Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Side 38

Stickney estimates that a more accurate number
is between 46,000 and 65,000.
While immigration stats might not be accurate,
there are 51 different languages spoken in the
Portland Public School District. More than 30 of
those, including Somali, are spoken at Portland
High School alone, which also accommodates
Muslim students when they need a place to pray.
Barre estimates, and Stickney agrees with his
numbers, that there are between 3,500 and 4,000
Somalis who have migrated to Portland, primarily
in the last six years. “Once you have a nucleus of
people, those people tell friends and other fam-
ily members and it grows from there,” Stickney
told me later. “They hear that it’s calm, quiet, the
schools are good, and it feels safe.”
For Barre, that’s how it worked. “I knew a
friend of a friend. I said, ‘Ahmed, how do I get
Maine?’” he says over the din of five more Somalis
who’ve arrived at the market on a Saturday during
Ramadan. “And I do the same for people. It’s ‘Hey,
we have this empty space beside our bed, you can
come sleep here.’ We do this so we can keep our
culture, our tradition, our religion, together.”
MAINEa
1 pm: The Woodworker’s Studio
Duane Patricio sharpens his number 2 pencil with
a handheld utility knife. “Doesn’t everybody do
that?” he asks. Every couple of minutes our con-
versation is interrupted by the intermittent hum-
ming of the air compressor that powers the nail
gun hanging from the ceiling of his downtown
Danforth Street studio.
City promoters sometimes tout Portland, just
two hours from Boston, as a mini-San Francisco.
It’s true, there are certainly steep streets rising
from the waterfront, galleries emerging from
every abandoned warehouse, and cuisine fit for
a true gourmand. But Portland’s authentic mari-
time character and small-town feel gives it a char-
acter of its own.
Patricio, 53, is a woodworker in Portland’s
vibrant artist community, with midnight black
hair accented by a little coarse salt. He creates
tables, dressing mirrors and frames, using wood
between 150 and 200 years old that he finds or is
given. Most of the wood comes from weathered
coastal Maine homes and barns, but, he says,
“You wouldn’t be stretched to
find me searching around
a dumpster if I see
something cool.”
DUANE PATRICIO
034-44MainAtl606.indd 36 18.10.2006 22:15:36