Obama: the view from an Ethiopian restaurant

African immigrants paying close attention to Barack Obama's speech tonight

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 28, 2008 at 5:11 p.m.

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DENVER — Barack Obama was the clear favorite among the majority of people dining at the Cafe Africana on East Colfax Avenue in Denver one night last week.

None of Ethiopian immigrants interviewed had the right to vote. However, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been paying attention to the race.

Teddy Gazahay, a 35-year-old warehouse worker from Denver, started tuning in back in the spring when the primary battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton was running at full tilt.

“I just like the way he talks. It has meaning,” Gazahay said. “I’m just convinced that he’s going to be president.”

Obama has been a frequent topic of conversation whenever Gazahay and his cousin Asfeha Teklehaimanot, 29, of Denver, get together for some home style cooking and Ethiopian beer.

Teklehaimanot is holding down jobs as a security guard and a liquor store clerk, all while attending Community College of Denver. Yet he started paying attention to Obama almost from the time the Illinois senator declared himself a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Teklehaimanot agrees with his cousin that Obama has a chance to win.

“He’s very confident and what he says makes sense,” he said.

In Obama, he sees America turning to a new and different chapter.

“Another thing is he’s against the war. That’s one of the reasons I hope he wins because the war is killing us,” he said, citing the impact the war in Iraq has had on the U.S. economy.

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