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-Welcome to "Seattle Voices." I'm Eric Liu.
I'm delighted to have as my guest today Rahwa Habte.
She's the co-founder of Hidmo.
And Rahwa, welcome.
-Thank you for having me, Eric.
-Lots of people know Hidmo
as a space and a place and a phenomenon.
But will you tell our viewers who don't know it
what it is and what it's all about?
-Sure. Well, my sister and I in 2006
decided to take over this little restaurant
and lounge in the Central District
on the corner of 20th and Jackson.
And our idea was -- You know, we're Eritrean.
Our idea was this is a great way
to share our culture, own a business,
be entrepreneurs in a neighborhood
that was very significant to us -- the Central District --
and also allow a space in a neighborhood
that was important to us
for activity to happen,
for people to come, gather.
We sort of imagined it as a community hub,
but we didn't know what that was going to look like.
We thought people would just feel comfortable, come in,
grabbing a bite, checking in.
You know, just a little, cool business
that the people can come and do things in, have meetings in.
And that idea just exploded into...
At the time, I was involved
I would say heavily in the music scene here
with a few specific artists,
producing shows and helping out with,
you know, marketing the things that they were working on.
We were both involved in our Eritrea community,
doing youth work and doing women's groups.
We'd both had a history of working at --
Actually, at the time, we were both working
at a women's shelter.
You know, we were involved in all these different things.
And so...
When we started spending all of our time in Hidmo,
all of those worlds kind of followed us there.
So, the artists that I was working with at the time
would come and meet there
and would ask if they could do a show there
or have a meeting there or, you know, whatever.
The youth that I was working with would come
and do homework there or come ask...
We had Wi-Fi.
...and would come and use our computers
to do different things. "I have a project due tomorrow.
Can I..." You know.
And just being a space that was...
We didn't run it like a traditional space
just to have people see people, have them order their food,
get their food, and get them out.
You're supposed to turn tables over, this and that.
You know, there's lots of space, and it did become a place
where people came and hung out
and just kind of shared, checked in.
And...yeah.
And then in a very short amount of time,
we just started getting known
for the incredible music that happened there.
'Cause then as more and more artists started utilizing it,
regular shows started happening --
monthly showcases, weekly showcases,
some of them that we helped to produce and promote,
and a lot of them that were just ideas that other people had
that didn't have another place that they could have it.
Would say, "Hey, can I do a monthly open mic here?
Can I do all women's, you know, showcase here?
Can I do this?" -Meanwhile, there still was
a restaurant going on, right? -Yeah, there's a restaurant.
There's a bar, you know. Yeah.
And that was why we were so busy doing that.
We were happy to have people come in and do their events
'cause, you know, I was used to producing events
and doing shows and doing this.
I didn't have time to do any of that
because I was trying to run a business.
And so, when people came and wanted to do shows,
I was like, yeah, that would be great.
And it was a also time for me to kind of enjoy,
you know, the music and the art and the stuff that I like.
When it was at my restaurant, I didn't have to leave.
-It sounds so incredibly organic how it happened.
Looking back, how much of this would you say
you intended to happen
and how much of it was really just people followed you
and things happened sort of one after the next?
-I would say...
You know, you ima-- It's kind of that thing where, yes,
I completely intended for it to happen, you know.
It's kind of my wildest dreams coming true.
I was open to it, and I wanted it to happen,
but I didn't have a plan of how it was going to happen,
but that me wanting it to happen and, you know,
and allowing people to just kind of...
allowing people to do programing there made it happen.
So, it wasn't intentional in that we said,
"In the first year, we're gonna do this many shows
and partner with this many non-profits
and have this many --"
We didn't intend it in that way,
but it was our intention to run a community,
have a community space that was hopefully like a vibrant space
that lots of people could utilize for different things.
And we did want because we loved art and music
and because we love the neighborhood
and because we loved working with youth and different things,
we you know... It was intentional in that way,
but it wasn't planned by us at all.
-When you think back now over the evolution
of this this cultural center,
what do you feel like you've learned
about how to create a space, how to create community?
I mean, if you were now to -- and we'll talk in a moment
about how Hidmo is moving to a new space.
But if you were doing something like in a whole other city
without any background, what lessons have you learned
about how to foster community in a space?
-I've learned that....
...you know...
just to kind of trust your intuition,
trust your gut on things, first and foremost,
and also just, you know,
trust other people also --
that other people know what's right for them
and who they are and what's good for them.
Trust other people's expertise.
And I j-- What I mean to say
is trust that you don't know everything 'cause we had --
Some of the things that we had even planned
because my sister and I were uncomfortable
running a bar at the beginning. I mean, we were like --
You know, we had our liquor license.
Everything was legit. We're like, "We don't know
about this whole bar thing."
We learned that spaces have lives of their own.
You know, there are certain things that you can control
and there are other things that you can't control.
And even though you don't have complete control,
it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing.
I don't know I'm doing a bad job of creating it.
But going into Hidmo, you know, there were people
that the space already meant something to --
you know, that the neighborhood, that those streets
meant different things to different people.
And coming into it, it had a specific meaning for us.
But recognizing that the same space,
the same street, the same whatever
can have drastically different meanings,
can mean very different things to different people
and to trust that this might be the way I see it,
but other people have a different vision of it.
And it's just kind of getting to know people
and building trust with each other.
-When do you feel like you learn that?
'Cause that's a hard thing to do as an entrepreneur, right?
I mean, when you're starting a business,
a lot of things you're trying to actually control
or at least, you know, plan, you know...
-Yeah. -...down to the Nth degree.
And you're talking about really this --
again, this idea of faith and trust that people
will find the right way to engage the space.
Was that a matter of temperament
or had there been past experiences for you
in the music business or otherwise
that that gave you that sense of trust?
-I think it's just all about personal connection.
It really is. It's about getting to know
a person and saying okay.
I'm, you know, just establishing
a relationship with somebody
and just getting to know them on a completely different level.
And, you know... Yeah, that's it.
You know, just getting to know people.
-As you've... Okay, so let's talk about
how Hidmo's entering a next phase now.
Tell us what's happening as we sit here in 2011.
You all are making a transition.
-Yeah. So, at the end of December,
we decided to close the space on 20th and Jackson,
which everybody was incredibly sad about
because so much community and so many memories
had been created there and some incredible energy
had been built there.
We had an opportunity last year --
There's another incredible space
that is going through a renovation of its own.
It's a space called Washington Hall.
It's on 14th and Fir,
and it's a historic venue. It's over 100 years old now.
It's also, over time,
has been this hub of community activity.
Jimi Hendrix played in his first high school band there,
Billie Holiday has performed there before,
tons of cultural and political,
you know, groups have called it home.
It was a boarding house for a little time
for I think the Dutch community.
It was run by the Sons of Haiti, for another.
It was a church. Just this space
with incredible energy.
Lately, it's fallen into the past --
Over the past couple of decades, it's fallen into disrepair.
And so, 4Culture and Historic Seattle --
Historic Seattle with the help of 4Culture
had purchased the building.
And what they knew they wanted to do
was preserve it and fix it up physically.
But another thing that I think both institutions understood
is that, you know,
they wanted it to be filled with community.
They wanted it to be vibrant again.
And so they went through a process where they selected
a few "anchor tenants" in Hidmo,
and we went through the whole process of getting to know them
and them getting to know us.
And they decided that Hidmo would be a good fit
to be housed in this space.
And so right now, we're in the process of transitioning
from the old space
into the new space in Washington Hall.
-And so, as you do that, there's obviously
a lot of logistical things to worry about --
what the new space is gonna look like
and how it works and everything.
What about, as you were saying,
the relationship side of that?
Do you feel like that will seamlessly flow
from one space to another
because it's just about this network of relationships
and it could go anywhere?
-Yeah. I know.
That's the big risk that you take, right?
That's a big risk that we have taken now
in trying to move our community
and the energy into this new space.
But we are taking it very slowly.
We're being very intentional.
We're doing intercommunity work.
So, you know, touching base with each other
about what made Hidmo special.
What was it about that space?
What was it about the community
that we built there that was good?
And what part of that can transfer.
We're not moving forward. We're not doing any programing,
anything until we hear from the community.
So there's been a transition team
that's been meeting for the past couple of months.
And this Tuesday, actually, tomorrow,
we are gonna have our first community meeting at the hall
where we're gonna give an update
on what we've been doing
and some of the immediate plans.
We want to hear from people -- you know,
what they want to see
and how they want to utilize the new space
and the ways that the community needs support.
-So, in the old space, when you open the doors
and you had your friends in the music scene coming in
and you had the young people who you've been working with
coming in, doing their homework and you had others
from the neighborhood coming in...
Again, how actively did you try --
you and your sister try to actually stir the pot
and get these people to actively engage one another?
Or was that another matter of just letting it happen
and seeing if new connections would form among them?
-Yeah, new connections definitely did form.
So, we're involved in all these different things.
And also, you know, there's lots of different activists,
lots of different community groups, advocacy organizations,
civic, you know, whatever.
Just all types -- folks that are super political.
Because it is a public space, it's a restaurant,
and people are coming there for something
that everybody needs to do -- eat, you know --
or, you know, they just need a space to meet
on days that "programing" wasn't happening,
that we weren't having an open mic or a specific event.
You know, you'd have one table where the NAACP is meeting.
We would have another table you'd have Youth Speaks,
which, you know, was a youth spoken word organization
that was meeting over here.
You would have, you know,
[indistinct], a Filipino organization,
a women's group that's meeting over here.
And so, when you have people that are just
within a table of each other
doing different things and all at the same time,
a lot of things just happened organically
because, you know, the space was there
and because lots of different people -- again,
lots of different people called it home for different reasons.
There's so many connections that were made there
that probably would not have happened otherwise.
And so, we weren't, again, intentionally doing that,
but we were intentionally opening the space up
and not "purposely" but not, you know --
We told people to be flexible with the space.
So, you know, somebody was, you know,
"We want a meeting with 14 people."
You know, I don't know how other people run their business,
but we didn't say, "Okay, how much food are you gonna buy?
And, you know, what's gonna happen?
You know, we allowed them use the space for free.
And then if another group said, "Okay,
we have a 10-person meeting that we want to have,"
we'd say, "Okay, you can come to."
We allowed the space to be flexible.
We moved chairs around, and people were patient.
People like liked that. Constantly --
look different all the time. There's always different
people meeting in there. There's always
different things happening. And so that flexibility
sort of allowed that to happen.
-Will the new Hidmo also still be restaurant bar
in addition to the civic hub and performance space.
-The new space will have a café,
it won't be a full restaurant.
Again, there's still this long process.
What can we do to the building?
Because it needs to be preserved.
And so there are certain things
that we can't physically alter the building in certain ways.
There definitely will be a public space,
whether it be a restaurant or a deli or a café.
Right at this point by summer,
there should be a café open there
and then in the future, after renovation,
we'll see what that can turn into.
But again, we still are promoting, you know,
besides things just happening at Washington Hall,
we are going to promote there.
One thing that Hidmo showed is that there is a need
for these kinds of spaces.
And so there are tons of, you know,
one of our community members branched off
and now he owns a café in the Central District
called Cortona Cafe.
And so we've been having our steering committee meetings
there and supporting him and his business.
-On Union and 26th? -Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And so there are other people that are community minded
that want, you know -- we don't have the, you know,
we don't have the... -Monopoly on this?
-Yeah, a monopoly on community.
We don't have the monopoly on that.
Hidmo is fantastic and we're secure in our identity
and, you know, the things that we're doing.
But if there is no need for Hidmo to exist any longer,
we'd be fine, you know, supporting other people
in their vision and their business.
But as long as people do need space and do need support
and, you know, there are these communities
that are kind of homeless, in need, you know,
and need someone to just open their doors and say,
"Come on in. You can -- You know,
you're welcome to be here," then we will exist.
-I want to pivot to your own path to this work.
You were --
Tell me your whole -- working backwards from this,
so when you and your sister started Hidmo,
you said you were both working at a women's shelter.
-Shelter, yeah. Mm-hmm.
-How did you come to that?
And how had you decided in the first place
that doing work in service like this
was going to be meaningful to you?
-Well, my parents, again, we immigrated -- we came here
as refugees in 1983 from Eritrea --
[ Clears throat ] Excuse me. --
In East Africa. And so when we came here,
there were not a lot of Eritrean families here.
There were only a few. And we were --
-How old were you at the time? -I was five.
I was five. And so it's me,
my six brothers and sisters at the time.
My little brother, Temesgen, was born here
in our first year here in America, and my parents.
So there was a bunch of us, but we were kind of all we had.
And as Eritrean families started coming,
we were sort of resettled in the same area
in Mt. Baker on MLK and McClellan,
the apartment complex up there still exists.
So as us and other kind of refugee families that lived
in these, um,
and so we, you know, not knowing the language,
we had to kind of just do for ourselves.
And so right away, you know,
Eritrean parents would get together,
we'd all get together and do things.
And as time went, other families came.
But we, being one of the first families,
were always kind of who everyone looked to.
And my dad is also a natural
just kind of leader in the community.
And so they would always look to us to do programing,
you know, help people fill out paperwork,
you know, start sports teams
or social groups and things like that.
We were always the ones that people looked to.
And we ended up founding a church and a community center
that still exists on 24th and Spruce,
the Eritrean community center there was founded
during those early years.
And so there we did everything, everything.
And again, it was very insular
just within the Eritrean community.
When I left for college, it was my first time away from home
and I went to college in Eastern Washington.
Not too far but just far enough away where it was kind of like,
"Oh, okay."
I was used to doing so much every day
that, you know, all I had studying to do.
I never had that much freedom and time before.
And so I just had the natural inclination to organize.
I didn't know it was called organizing.
I didn't know it was called, you know, service or whatever.
I'd say, "Oh, there's a need here.
And I kind of know how to do this.
Oh, this program."
And so I just started coming up with programing
and started doing things in college.
And, you know, I got voted for all kinds of awesome,
you know, I got all these awesome awards, I got to travel,
and get selected to do all these things.
But I didn't know that I was doing
anything special to deserve, you know --
-This is just how you've been raised.
-Yeah, exactly. You just kind of --
When you see a need, you kind of fill it,
you know, and you see -- and also that whole thing about
personal, you know, seeing people,
there's lots of people that,
you know, they're not going to kind of
jump up and down and say, "Hey, I need..."
But we also had a knack for in our community recognizi--
you know, the quiet person or the person that might need
help that might be too proud to ask for help.
Or it wasn't about just the leaders
standing up and down and doing that.
-Was it at college or before college
that you're -- that the arena where you would be this way,
extended beyond the Eritrean community
and into a wider community?
-It was just in college. -Just in college
is when it happened? -Yeah, I mean,
we were involved in sports and activities in high school,
but all our, you know, it was sort of we saved all our service
and all that stuff for just within our community.
College was the first time that I reached out
because, again in college,
at Washington State University
there are not very many Eritreans.
And so I had to look outside of that to,
you know, but again, there were no limits
because I already felt like an outsider culturally.
There was nobody my culture in college,
I was vice president of the Samoan Club,
you know, chair of the Coalition for Women Students.
I was the PR person for the Filipino
American Student Association, things like that.
Just things that are, and again, I got into those things
by having a personal connection with a person.
You know, my friend is in this club.
I'd go with her to that club and be involved
and help out volunteering or whatever in that club.
And then I'd get voted
to be the vice president of the Samoan Club,
that was kind of the most random, I think.
I was like, "Okay."
But I felt comfortable doing that
because everything was outside of my culture
and everything was outside of my identity.
So but then again, it also helped me learn
that people we, you know, have very distinct
and different identities, cultures, all of that.
But there's a lot of common things
that we share in common, too.
-How do you define your identity now?
-Myself? -Mm-hmm.
-Oh, I, um...
I'm American. [ Laughs ]
What do you mean? Like, I'm a --
-Yeah. -I'm a female African American,
Eritrean Orthodox Christian, US citizen person
that was born in Are'eta and raised in Seattle,
pretty much, yeah.
Like, I'm all these different things.
-But it's interesting. I mean, American
came pretty early in your list.
Was there a time where American would have come lower
in the list or later in the list?
-I think senior high school, before going away to college,
Eritrean would have been number one.
I'm an Eritrean, probably,
I would have probably called myself a girl.
I'm an Eritrean girl that's Orthodox Christian.
And now I say African-American or Black, you know?
And then I say, yeah, I consider myself like Black first,
you know, and then American.
-And having grown up, you know, in Seattle,
you know, it's interesting. Just the word African-American
can connote lots of things.
Right, it can connote African immigrant.
It can connote native-born American Blacks.
For you, do you deliberately say that's all one big label,
one big tent? And do you try to, you know,
how much do you want to acknowledge the differences
between African immigrant communities
and African-American native-born Black communities here?
-Yeah, that's such a good question,
because in applying for college, there was no mark for me
to put African for most of my applications.
So I would put other and I'd write in Eritrean
because I identified as Eritrean,
not as a Black person, but, you know, going to college,
"A," I was like, "How come all my other cultural friends,
that are from cultural communities
have like support mechanism.
They got mentors and they got all these things
that I didn't get,
which I think would have helped me in college.
Anyway, that's a whole different stories.
I should have just marked Black,
but 25-plus years into this American adventure,
you know, since coming to America,
I look back now and I think,
you know, we were settled in Mt. Baker in the hood,
you know, in 1983.
And while we were Eritrean, the world
still saw us as Black, and 25-plus years
in this American adventure, I see that a lot of people
that came to America around that same time,
a lot of them ended up going to jail,
being involved with gangs, you know, da da da,
you know, all the same things
that were impacting the Black community,
it had the same impact.
You know, it didn't discriminate, you know,
didn't discriminate, like a lot of the Eritrean males
that came with me, you know,
ended up, you know, not coming to not so great.
So it is really important to recognize that, yes,
we are Eritrean. We are definitely immigrants.
You know, when I go home,
my mom is dressed like an Eritrean.
We are speaking Tigrinya at home.
We have our own very distinct culture and there are,
you know, experiences unique
to our community and barriers
you know, specific to our community.
But for me,
it is also very important to acknowledge
that we are also Black American.
We are Black people, you know, in this country,
in that we share a lot with the Black non-African community.
-You know, you say that 25 years plus into
your American adventure and you're still so young.
So what's interesting to me is,
you know, over these years of, and so,
so much of your adventure has been doing this work
of connecting and creating community and organizing
and so forth.
Do you feel like -- How is it different today?
Is it harder, is it easier to create community,
to reach out to people across different lines of identity?
Do you feel like people are more open to this
or we're more closed today than 10, 20 years ago?
-I don't know about people,
but I know that I'm better at it now
because I'm more secure in who I am
and what I have to offer. And I'm a better listener now.
I'm better, like, I'm able to do that,
whatever it is, better.
I'm better able to connect with people
now than I did because I had all kinds of things
that I was dealing with, you know, a long time ago.
I wasn't as secure in my identity
in reaching across the divide.
But now that I am a little bit better at it,
I see how easy it can be.
You know, I have learned
how much of an impact that one, you know, I do recognize,
there are big, systematic things in the works
that are keeping lots of people, you know, media,
there are all kinds of things to try to keep people apart
or keep people from engaging with each other.
But I have also learned how, you know, even how one person
really can make a huge impact in another person's life
and how one person can have a huge impact in the community
that they live in, in the world that they live in.
-Um, what does Hidmo mean?
-Hidmo means home.
The word "Hidmo" are the traditional huts
that people in the countryside in Eritrea live in.
In Ethiopia, they're called agudos.
So they're just -- it's a hut.
And so it's a home. It's a house.
And so we have the tagline "Hidmo means home,"
because it was a home
for lots of different things in the community.
-So in the last minute or so, I want to ask you,
you talked about how, you know,
different spaces have now spun off from people
who've been part of the Hidmo family, right?
To what extent are you interested in, again,
affirmatively teaching others how to create their own spaces,
whether they're coffee shops or other,
you know, whatever it may be, because it seems like you have
a lot of experience that, I don't know.
Is it the kind of thing where if you try to teach it
to somebody explicitly, the magic disappears or?
-No, I don't think so.
I'm very interested in doing it.
And again, like we're talking about Hidmo's impact in Seattle.
There are people in New Mexico that have contacted us
saying "We came and we visited. We know all about your space.
We want something like this in New Mexico."
There's people in the Bay Area. There's people in Toronto
that have contacted us
saying that they want something like that.
But we were able to do what we did
because we so strongly identified
with the neighborhood and the people.
And Hidmo really was just an extension of who we were.
And we put everything that we were into it.
And I think that's what made it successful
because it's very genuine. It was very organic.
And so I don't know that I could teach it.
But if I visited New Mexico and got to know
the people trying to run that, you know, I could.
-It's all relationships, isn't it?
-Yeah, exactly. I would say, okay, so, you know,
I can go and tell about my experience
in how we did it and see if they can do that.
But I don't know if I can.
But I would be interested
because I think spaces like this are completely necessary
and I hope that they can open all over.
I don't want to do them.
But, you know, I would love to teach it if I could.
-Well, we in Seattle are sure glad that there is a Hidmo here
and that there's going to be a new Hidmo
soon in Washington Hall.
And Rahwa, thank you for being part of this
and making this part of your journey.
-Yes. Thank you, Eric, for inviting me.
-My guest today has been Rahwa Habte.
She's the co-founder of Hidmo.
And you've been watching "Seattle Voices."
Please join us again. And thanks for watching.
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