New Americans:
Refugees in Fargo-Moorhead

"I'M VERY LUCKY TO BE HERE" 

Niteka’s family had to flee their home country of Burundi due to racial persecution. While Niteka doesn’t love the idea of being a refugee, he explains that it has helped him keep a positive outlook on the things that are going on in his life.

“I have this basis of gratitude where, even though I consider myself American, I’m very lucky to be here,” Niteka said. “It’s really good for pushing you and motivating you.”

Burundi, located near Rwanda and Tanzania, has seen armed conflict off and on for the last 40 years. The country was thrust into an ethnic and political conflict in 1993 when the elected Hutu president, Melichar Ndadye, was lured to a phantom meeting and executed by Tutsi assassins. The conflict lasted until 2005.

The Hutu group makes up about 85 percent of the population, with the last 15 percent being Tutsi. In reality, the Hutu and Tutsi are more alike than different and there is no real way to tell which person belongs to which ethnic group. Children in Burundi identify with the ethnic group that their father identifies with.

“Some people are mixed,” Niteka said. “It’s kind of flip-flopped depending on which country you’re in. Some Hutus were attacking each other.”

The conflict began about two years before Niteka was born. It became so dangerous that his mother had to flee to Kenya in order to give birth to him.

“I was born in Nairobi and then we returned to Burundi for a while because we thought things were chill,” Niteka said.

Unfortunately for his family, things had not settled down in Burundi. They had to flee to Burkina Faso, where they received their refugee status before being sent to Fargo.

Niteka was only three years old when his family arrived in Fargo. He received citizenship when he was in fourth grade. For those reasons he identifies more with being an American, but he never lost his Burundi heritage. His mother made him solely speak French at home, and while he doesn’t speak Kirundi, one of the native languages of Burundi, he can understand it.

Life as a refugee child wasn’t always easy, but Niteka didn’t let that stop him. No Lackin’ is a brand that was born out of Niteka’s love all things skateboarding and the constant support of his father.

“My dad bought me my first skateboard and then right away I started a team,” Niteka said. “I was trying to do skate companies when I was in elementary school.”

While Niteka has had the idea for a skate company since he was in elementary school, he didn’t figure out how to create it until he joined the Distributive Education Clubs of America at West Fargo High School. The creative and business aspects of DECA drew Niteka in and kept him involved. It was then, during his senior year of high school, that he officially created his business.

No Lackin’ was originally called Supa Dupa. Niteka registered the business under his name, but had intended to further work with a few of his friends. With him being the most serious about the endeavor, he’s the only one that stuck around.

“I’m just trying to experience as much as I can and grow as much as I can and have No Lackin’ grow with me,” Niteka said.

During Niteka’s freshman year at NDSU he decided he no longer liked the name Supa Dupa and decided to go through all of the legal work to change the name to No Lackin’.

“It has more of an air of finesse,” Niteka said.

FIRST SCHOOL, THEN BUSINESS

After each day full of classes at NDSU, Niteka heads to his apartment in downtown Fargo where he works on his clothing line. One room in his apartment is dedicated as his office. The room is lined with bookshelves and law books that belong to his step-father.

“They’re so old-school,” Niteka said.

Niteka received help from his father, mother, and step-father with the legal issues when creating a business and ensuring he kept his drive up after he got the idea to start No Lackin’. Even with their help, it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

“I didn’t really realize how much money it cost to make shirts and stuff,” Niteka said. “I went through the trial and error process of trying to make clothes. I started making a lot of stickers and doing a lot of promotion.”

It wasn’t only the cost of making clothes that threw a wrench in Niteka’s plans; finding a manufacturer that could create what he wanted was a bit of a hurdle. Once he got his “ducks in a row,” Niteka was able to find the right manufacturer and start producing his clothing. The manufacturer he settled on is located on the East Coast. His choice was based on the quality of the product along with the price to produce.

Starting their own businesses tends to be a trend among New Americans. According to the American Immigration Council, between 2006 and 2010, 381 new businesses were opened by new immigrants in North Dakota.

PAU MOA: KEEPING CUSTOMERS AND FAMILY HAPPY

Pau Moa, a native of Cambodia, makes up part of the four percent of minority business owners in North Dakota.

Moa opened her business, Lucky Beauty Salon, about sixteen years ago. She had worked for another beauty salon and after settling in Fargo, she decided to open her own.

“I love this job, so I might as well have my own, right?” Moa said.

Moa received support from her brother in the process of opening her salon. Her brother owns a strip mall located on Main Avenue in Fargo that houses six stores owned and operated by New Americans.

“He’s the one that encouraged me to open my own place,” Moa said.

Her brother was a refugee and came to the United States with their mother before Moa. After they realized that their life was better here, Moa’s brother decided to sponsor her and bring her to the country.

Like Niteka, Moa ran into some troubles when trying to start her business. The space she is located in had never been a salon before and was pretty bare-bones inside.

“It’s kind of hard from beginning,” Moa said. “Because this start from scratch, there was nothing in here.”

The whole process, from securing the space to opening the front doors, took about five months. A large chunk of that time was spent determining how the salon would be designed and what colors would be included in the store.

Immediately upon walking into the salon, visitors are greeted by a low-hanging bell to alert Moa that someone came in. The floor is made up of black and white tiles, reminiscent of a 50’s diner. Hanging up on the left over three couches are red Chinese lanterns. All throughout the salon are random pops of pink and green from various hair and nail accessories that look as though they are native to Cambodia.

Moa gushes about her customers and describes them as one of her favorite parts of owning her own salon.

“I enjoy working because customer come like a friend,” Moa said.

As the customers have become friends for Moa, she says they begin to trust her in all aspects rather than just as their stylist.

Some of Moa’s customers trust her so much that they will call her in the middle of the night seeking advice for an array of problems. She said that she has become like a therapist to many of the customers. If they don’t reach out to her in the middle of the night, they may text her asking her for advice.

“I do respond most of the time,” Moa said. “Sometime[s] I can’t understand how to solve that problem, so I need a little bit more time or the next day. [I] also tell them, ‘maybe you should talk to this person. They may be able to help you.’”

Similar to how Niteka grew up, Moa’s two children are growing up living in both the American and Cambodian culture. Both Moa and her husband are from Cambodia and both own their own business in town—her husband owns a gas station by the community home in Fargo. Even though they have both been here for 22 years, raising their children in a dual-cultured home hasn’t always been the easiest.

“We have to learn how to adjust,” Moa said. “We try our best to influence them a little bit at least.”

Moa credits how much her children actually know about the Cambodian culture to the fact that she and her husband do own their businesses. Because they can set their own rules, they don’t feel the need to put their children in childcare after school.

“We was really bless[ed] to have our own place and have our kids around us,” Moa said. “That’s one good thing. We keep influencing them.”

Even with two kids in school and both Moa and her husband working full-time, Moa still runs the business almost completely on her own.

“I have on-call employee and one part-time,” Moa said.  “I’m mainly here by myself most of the time. Customer get to know me really well.”

Luckily it hasn’t become too much for Moa to need to hire a whole staff to work the salon while she runs it behind-the-scenes. She looks to the positives when it comes to running her business and having a small staff.

“You can take your own time,” Moa said. “You have the right to bring your children here anytime. If you were to work for somebody else, you cannot do that. One advantage we can take is the time and have your family around you.”

Customers are very important to Moa, but so is her family. Right now, if she wanted, she could go back to Cambodia to live a life there. The conflict has settled and it’s a cheaper cost of living. But she doesn’t go back. She stays in Fargo because it’s where her kids have called home and she wants them to be happy. Though, she still toys with the idea of going back someday.

Because Moa’s children were born in the United States, she is unsure of whether or not they would be willing to move to Cambodia, but she doesn’t count that option out for herself and her husband.

“Maybe for us, by the time we decide to retire we have that opportunity,” Moa said.

While she stays working to keep her family happy, she works to keep her customers happy. Moa gets a wide variety of people walking through the door looking for her services. Strangely enough, there is one demographic that she doesn’t see much of.

“I kind of notice white American don’t really like to come here because they probably think this is ‘different,’” Moa said. “I still do have some of them, probably a really small percent.”

Even though she sees a small percentage of white Americans coming into her salon, she finds herself serving a wide variety of people.

“They feel comfortable to come, so it’s good,” Moa said.

Moa sees it as a priority to keep her customers happy and coming back into the salon. She fields suggestions from them and, if she can, finds a way to implement them into her salon. Moa works with a lot of women who come from cultures where others are not allowed to see their hair. This can become a problem in a wide-open salon with the chairs in plain view of the window.

“I [get] requests to me like, ‘would you be able to make like a private room?’” Moa said. “So I [was] like, ‘oh yeah, let me think about it and see what happens.’ So I just put a curtain there. They so happy for that, so that’s nice. It’s a good result on guests.”

WORKING HARD TO GET AHEAD

Both Moa and Niteka work hard to ensure they’re putting out the best product possible and keeping their customers happy. Moa has had to adapt to keep this going, especially in order to keep up with the changing pace of the world, which she admits is a struggle for her.

“Sometime[s] you really have to prove that you can do it to make the customer feel confident and no worry when they in your hand,” Moa said. “I have to be really careful when I’m performing a service. I have to exactly use the knowledge that I knew. If you want to be successful, you have to hold on to that formula.”

Since Niteka’s business is so new, he’s focused more on the cultivating of new customers.

“I definitely want it to be something where people seek it out,” Niteka said. “I think that online is the best because you have to go to the website. We’re trying to get big enough where people know the name and want to go and get it.”

Being a New American isn’t an easy experience, but both Niteka and Moa have taken it in stride and worked to be as successful as possible.

“It was really good being a New American,” Niteka said. “I have this drive to feel like I was going to do something and want to do something with my life.”

KELSEY DRAYTON is a 2016 Concordia College graduate with degrees in multimedia journalism and communication studies with a concentration in public relations. Her work has been published in the Concordia College campus newspaper, along with On The Minds of Moms, a Fargo-Moorhead local publication. She plans to take her undergraduate degree wherever the wind blows.

kdrayton@cord.edu