Need for African foods in Morgantown leads to unique store
Nagwa Wankey, owner of African Caribbean Foods on the Mileground, loves food, but doesn’t like to cook.
So how did the mother of three, who moved to Morgantown four years ago, end up opening a food store that specializes in African and Caribbean food?
Nagwa credits her mother, an immigrant from Cameroon who now lives in Canada. They could not find any African food products to cook with locally and were frustrated.
“It’s always been my passion to start something and then execute the idea,” said Nagwa, who worked in the hospitality and restaurant industry in the suburban Washington, D.C., area. It was there she met and married her husband Chuck, who had just retired from the military, where he was a chef.
They moved to Pittsburgh, where her husband worked as an aircraft mechanic, but that company was downsized. They then came to Morgantown when Chuck took a job with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nagwa tried to initially be a stay-at-home mother to her three children. But after her mother’s visit, the itch to be a business owner and introduce Morgantown to African and Caribbean food was too strong. She had to scratch it.
“I also have a business mindset,” she said. “My mother is behind me 100%.”
The first location of African Caribbean Foods was on Earl L. Core Road in Sabraton. In April, however, she moved the business to 1616 Mileground Road and reopened immediately to serve customers during the ongoing pandemic.
A large portion of her customers are West Virginia University students and faculty members, she said. She also gets customers from Fairmont, Clarksburg and Bridgeport.
“It’s all about baby steps,” she said of growing interest in African and Caribbean food.
The cozy space now occupied by Nagwa’s food store holds a variety of products that are staples in the African and Caribbean diet, including red palm oil, fresh vegetables, African teas, goat meat and smoked fish — with the bone in.
“You always leave the bone in the meat with African cooking,” said Nagwa, laughing as she did an impression of someone sucking on a bone. “People love to suck on the bones.”
Nagwa often travels — sometimes every other week — to a specialty wholesale food supplier in the Washington, D.C., area to buy food. And sometimes, they will strike a deal and meet halfway, she said.
She also makes it a point every Saturday to cook an African-style meal in the store, and people can buy a plate of food to take home and try. Typically, the dish is some sort of African stew. No menu is planned, and Nagwa cooks whatever she is in the mood to make or a dish a customer may have requested.
“African food is spicier than American food,” she said. “American food is sweet.
“In Africa people take time to cook,” she said. “It’s fun.”
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