Researchers focused on the Hillview community to gather their data.

LEWISTON – The way local Somalis watch TV tells a lot about them, according to Massachusetts researchers.

All of the Somali households in Lewiston’s Hillview apartments own a TV and most families subscribe to cable.

“But they don’t watch American programs,” said Professor Laura Hammond of Clark University. “The kids do. The American programs are mostly for the younger people, in Somali homes.”

Most of the adults watch Somali programs on videotape, Hammond said. “It may be a way of reminding themselves and their children where they came from.”

It’s not the most important finding of a report released by Clark University and Somali Community Services this month, but it does show how Somalis are adapting to Lewiston, and adapting Lewiston to fit their needs.

The Clark team – Hammond, colleague Richard Ford and a group of 15 graduate students – came to Lewiston last fall to meet with Somalis living in the Hillview apartments. The goal was to help those families control their destinies and decide what they needed to make themselves more at home in Lewiston.

“The point was always to demonstrate to the Somalis that they themselves are the most knowledgeable about their own needs,” said Ford, a professor of international development, community and environment at Clark. “The point was to show them that they need to know what they want and really need to take the initiative in solving problems.”

The Somalis were asked to sketch out their lives for the researchers, mapping their communities and social interactions. They were asked to rank the things that matter, including personal relationships, social programs and technology.

Genders ungapped

The results show a group adapting the life they left behind to their new surroundings. Hammond said she was most surprised by the relaxed gender roles. Men and women have strictly defined jobs in traditional Somali society.

“Those roles blurred a bit in Somali, because the men went to fight the wars and that made the women’s roles as economic actors more important,” Hammond said. “And that’s been the major conflict recently in Somalia. The men returned, but the women were not willing to give up their new roles.”

In Lewiston, men and women share child-rearing responsibilities much more easily and both tend to have jobs, she said.

“One woman was very proud, saying that there is hardly a single woman in Lewiston who does not have a job,” Hammond said.

The process – several informal meetings conducted in the Somali native tongue – has been used by Ford and his colleagues to study groups in Africa and Asia. It was only the second time the process was used in the United States, however.

In all, about 25 Somali household participated. The group made better internal leadership and stronger Somali community groups their top two goals. Those results were released in December.

Abdirizak Mahboub, a leader of Somali Community Services of Maine, said he’s hoping the Clark team comes back in the fall. His group co-sponsored the report.

“I would like to see this process expanded to include all of Lewiston,” Mahboub said. “The report now is a good picture of life in Hillview, but I think we need more of a picture of life in all of Lewiston.”

And it shouldn’t include only Somalis, he said.

“There are other people living in Hillview,” Mahboub said. “How do they view the community? And what do they need?”

[email protected]