Community In Every Cup
For one coffee shop in “the most diverse square mile in the U.S.,” big business begins with a big heart
IT’S 7 A.M. ON A LATE-SUMMER SATURDAY morning when the first customer walks up to the counter at Refuge Coffee in Clarkston, Ga. Ahmad Alzoukani makes his first sale of the day—chai and a cinnamon bun—just as the charcoal sky begins to lighten and the first hints of the sun cast a pink glow to the east.
Before he was a barista, Alzoukani was a pharmacist in his native Syria. He fled the violence and upheaval there four years ago, resettled in Clarkston, and found a job at Refuge. His role grew with the business, and he is now the shop’s catering manager.
On this Saturday morning, he is alert and congenial, despite having delivered a midnight (literally) snack the night before to the crew of Ozark, a Netflix crime drama set in Missouri but filming in the Chamblee-Doraville area. The late-night run was not unusual. Refuge’s catering business more than doubled in 2018 and is on track to almost double again, thanks to Georgia’s growing reputation as “Hollywood East.” Already, film and television crews from Captain America to Zombieland have appreciated the shop’s willingness to accommodate their long, irregular hours.
Alzoukani arrived home in the wee hours, in time to squeeze in a brief snooze before coming back in to work for 5:30 a.m. setup.
Refuge is a coffee shop both like any other and like no other. The beverages and baked goods are familiar varieties; but the staff, the clientele, and the atmosphere are unique.
Kitti and Bill Murray founded the nonprofit business in 2015, two years after they moved to Clarkston from Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. Both white and U.S. born, the Murrays were seeking neighbors whose experiences and backgrounds differed from their own. So, they came to Clarkston.
Since 2015, Refuge Coffee co-founders Kitti and Bill Murray (no relation to the actor) have used their business to create job and training opportunities for refugee neighbors in Clarkston.
Two phrases have been used so frequently to describe this pocket of DeKalb County that they have become clichés: “the Ellis Island of the South” and “the most diverse square mile in the United States.”
But there is often truth in cliché.
Clarkston was developed in the 1800s as a railroad stop between the city of Atlanta and all points east and prospered until the 1970s, when many of its majority-white residents moved away in reaction to desegregation. A few years later, Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians immigrating to the United States as refugees found inexpensive housing there, and a trend began. Agencies settled refugees from various countries, such as Sudan and Somalia, in the area, and immigrants came on their own.
By the 2000s, Clarkston High School had students from more than 50 countries, according to the city’s website. In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 53 percent of Clarkston’s 12,757 residents were born outside of the United States.
I love it that this is a place where friends from other countries can feel loved and welcome, and where people can rethink their views of people not like themselves in the process.”
KITTI MURRAY
Living amid the diversity, Kitti, a freelance writer, and Bill, a pastor who works as a consultant to churches, witnessed many of their immigrant and refugee neighbors struggling to find good jobs, or piling into vans to be carted off for long days of risky work in chicken plants around Gainesville, Ga., which bills itself as the “poultry capital of the world.” The Murrays wanted to help their fellow Clarkstonians find safer, more convenient, and more stable employment.
They also thought Clarkston needed a town square of sorts, a place where people could gather and get to know one another. At first, Kitti and Bill organized some block parties, but that didn’t seem to be enough.
That’s when the notion of starting a business began to percolate.
What resulted from this initial spark of an idea was an old UPS truck, circa 1986, bought for $3,000, painted red, outfitted with a coffee machine, and parked on the corner of Market Street and East Ponce de Leon by a former service station. They continued to expand, eventually absorbing the whole property.
Coffee gets brewed and served from the original bright red truck, with a second truck traveling through the metro area doing catering. The office of the old service station is a shop with T-shirts and coffee mugs; the former gas-pump space and service bays, stripped of their hydraulic lift, are covered with an assortment of tables and chairs for eating, drinking, visiting, and working.
The main point behind the thriving business is to help those who have fled to Clarkston from war-torn or otherwise troubled areas of the world build a life for themselves and their families.
The Murrays hire and train refugees to run the business. As the Refuge website says, “We believe every refugee has a right to the American Dream; we believe that right comes packaged in the opportunity to work hard.”
ON THIS HOT SUMMER’S DAY, Mirela Jakubovic, who emigrated from Bosnia 12 years ago through the efforts of her aunt, nurses a cup of coffee and nibbles an almond croissant. She recently graduated from Georgia Tech as a pharmacy major and started a full-time job that has cut into her time at Refuge, but she tries to drop in at least once a week.
“I like the people. I like the culture. I like to learn new things,” she said.
Nearby, Ashley Behymer, an IT auditor for an accounting firm, drinks an iced black coffee as she works on a laptop. “The ideals Refuge stands for mean a lot to me,” she says. “And the coffee’s good, too.”
As the sun rises higher, the first wave of customers leaves and in come reinforcements.
Ti Hniang walks into the shop to buy a Clarkston T-shirt for a friend who moved to Boston. Ti and her family were resettled in the United States as refugees from Myanmar/ Burma in 2010. Her friend Nishani Kanthasamy, from Sri Lanka, tags along and samples her first cup of Refuge coffee.
Between orders, Alzoukani cleans, hosing off the cement patio area and watering the potted plants in the seating area.
By 11:30 a.m., the sun is beating down as electric fans on stands work overtime to cool the customers.
Eugene Liu is glued to a laptop, sharing the screen with two Ethiopian residents of Clarkston who are training in IT. From Powder Springs, Liu is a volunteer with Refcode, a program that introduces refugees to computer coding. It’s part of the Refugee Career Hub, a Clarkston-based nonprofit corporation that helps refugees learn skills for gainful employment.
A group of women chat during one of Refuge Coffee’s events, “From North Korea to Clarkston, Ga.: Sounds of Refuge and Hope,” a night of music, stories, and discussions with North Korean refugees, in August 2019.
As the day progresses, Alzoukani is relieved of coffee duty by a fellow Syrian, Ali Ghbis, who was once a television cameraman and director in Damascus. Unlike Alzoukani, who came to the United States on his own visa, Ali was resettled as a refugee with his wife and four sons, who range in age from 10 to 18 years old.
Ali’s family spent four years in Egypt before being cleared to enter the United States. Recently, they bought a home in Stone Mountain.
At 1 p.m., coffee shop manager Leon Shombana, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, welcomes six students to a workshop on chai, which he explains is a Hindi derivative of a Chinese word, meaning “tea.”
“The thing that makes the chai at Refuge Coffee special is that it’s homemade,” he explains. “I think you will find it different from the chai at Starbucks.”
The secret, Leon says, is in the spices. He dumps fresh ginger, brown sugar, peppercorns, cloves, star anise, and cardamom into a two-gallon pot of boiling water. While the spices steep, an enticing aroma wafts through the building. As he meticulously prepares the tea, Leon shares his history with the group.
After long-ruling dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was ousted from power and Laurent Kabila was installed as president in 1997, the DR Congo plunged into a civil war that would go on for the next six years. This was a traumatic time for Leon’s family, as his father and several relatives were killed in the violence. Leon finally fled the country in 2003.
“I had to get out,” he said. “For me, there was no way to survive otherwise.” He spent about nine years in Swaziland before coming to the United States.
As the workshop participants watch, Leon pauses his story to add black tea leaves to his pot, then continues speaking.
He was working in a chicken plant about four years ago, Leon says, when his “neighbor Kitti” asked him to come into Refuge for an interview. He landed the job, and his responsibility has grown with the business ever since.
Refuge exists, Leon says, “because of perseverance” and “hard work.” The same could be said for him.
As he finishes his story, Leon stands up to remove the various ingredients from the chai pot with a big strainer. Then, he carefully serves the strong, sweet tea.
BY MIDAFTERNOON, a lull has set in. During the school year, Saturday afternoons often bring carloads of students from Emory University, Columbia Theological Seminary, or Agnes Scott College. But with most summer programs over and fall classes yet to begin, there are no chattering crowds today.
A few more customers come in: some members of a Christian and Missionary Alliance church from North Carolina doing volunteer work with refugees in a nearby apartment complex and some young adults from Buckhead. With no one else in sight, Alzoukani returns and with Ali and Leon shuts down the shop a little before the usual 7 p.m. closing time.
Two days later, they are back on-site, gathered around picnic tables outside the coffee truck for a meeting of most of the 13-member staff. The object of today’s gathering is to brainstorm with Kitti and one another about how to grow the business and how to raise funds for air conditioning, bathroom renovation, and an additional truck. First Presbyterian’s Epiphany grant jump-started the fundraising.
In the cool of the Monday morning, Kitti looks around and expresses appreciation to the workers for their enthusiasm and team-building spirit.
“I started this very aware of my own limitations,” Kitti says. “I love it that this is a place where friends from other countries can feel loved and welcome, and where people can rethink their views of people not like themselves in the process.”
The coffee shop is a refuge for anyone who wants a respite where, caffeinated or decaf, every cup comes with a generous serving of hospitality.
