Halal Camel Down

Ez has ridden the 11 bus now for months and hasn't run into a single warlord yet. Is that possible? This is, after all, little Modadishu, well, at least to the politically incorrect, it is. There are more East Africans in Minnesota than in the entire Horn of Africa. The only runner up is, well, Nebraska.

We're talking about Minnesota now where Garrison Keillhor got rich, spinning monologues about laconic Swedes, bachelor Finns, spinster aunts, ice fishing, biscuits, endless winters, down home in the frozen north, more biscuits. Things sure have changed, haven't they, Sven? Suddenly we aren't talking Lake Wobegon anymore --we're talking Indian Ocean.

Typically, the area of Minneapolis between Cedar/Riverside and Franklin Ave in Minneapolis is teeming with women of all ages in veils. Halal butcher shops line Franklin. Halal is the Islamic equivilant of kosher. Several high rise tenements, what else would you call them, stand out against the urban skyline, marking the epicenters of the disapora. Get on a 2C bus at Franklin and you are likely to encounter a matronly Somali lady, breaching cell phone etiquette with the rapid clucking sounds of lowland Cushitic.

Many Americans may have picked up a distorted view of the Somali people from the 1999 best seller, Black Hawk Down. Mark Bowden's book tells the unhappy store of the abortive US intervention in Somalia back in the Billy Clinton days when two Marine helicopters were brought down by militia fire in the capital, Mogadishu.

Ez gets a little miffed when political hacks go off the map and describe the situation in Somalia at the time as 'anarchic.' Hey, how would you describe Dodge City in 1879? Or any frontier town in the good ole US of A before Marshall Matt Dillon or Wyatt Earp mowed down the shifty bad guys. Not the city of brotherly love, yo, that's for sure. But Ez is biased.

A little anarchy is good for us all, and the messiness witnessed in Somalia during the Clinton years, that really had little to do with real anarchy. Ez tends to think that pundits obsessed with their rigid model of two party lockstep psuedo-democracy always tend to trot out the A word when they find situations on the ground to be a little fluid. What happened in Somali in the 1990's, was a typical reaction to the destablizing impact of a two tiered world economy that favors rich nations at the expense of poor ones, the usual super power machinations in the Middle East combined with the lasting effects of colonialism. Maybe the liberals cooked up that factional stew in the first place to create a relief crisis and make legions of Minnesota social workers rich.

No, besides violating cell phone etiquette from time to time, the Somali people are wonderful. As previously mentioned, Ez has not in all this time encountered any child soldiers, warlords or rabid terrorists with links to OBL since he's been in Minnesota. Actually, there may be more Somali than Scandinavians in Minnesota now, but that boast really requires more research. In later blogs, Ez will deconstruct Scandinavianism. Be there.

Anyway, the Somali people are wonderful. And they add diversity to the social landscape. Hell, they ain't blonde, are they, which is a relief in of itself. Ez once spent an entire day without running into a brunette. And, yep, they do provide jobs for Americans. The Somali Diaspora has made the American Dream possible for so many social workers, liberal establishment Lutheran Church relief workers, quick manuevering educators who set up literacy centers, greedy investment bankers who finance development projects like those tall high rise tenements, taxi companies who exploit cheap Somali labor, down the entire list of bottom feeders. Without this influx of Somali, so many white middle class college graduates in Minnesota would not be able to afford prairie style bungalows in the $450,000 range out in the 'burbs of Edina. Hey there, Sven, political unrest in Somalia sure was a windfall to Minnesota, ja? Like Sutter's gold for California. Relief crisis bonanza.

Ez once thought that Ithaca, New York was the social work capital of the universe. Ain't so. It's Minneapolis, Minnesota. A friggin' NGO theme park. Hell, think of the Light Rail as a ride. More East Africans ride the Light Ride between Cedar/Riverside and the Franklin in a given day than ride the Bakara Express in a month of Sundays. Meanwhile the poor immigrant is allowed to percolate up the economic pipeline, driving a taxi, working low paying jobs in the fast food industry, taking courses on outmoded computer applications at some Minneapolis Degree Mill, believe us, you will never experience a 10th reunion barbecue at this campus.


Ez does have one problem. It's the newcomer's unnerving taste for camel meat. They like their camel. And, of course, all meat has to be halal, which is the same in Islam, as kosher is in Judaism. There are literally dozens of halal butcher shops lining Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Think of it.

Poor camels.

That means, as the newcomers assimilate, work their way into the American mainstream, create market niches for themselves on the Great American Food Chain, McDonalds will have to start selling Halal Camel Burgers. And then there will be a goat chili option at Wendy's. And Taco Bell will feel left out of the camel train. Halal tacos?