Sidy Idriss (pictured above). Idriss, who came to the U.S. in 2006, has worked at Motherland Market since its beginning.

This past Friday, he sliced large hunks of meat into smaller chunks and then bagged them. Meat, he said, is the number-one selling item at the store. As he and his family are Muslim, all of the meat is halal.

Idriss said that most customers are immigrants from various parts of Africa. ​“We try to make them still feel like they’re still in Africa,” he said.

Some customers are Haitian or Jamaican.

Some come into the store from just down the road, like Roth Kougnigan (pictured above), who was there to pick up suya powder and a few other items for his mother. He was born in Togo, and now lives in Hamden and studies mechanical engineering at the University of New Haven.

Others came from further afield. Gerard Yengue, originally from Cameroon, drove down from Hartford. He asked for a pound of bitter kola, a nut prized for its medicinal properties.

Harris knew almost every customer. She greeted each one, sometimes in English, sometimes in French.

Mother Of Motherland

Near the entrance to the store, on a chair at the end of the bean and grain aisle, sat Harris’s mother, Abiba Bayor (pictured). Bayor, 81, came to the U.S. to get medicine she could not get in Togo. She said she plans to go back when she’s better.

Idriss said his grandmother is the source of inspiration for Motherland Market. She ran a similar store in Lome, Togo, which Bayor specified was smaller than Motherland Market.

The products in Motherland Market come almost entirely from Africa. As Harris walked through the store, she pointed out the various products and their country of origin. The coffee, Café Touba brand, comes from Senegal. Smoked, dried sardines come from Guinea-Bissau.

The big jugs of palm oil come from Nigeria.

She carries three kinds of Milo, a chocolate drink made by Nestle. One is the Ghanaian version, one comes from Nigeria, and one from Thailand.

As she talked, she held a palm full of kola, which is different from bitter kola. Kola is a caffeinated nut, and is the gesture of welcome in Togo. When a man proposes, he must present at least 10 pounds of it to his bride, Harris said.

In order to keep her shelves stocked, Harris drives either to the Bronx, Long Island, or New Jersey twice a week to pick up shipments.

When she has to drive to New York or New Jersey, she does so before the store opens at 10. She said she gets up at 4 a.m., takes a shower, and then prays. Once she’s done praying, she gets on the road, picks up the order, and brings it back to Hamden to restock the shelves.

Motherland Market is open seven days a week, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., except on Sundays when it closes at 6. Harris and Idriss are the only employees.

Harris said she does not take days off. She said she has worked every day since she arrived in the U.S. in 1995.

“Remember, I didn’t start with money,” she told the Independent. ​“I start with nothing. So just my energy.”

The exhausting work pays off. Harris sent her daughter to a private school, and now pays the part of her college tuition that is not covered by a scholarship. Her daughter studies biology at Franklin and Marshall with the goal of becoming a doctor.

Harris plans to pay her daughter’s last tuition bill before taking a day off. ​“Once my daughter finish college,” she said, ​“that’s it. I take a break.”