Q&A: Hannah McKenzie ’21 and the ‘unfathomable beauty’ of a Watson Fellowship

"Despite working remotely this summer, I’ve been glad to still be able to engage with the community a bit in-person like this.” —Anthropology major and Bonner Leader Hannah McKenzie of Stevenson, Md., photographed on Lewiston’s Lisbon Street and in the Heritage Restaurant and its adjacent market place, where she regularly shops and purchases tea. This summer, McKenzie has divided her time between two local organizations providing support to refugees and immigrants: the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine and Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project. The tea she purchases at the Heritage Restaurant, says Mckenzie “reminds me of one of the first cultural lessons I learned in Lewiston.” When Hamza Abdi, a community leader and an academic administrative assistant at Bates and she first started teaching an IRCM English class together her first semester at Bates, “Hamza would leave in the middle of each class to retrieve us each traditional Somali tea, flavored with spices like cinnamon and cardamom and sweetened in condensed milk. I loved this tea,” she says. “Only three months into teaching did I realize Hamza had been buying the tea from this restaurant downstairs, rather than making it in the office break room as I had assumed. I contested that I didn’t want him spending his money on me — after all, if I come to the Center twice weekly for four years, that’s a lot of money. Hamza laughed, well versed in the differences between our cultures. He explained that in Djiboutian culture, money is considered best used for gestures of sharing and showing others appreciation. Someone in his culture doesn’t ‘lose’ money, as people essentially take turns paying for their friends.” These days, Mckenzie regularly picks up tea at the Heritage Restaurant. “I really appreciate the culture of collectivity that surrounds it. These kind of cultural lessons are what have made my experience of Lewiston and my studies of anthropology at Bates so eye-opening a

As she concludes her Bates education, McKenzie is at a crossroads. the Watson Fellowships, she believes, will be the perfect guide.

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