- Isaak Gawo hands an order to a customer on Sunday. The Isuken Co-op truck has been making weekly trips to the Lewiston market. Most days though, it is parked on Sabattus Street in Lewiston, next to a farmstand operated seasonally by New Roots Cooperative Farm. (Joel Page/Portland Press Herald)
- A chicken sambusa from the Isuken Co-op food truck at the Lewiston Farmers’ Market. (Joel Page/Portland Press Herald)
- A customer waits for an order outside the truck. Many of the ingredients used to make the Isuken Co-op truck’s specialties were grown by Somali Bantu farmers in Lisbon and Lewiston. (Joel Page/Portland Press Herald)
- Ibrahim cooks injera, an East African flatbread, on a griddle inside the food truck. (Joel Page/Portland Press Herald)
- Isnino Ibrahim packs an order of sambusas to go as she works on the Isuken Co-op food truck at the Lewiston Farmers’ Market on Sunday. (Joel Page/Portland Press Herald)
LEWISTON — The brakes are showing some wear. The steering is soft. And there’s no oven to make African cakes in. But inside Isuken Co-op, Maine’s new – and first – Somali Bantu farm-to-table food truck, the focus is on moving forward.
On a gloomy Saturday afternoon in October, Ghali Farah was working the cash register, an iPad with a Square attachment. Habiba Hussein was delicately running a wet finger around the edge of an uncooked sambusa, a savory pastry, to seal it before Isaak Gawo put it into the fryer. Isnino Ibrahim was at the cleaning station. Isuken means unity, and based on the tight squeeze in the truck for the crew of five, it seemed like an apt name in many ways.
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