Photo Essay: Meet K-Fly, one of North Oakland’s Eritrean barbers
on December 16, 2014
These photos follow a barber named Kiflay Habte, a.k.a. “K-Fly,” who is part of North Oakland’s Eritrean community.
Many of his shop’s customers are Eritrean, but their customer base is very diverse: white, Mexican, or from other places in Africa. Both Habte and his employee, Mussa, are from Eritrea and speak Tigrinya to their Eritrean customers. Habte speaks 6 different languages, including American Sign Language, learned in college, as well as Amaric, Arabic, English and Tigrinya.
The shop is near Bushrod Park, off Shattuck Avenue. The area is home to a large Eritrean and Ethiopian community. “It reminds me of home,” Habte says. “The atmosphere, seeing people in the street like me. When they pass, I can smell the food they eat and cook.”
Habte moved to the U.S. in 1994 after spending six years as a member of the Eritrean freedom fighters in that country’s war for independence from Ethiopia. His mother and sister were already in the Bay Area when he arrived; they had escaped from the war and arrived as refugees in 1989.
Habte stayed behind and volunteered for direct combat. “I wanted to fight for my county’s freedom,” he said. “I fought that war so that my children wouldn’t have to. It was scary but there was a purpose for it.”
When he arrived in the U.S., he became a long distance runner. “Being in the zone–it just feels like you want to keep running, go longer,” he said. “There is no pain.”
But he had to stop when his ankle was injured. “That was very disappointing, the injury,” he said, “when something that you love and you love to do it has to end. All of the sudden doctors say you can’t run for 6 months. After that my priorities changed, when I got married and had kids, and when I met my sweetheart. I feel that that was a different time of my life. Now my life is raising my kids.”
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- Kiflay Habte, 41, opened K-Fly Barber Shop six years ago and arrives each morning to open its doors. He is orignally from Asmara and is one of many Eritrean immigrants that call North Oakland home.
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- Habte stretches in front of his apartment after running an eight mile double-loop around Lake Merritt, as he does every morning. He began running at 22 and from 2004-2006, raced professionally, sponsored by Adidas.
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- Habte’s wife, Helen, pours tea to accompany a breakfast of avocado smoothie, eggplant, toast, and eggs. In Eritrean style, the family wraps their food in wheat toast, in place of the traditional unleavened bread called “injera.”
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- Adonai, 1, waits for his mother to finish clearing the breakfast table. The couple gave their younger children Biblical names, representative of their Christian faith. They sometimes attend Tewahdo Greek Orthodox Church, which has an active Eritrean congregation.
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- As her husband leaves for the day, Helen nurses Adonai. She will spent the day in the apartment or running errands, taking care of her son, cleaning, and waiting for the other children to come back from school, while her husband works at his barber shop.
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- Habte leaves at exactly 8:05 each morning to drive to 52nd street and Shattuck, slightly north of the Temescal neighborhood. Before giving his first cut of the day, he makes sure the shop is clean and everything is in place.
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- Habte changes into his barber uniform before the first customer arrives. He works 6 days a week. His main employee Mohammed Mussa, 29, works 7.
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- Samuel Ghile, 27, has come to K-Fly’s barber shop from San Francisco. “For me, it’s the best,” he said. He, like Habte, is originally from Eritrea and was told he should go nowhere else for a haircut. The two talk about soccer.
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- In his previous life, Habte was a soldier in the war for Eritrean independence. “I wanted to fight for my county’s freedom,” he said. “I fought that war so that my children wouldn’t have to. It was scary but there was a purpose for it.”
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- Mussa has been working at K-Fly’s barber shop for over four years. He says that having Eritrean customers is good for business, but for him, it’s not personal. He often cuts the hair of young children whose parents come to the shop. Here, he speaks to the father in Arabic.
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- After a tendon injury from running, when he could no longer race professionally, Habte enrolled at Moler Barber College to begin a new career.
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- K-Fly cuts the top layer from L.V. Ali’s hair revealing a swath of white. Ali, who is a longshoreman from West Oakland, will have all of it re-dyed.
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- As the owner, K-Fly spends less busy hours observing haircuts, answering the phone, and watching sports on the shop’s small T.V. “Sport is my life,” he says. He watches everything—soccer, football, basketball. At heart he is an athlete, he says. Now that he has more employees, he cuts hair less.
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- Habte now coaches running two nights a week at a high school field in Piedmont. This month he is training two-time World Champion Azeria Teklay, who is in town to run the California International Marathon.
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- K-Fly says that he doesn’t regret not making it past the qualifiers for the 2004 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, where he says he came in 17th place, with a 26.2 mile running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes.
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- Habte times Teklay as he runs around the track, yelling “faster, faster,” in Tagrigna. Teklay clocks a mile warmup at 4:20. In a race, he runs about 4:30 per mile, to pace himself.
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- K-Fly hopes to one day open a training facility in Eritrea, where the elevation is high, making it a prime climate for runners. Right now he doesn’t have the funds and he’d doesn’t want to move his children. But he is hopeful. “I want to go back,” he says. “I just need to wait.”
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