lakeland pbs presents common ground brought to you by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund and the citizens of minnesota production funding of common ground is made possible in part by first national bank bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community member fdic welcome to common ground i'm producer director scott knuds in this special moving lives minnesota episode of common ground we visit with immigrant and entrepreneur for tuna alexander she's the owner of faw tea and she and her family talk about her immigrant experience how big this is a bag that is full of beautiful clothes that i think this lady is over 80 that made this for the little kids at the finish isn't it beautiful this is just 25 of the things that she made so these ones are going to africa this week look at these comforters she made them pray over them so nice when you want to be a little girl wearing this so these are some of the things that minnesotans do you know that is so nice and this is a native minnesotans that did this oh fati is uh amazing uh business that she works tirelessly on day in and day out crack of dawn she's up out in the streets delivering tea people love her it's just it's amazing what she's done um from coming all the way from africa here and starting her own business and for it to grow to this amount uh i help my mom brew the tea i help her with farmer's markets i help her distribute the tea so we go to other businesses places of work like right now the tea the plan is for the tea that we're gonna have a percentage of the tea go for orphanage that uh my parents thought of in africa since my mom was an orphan i plan on helping kids back in africa she went there in 2016 and we saw a lot of kids who were homeless not going to school because of the ebola outbreak in 2014. and we're planning on helping them do that way so farty helps back in africa first of all we buy a lot of the tea from africa and senegal and nigeria and places like that also my mom is right now trying to build an orphanage in liberia because she was an orphan as well and she knows that uh having a place where people can care for you is so big in a child's life and she just wants to give back by doing that and percentage of the proceeds from this tea will go back to help with that project the tea health benefit children back in africa because you know our country is not a country of a a lot of means so with her opening the orphanages and then having the beverage out the children have something to drink on they have something to rely on food wise and all of that and i think that's amazing that she has done that her heart is so big on giving that she wants to give back well her being a orphan herself and both of us were adopted by our parents her whole thing is to give back to where she came from during the farmer market season we get the cassava leaf and this is the other product the cassava itself that's it there this is not a cup though i just put a year for freshness fortuna is my sister we were both adopted by our parents alberta and david howard you know it's important for people to know where the food comes from i used to take our sons me and my husband our four boys to ingov grove in minnesota there is a farm there they kill the cow you choose your goat or your chicken and you go there it was fun but the boys didn't like it my name is ethan alexander i'm my mom fortunas alexander's son and franklin alexander's son i'm from the youngest of four brothers once every a year because we used to do it once a year with like four different families we would take them there and it smelled horrible because of the goat we'll have volunteer tears coming down from the stage from the good but they will go down like i'm not eating these things again and we're predominantly immigrants yeah and if you see an american they marry an immigrant hello my name is brian alexander i am for tuna son the owner of fati so they got to know early on that you know where the food came from even when we lived in ohio welmintown ohio it was a rural area and they used to go on a farm pick strawberries or play with the horses i'll see how the different hill process is made you know and done for the cows to be able to eat during the winter my mother was born in liberia same thing with my dad so i think it's a huge difference between you know first-generation americans who have immigrant parents and then parents that children of parents who have been here for a couple of generations or even since the beginning i think there's a different mindset you know a lot of uh immigrants come here and know that you know you have to work hard and an immigrant child like myself would even though i'm born here knows that hey i can't let my parents work on vain by not being successful you know oh my goodness my babies are hard workers they my nephews are very hard workers they're up for her crack of dawn helping her out when they don't have school we don't get to do the exact same stuff that we get to do as our friends so like let's say my friend gets to go to disney world we go to africa and stuff like that this is burning fish they have a very nice taste to it so just add a good flavor it's from africa and this little flavor a little pack you see five dollars they give a very nice flavor to the food besides this fish and fish is good for you your brain so i most african will always eat fish and then i have grilled chicken i said i smoke it myself because because of my parents they can have fried food so we smoke it a whole yeah and then there's another interesting one this one is uh crayfish it's smoked shrimp let me find one with the head so when i'm cooking it this is how it's going to be but it's smoke and then don't forget a stock fish so this is a stuck fish it's hot though but you can check it out it got a little older to it but it's very good it is made in holland and i think africans eat it more i feel like the difference is getting smaller and smaller each year with new generations and stuff like that so so this is manioc leaves we eat it in west africa especially in liberia and it is imported from where it should be imported from liberia and this company carried it in the african grocery store in brooklyn park yeah so three of this pack is ten dollars and it can feed us about two or three times this one pack yeah and normally i do have three children that could help me but what if if it were africa there would be a helping me but america is reverse the veterans that doesn't seem fair no being in minnesotan i love being a minnesotan you know i was originally born in ohio but if you ask me now i think minnesota is a place where i i want to be and you know i love everything about it the snow it's a love-hate relationship but you gotta like it the summers are amazing here and yeah i just i just like everything about minnesota africa the children cater to the grown-up you know to learn what's what they are doing but i don't worry nowadays because the other two went to college and they come home and they are always here trying to see what's cooking so they can know it because they realize they cannot afford to go to the restaurant all the time they they they culture demand that they be pumped like they are pampered they said we are forceful like my boys the younger one did the dishes you always do the dishes and my little sister would do the dishes too and then they help clean up so far it's only i believe since they are african children so they will try and do that so this is a chicken it's almost like chicken kind of yeah i'm almost like because it was seasoning and then i put it on the grill and smoked it and then normally i do a whole case so then that would take us for just about two or three months we did it for winter and took us through winter and we're going to do something with a peanut butter so i will wait till that time and you see it that's why i asked you if you could have peanut butter yup i am not allergic to peanut butter are there peanut allergies in africa i think so but it's not recognized you know i always save you happiness allergy you just die it's just a matter of when you know because almost all our food have peanuts because of the protein yeah i'll put this and put that there so all we're doing is getting the broth ready this is minnesota grown pepper i get it from the farm off market it's a good deal always go there this is a habanero pepper but we all can take the heat yeah and i like spice i have one onion and my husband also loved to cook if he were here he'd be cooking do you two enjoy cooking together now it's better he cooked by himself he got the joy of cooking that's a good thing so the onion i'll just put it there this is magic like in america we all have our seasoning oil and stuff yeah it is magic you because it does it so i get water in there for it to start boiling so then we put it three of this maggie cube in there so there it is getting ready to boil got to clean it up real good once we're done with that wait for it to come to a boil and then we'll add the cassava leaf in there we eat rice as well with the cassava leaf bubble rice so the rice normally this little tea cup we use three and a half so if we count how much we spend for this food if that is three for ten and we're just going to use like half of it and then the chicken and all that i use half of the not even half the bonus and then the shrimp and then the stock fish everything was five five dollars i only use half well it's cheaper to cook from scratch than to eat out it's good to eat out but at least every now and then until you get there but if you're not there and if even you are there wherever there is it's good to have something that you made that way you appreciate it when you go to the restaurant and stuff like that so that's the water and then put it in our american rice cooker pot on sands club no we got it from costco i'm a science club girl my husband is a costco so now we got our pot boiling and now i will mash these because it's not good if you eating in this is hard so i'll mash it i need to boil a little bit more so now you can smell that nice pepper heat okay ryan can you please carry this uh the other things in the freezer in the garage for me so it comes frozen and then that's why i how i do mine and i put it there and once it cooked down a little bit then i'll take out the other half and send it there we go so planting you may not think oh maybe most american might think but it's sweet so be on the side you can consider a dessert but it's just something i like planting i love it so i'll just slice it like this so if i was selling it i'll cut it like this and then you cut it in the little cubes like this that way you can count it so at home we cut it like this you know cut it long like this and you can make this as a baby food too the green ones it's a good food for babies so i'll put a little bit of salt okay so let's hop it you can barely see it and i'll make the oil hot and fry it so i'll get my oil out my mom's just a really hard worker she has other people along with her behind the scenes that are working just as hard as her and so i on that and i don't think it can fail her whole thing is if god is behind her and for her she's good there is never a day that my sister is down about anything she's just god's got me that's that's it cincinnati ohio finneytown high school that's where i got my education from a wonderful school a lot of hard work and my mother was on me constantly constantly was on me about getting the education you want to you know do right and and um be a better person because coming from africa here you know they really push us to do the best that we can so you see how much it's there i'll break that little piece now let's get to the whole thing put that there and put it in a sandwich bag so that we can use it another time again my experience there have been hurdles um to over uh come especially in school and stuff like that but for the most part it's been very well um our parents mostly encourage us to study hard they encourage us to you know get a good education that's number one thing as an immigrant coming to the united states how has your experience as uh an immigrant coming to america well today they're true i didn't grow up with my own parents so there's always resistance i don't care where it's so long you're on earth i don't know about heaven yet so but first of all since i'm a female my experience is quite different than a male african you got that picture right yeah so so my experience have been uh fair good yeah uh well one good thing with this country once i have i came in this country my experience were quite different because i came in in two weeks i had my green card uh in a month time i was working so another person experience would be quite different you know my grain card my social security number everything so long i started using them it was active and everything and then somebody else i know so many stories where people will have to work or maybe work in a place where they're practically hiding even though the employer know that they don't have paper but just to help them and then for better turno when things turn around for them you know then you can see like when i got my citizenship i had that experience the post office i wanted to really work with the post office i couldn't work with the post office because i was not an american citizen so when i got my citizenship i applied to the post office just to fulfill that even though i didn't want the job again but my application they could accept it because i was a citizen yeah so i think whether it would agree if you don't have paper it's life is difficult and then you still have that responsibility to help your family back home so and then you have to live with other family members or friends if you don't have a paper because then you cannot afford your place but first of all you cannot rent a place yeah so let me taste this and make sure it tastes better yeah almost there i think my mom inspires people it'll be better to pursue the things that what they want to go do but they're kind of shy about it so i've seen my mother contribute to the richness of minnesota multiple times you know minnesota is like has a lot of lakes but it has a lot of opportunities as well so knowing that my mom is always making calls you know as a small business owner reaching out and we are always involved we're in the community and we're a staple of the downtown farmers market everybody knows it's there and that's just one way we're adding to the richness of minnesota if you're allergic to peanut butter eggplant will do the same make it soft tender okay so you can see now the planting getting brown now just keep turning it so everyone is nice and brown the best way can all of us are involved in the tea we all love to go make it and we're really supportive towards each other the tea is made out of hibiscus and it's really good it comes in like all different type of flavors ginger pineapple right now my favorite flavor is the pineapple regular hibiscus tangerine unsweetened pineapple and mom has been really trying to like switch up her game making slushies and all that and i floated the idea of even making ice cream so we could see that in the future she tells me well deputy you know i started out with my business and look at what god has brought me through so anything you put your mind to the sky is the limit any immigrant person out there any immigrant children the sky is the limit if my sister can do it you can do it too our family we're doing pretty good i don't know if you try to start your own business but there's a lot of hard work there's a lot of hours that you may fail that you're just getting experienced and that you got to continue to keep on going and i think that's the will that my mom has learned over the t and i think that's what i've learned and my brothers have learned to just always keep on going no matter what if i wanted to do this making this tea in like any other state it would have been very difficult for me but minnesota because they have so many immigrants here they made it available that whatever you want to do so long they tell you they will tell you the steps are so how to go and if you meet the right person like i did at school cohabit i met the right people and i was able to start the fatih fabis up so thank you so much for watching join us again next week on common ground if you have an idea for common ground in north central minnesota email us at legacy lptv.org or call 218-333-3330 to watch common ground online visit lptv.org and click local shows to order episodes or segments of common ground call 218 3330 production funding of common ground was made possible in part by first national bank bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community member fdic common ground is brought 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