Our theme for the month of June is “snapshots.” Writers were asked to submit a piece with a cover photo that they took or created.
This month, I passed by an old building and traveled back in time. As a child, my family frequently drove almost an hour from our suburban northern Virginia home to a collection of warehouses in DC. Well from the outside, you might think they were only industrial buildings facing loading docks and parking. But inside, the units enclosed products from an ocean away. In this market, our first-generation Ghanaian immigrant family collected the ingredients to recreate home: chicken, tilapia, sacks of rice, yam tubers, palmnut oil, and plantains. Boxes stacked high and seemingly unmoved for years created the perfect narrow maze for a child to shimmy through. There was always something to discover: an array of Sunday church hats, Ghanaian artworks, or likely counterfeit purses. Reflecting back, I wonder with a laugh who mass produced the Obama family umbrellas, calendars, and mousepads that flooded the market in 2009.
Like other parts of my upbringing, these visits to the African market affirmed immigrant identity as normal. (It wasn’t until I moved to West Michigan that I learned to tell a story of pride and reference the Bible to evoke responses of “welcome.”) Markets and grocery stores became one of my favorite places to amble in fascination and learn about the world.
Recently, since moving to DC for the first time, I grew curious to backfill my memories at the African market. How did we find it? Where exactly did this core memory take place? My family explained that they frequented the market out of a sense of loyalty and a desire to support the older immigrants who’d welcomed them with a “taste of authentic home.” I looked up warehouse complexes and after several dead end searches, I realized the African market formed part of the wider “Florida Avenue Market,” a five-block collection of warehouses stretching back to the 1930s. At its height, this area described as “gritty” hosted about one hundred vendors, including many African and Asian immigrants.
My search was confusing in part because Florida Avenue Market no longer exists formally on a map—several of the buildings were converted into what is now called Union Market, a mixed-use zone with apartments, food halls, and upscale shops.
The redevelopment was led by the city, which felt the area did “not strengthen the public image of the city.” A 2009 report acknowledged that families like mine loved the market’s affordability and collection of options. But, it worried, “A first-time visitor to the Florida Avenue Market today may feel a sense of bewilderment. The experience can be rather chaotic; trucks parked helter-skelter, cars weaving around them way too fast, the mingled odors of raw chicken, international spices, and sometimes garbage. Where is the farmers market? Which of these businesses sell retail? Am I allowed to go into any of these stores?” Cue millions of dollars.
I carry mixed emotions because the Florida Avenue Market of my childhood was all asphalt, with limited pedestrian accessibility or green space. And I’ve enjoyed dandan noodles and cocktails in the revamped Union Market, which also boasts outdoor movies and reportedly many people of color entrepreneurs (though fewer are working-class).
But when I passed by the African market stores, those that remain, for the first time in a decade, they looked quite the same—with graffiti on rolling garage doors, printed banners, and occasional missing signage. I don’t know yet what changes these entrepreneurs requested or didn’t desire. I know some of them moved to new immigrant enclaves in Maryland and Virginia. I know some of them weren’t able to pass down their businesses to the next generation after being dismissed from their lease or bought out. I know when I shop, I’m more frequently influenced by personal efficiency than by authentic connection.
Old Yelp reviews and memories seem all that are left to honor shopkeepers like the kind man who sold kenkey (a Ghanaian dish) and showed care to my family. And I think that is what dissatisfies me the most. For decades, immigrants bridged continental gaps and built belonging despite the odds. There was something worthy here beforehand—as there always has been in this country. These stories deserve to be told before a different narrative of development takes hold.
Comfort Sampong’s heart is sparked by fried plantains, tropical foliage and the stories of women thriving and creating a way out of no way. She graduated in 2018 with majors in economics and international development. Now she lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where she works on English communications for the Association for a More Just Society, a Honduran non-profit fighting for justice and peace.
