At the western edge of Parkchester in the Bronx sits a unique store owned and operated by Lawrence Agyei. Named after a famous market in Kumasi, Ghana, Asafo Market provides the local African community access to all sorts of foods such as gari, kontomire, kwansusuaa, shito and others from various part of Africa, although it primarily focuses on ingredients from Ghana.
It all began in 20 years ago after Mr. Agyei and his wife had migrated from Ghana to the United States. Born and bred in Ghana, the couple had gotten used to eating foods common to their Ga tribe. In Ghanaian culture, food is extremely important among the various tribes because traditional foods are viewed as something to connect one to his ancestors. It is so much so that a person can rightly say that he hasn’t eaten all day if he didn’t enjoy a tribal food that day.
As such, upon their migration to America, the greatest challenge they faced was getting access to the food they used to eat because most of the ingredients needed for preparing their favorite foods weren’t available here. Occasionally, they would send word back home for friends and family returning to the United States from Ghana to bring them several ingredients. Since this rarely happened, the Agyeis were constantly in search of ways to get access to the foods they wanted to eat as they were getting tired of eating “rice, cheeseburgers and French fries.”
A door finally opened 5 years after their arrival in the United States. They had realized that over the years several Ghanaians who had immigrated to the United States and had settled in the neighborhood were facing the same issue. Mr. Agyei had traded food commodities with them several times and many of them were more than willing to pay money for these commodities as they all missed the food they were used to eating. As an entrepreneur who once owned a shop back in Ghana, Mr. Agyei started looking for an opportunity to open up a store where he would sell these food commodities. And since he would be ordering the food ingredients on a large scale for the store, he and his wife would also have easy access to these ingredients they longed for.
In due time, Mr. Agyei found an empty space for an affordable price and started his store. As mentioned earlier, Mr. Agyei named his store Asafo Market specifically to draw the attention of the Ghanaians in the neighborhood, as any person from Ghana would recognize that name. As expected, he started small, running the store on a part-time basis while also attending to his full-time job. As the years went by, more and more immigrants, even several from other parts of Africa, noticed the store. Mr. Agyei in response expanded the store, began running it on a full-time basis and acquired several suppliers. Soon, Asafo Market was packed with almost every basic Ghanaian food ingredient as well as food commodities from countries like Nigeria and Liberia, some fresh and some processed.
Today, Asafo Market not only supplies the African immigrants in Parkchester with good local food, but also serves as a center for both old and new immigrants from Ghana to meet and interact with people with whom they share a common background. It has become a place where Ghanaian immigrants can connect with people just like themselves and share experiences as well as tips and tricks to survive living aboard. When once steps foot into Mr. Agyei’s store, one steps foot into a mini-Ghanaian community carved into the United States.
Comments