Currently, an estimated 1,750 Ethiopian families call Cambridge home.
The number of Ethiopians in Cambridge has been steadily rising since the early 1980s, when the United States opened its doors to Ethiopian refugees, Argaw says
In 1974, the Communist regime toppled the Ethiopian government, Argaw says, and the country fell apart.
As she considers the situation in Ethiopia, she begins to speak slowly.
"People fled," she says. "Some died on the way of hunger, of thirst. They went to the Sudan, but the conditions there were terrible too."
When the United States granted the Ethiopians asylum, Argaw says, they started coming in droves.
"It used to be only the educated people who left, the people who wouldn't be a burden to society," Argaw says. " But when these people came, they had no education, they had never been to school. They came here and it was a culture shock."
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