The candles are lit. The room smells faintly of incense. The priest stands at the altar, clothed in a white robe. An intricate purple-patterned tapestry is strung across the altar behind him.

He speaks in 'Gez'--an ancient Ethiopian language--his voice rising and falling in harmony with the congregation. The men sit on one side of the church, the women on the other. At the back of the church, a few adolescent boys huddle together, whispering--the service has been two and a half hours long and they are restless.

Just 20 minutes away, there's a Catholic service being held. The priest stands at the altar, speaking Portuguese to his congregation. They respond to the priest's questions with Portuguese prayers memorized years ago.

When the service is over, they will linger for a bit. The old people will talk to each other in Portuguese, before heading home, perhaps stopping at the Portuguese butcher for sausage or the fishmonger for fish imported from Portugal.

The Portuguese service at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in East Cambridge have become a tradition over two decades. The Ethiopian service, held at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Central Square, struggles to build its new congregation.

For both communities, the services stand as landmarks to their immigrant identity. And the city which received hordes of Irish and Italian immigrants at the turn of the century still holds its doors open to all nationalities trying to make a new start.

In an increased cycle of upward mobility, the largest influx of new immigrants, Haitians and Ethiopians, struggle to get by before they migrate to the suburbs in search of a better life--and cheaper housing.

But Cambridge's more traditional groups can only claim enclaves, from the tiny Irish "Kerry's Corner" on Surrey Street near Dunster House to the long-entrenched Portuguese community in Inman Square. They worry their children are leaving old traditions--and their native language--behind as their culture becomes assimilated.

And so for many of the city's immigrant communities, making it in Cambridge today often means leaving it.

But for the people who stay and build or try to perpetuate their immigrant enclave, the most important part of the American dream is not necessarily upward mobility, but rather community.

A Place To Call Their Own?

Often immigrants families who want to settle in Cambridge but cannot afford the skyrocketing rent will choose to double up in a single apartment, often in a high-rise building like the Fresh Pond Towers, according to Jean Jeune, director of the Haitian Multiservice Center.

But as soon as they find a job and no longer have to share an apartment with friends or relatives, Jeune says, Haitian immigrants move out of Cambridge.

While there were once upwards of 7,000 Haitian immigrants in the area, Jeune says the number is closer to 5,000 today. He estimates that in the next five years, Cambridge will only have half the Haitian population it does today.

"The first generation will stay, because many of them bought places already," Jeune says. "But the younger people leave as soon as they get a job."

Cambridge, because of its strong educational background, plentiful economic opportunities and welcoming atmosphere, has historically been a mecca for immigrants.

In the early 1980s, Cambridge political leaders responded to turmoil in Central America by designating Cambridge a "sanctuary city," says Elena Letona, director of Latin American advocacy group Centro Presente.

The "sanctuary city" policy meant that a refugee could come to Cambridge without fear of being deported, Letona says.

While Cambridge is no longer officially designated a sanctuary city, the reputation remains, Jeune says.

"People still feel that by coming to Cambridge, they will be protected," she says. "Cambridge is very welcoming. There is a sense that your culture is welcome here and people will be able to help you."

For many of the new arrivals, coming to Cambridge is the hardest part, as they flee homelands rife with war or inflicted by natural disasters.

But making it in Cambridge often means learning a new language and struggling to find jobs that will cover increased rents. In this potentially isolating world, immigrants who need a sense of community most urgently often find themselves with barely enough time to sustain their families.

Fleeing No-Man's Land

Seble W. Argaw, director of the Adbar Ethiopian Women's Alliance, began her fledgling organization only seven years ago--and it is still run out of a basement room in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church.

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."

She smiles briefly.

"From no-man's land in the Sudan to the city--to Cambridge," Argaw says.

She speaks of one woman who was sold across the border of Ethiopia. She escaped, made it to Cambridge and heard about Argaw's organization.

"When she came to our office, she had no one," Argaw says. She pauses to think, looking slowly around the small room. "She is so brutalized, she sometimes makes me cry."

The obstacles facing these women and their families extend far beyond poverty or difficulty learning English, Argaw says.

"People think--oh, they're poor, we should help," Argaw says. "But there is nothing that prepares me, when I go deep inside, to understand the life of the woman who was married when she was 15, came here with her children and started working."

These issues extend into the schools. Argaw often has to call teachers and explain when a parent refuses to sign a report card. It is not that the parent is being uncooperative, Argaw says, it is just that she is embarrassed because she does not know how to write her own name.

And the children have their own struggles.

"Ethiopian kids in seventh grade know as much as American second graders because the educational system is so terrible," Argaw says.

Upward Mobility?

Desperate to make money to support their immediate family and family in refugee camps relying on them, Ethiopian immigrants are forced to work two or three jobs, Argaw says.

"They do anything they can, in a factory, in a parking lot, in the laundromat," she says. "They do whatever gives them money for their children to survive. They don't want to have to depend on welfare."

And it is more difficult than it used to be to find a job without speaking English, Jeune says.

"It used to be that if you wanted it enough, you could find some sort of job," Jeune says. "Now, you need a basic knowledge of the language because people won't take the time to explain things to you. Now, you need a certificate even to clean a nursing home."

There are no longer any factories in Cambridge, Jeune says, which limits initial job opportunities for non-English speakers.

While the Portuguese population in East Cambridge is large and established enough to be able to employ new immigrants from Portuguese-speaking countries, Binyam Tamene, director of the Ethiopian Mutual Assistance Organization, says the Ethiopian community does not yet have that ability.

"People need to learn some English before they can get a job," Tamene says. "Only a few of our people run their own businesses, so we must go out of our community for jobs."

Tamene divides the Ethiopians who immigrate to Cambridge into two categories.

One group--pressured to support family members who have remained in Ethiopia--must begin work immediately.

"It's difficult," Tamene says. "We have to tell them that this should not be their ultimate goal, as individuals."

The other group comes from Ethiopia highly qualified. Some were engineers, Tamane says, some were doctors.

It's even more painful for these people, Tamene says.

"It's hard for them to forget their credentials, to take a job cleaning right away," Tamene says. "Sometimes, I think it's better to come here without any experience at all."

But once people do get a job that pays, Tamene says, they rarely look back.

It is a sign of success, Tamene says, to move away from Cambridge and the high-rise apartment buildings where so many of the newly-arrived Ethiopians live.

"They meaure how they've done by what they have, by where they live," Tamene says. "As soon as they can, many people move to the suburbs, where they are away from their own community."

Tamene bemoans what he perceives as a lack of activism in Cambridge's Ethiopian population.

"Once they've made it, people don't try to help the ones having the same experience," Tamene says.

And for newly-arrived Ethiopian immigrants, volunteering is a luxury they do not have, Argaw says.

Her organization struggles with a lack of manpower. Few members of the Ethiopian community volunteer for the organization. They simply cannot afford to, Argaw says.

"They have to eat, have to survive before they can volunteer," Argaw says. "It's not easy. There's just too much for them to deal with right now--the housing issue, immigration, language. In time, it'll get better."

The Success Story

Argaw can look to the experience of the Portuguese in Cambridge for hope.

There has been a small Portuguese population in Cambridge since the turn of the century, when a factory that made fishing nets began to bring in Portuguese workers from sea-side villages.

But the population did not begin to grow until a volcano erupted on the Azorian island of Faiail in 1957, says Joseph A. Cerqueira, a Cambridge resident who arrived from Portugal in 1970.

Due to the volcano, the American government opened immigration up to the Portuguese, Cerqueira says.

Like the Irish before them, the Portuguese--fleeing natural disaster--chose to settle in East Cambridge, joining the relatives who had come decades before to work in the fishing-net factories.

Poor and struggling with English, the Portuguese immigrants found factory jobs in Cambridge and Boston.

"They just took whatever work they could find," says Claudia Lobo, director of social services for the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS).

It was a painful, often isolating experience for the Portuguese immigrants to work in factories where no one spoke their language, Lobo says.

In response to the myriad problems facing the quickly-growing Portuguese population, a small group of Portuguese-speaking Cambridge residents joined together in 1969 to form MAPS, a program that works to ease the transition for fellow immigrants. Since its founding, MAPS has grown and is now a mainstay for Portuguese residents of Cambridge.

In fact, the program recently expanded to offer services to the burgeoning Portuguese-speaking Brazilian and Cape Verdean communities.

In East Cambridge, many first-generation Portuguese simply do not need to know English to survive.

"A lot of people just never learned," Cerqueira, whose parents lived in Cambridge for 10 years and did not learn English, says.

"They have their Portuguese bank, their own convenience stores. At church, there are services in Portuguese," Cerqueira says. "They really live an isolated experience. If they spoke English, they would've been able to make a better life. They would've done better job-wise."

It is now up to the second generation to integrate the Portuguese and American culture, Cerqueira says.

He has two daughters. Since English was their first language, he sends them to Portuguese lessons at St. Anthony's. They enjoy it, he says, and use their Portuguese to communicate with their grandparents.

"You just can't lose the language," Cerqueira says.

Cerqueira owns a Portuguese restaurant, Atasca, which sits off Cambridge Street, slightly removed from the plethora of Portuguese restaurants that mark the approach into Inman Square.

The restaurant is spacious and well-decorated. It seems to speak to the mix of new and old in the life of the immigrants who came to Cambridge as children.

On one restaurant wall is a suit jacket with red ribbons. It is the costume that is used for a traditional folk dance in Northern Portugal, Cerqueira says.

He says that even after living in Cambridge for 20 years, these traditions are important to him.

"I consider myself Portuguese-American," he says. "Portuguese first. I've been in the U.S. longer than I was in Portugal, but it's still a very strong part of me."

The second and third generations of Portuguese immigrants will work to keep the culture alive in East Cambridge, Lobo says.

"The younger people promote the Portuguese festival that takes place every year, they've opened restaurants, they promote voter registration," Lobo says. "They will maintain the tradition."

It seems as though the older generation will not let them forget.

"The old people idealize Portugal," Cerqueira says. "They always say that they'd go back, if it weren't for their children who live here. I think that if they had to go back, and hang around there, then they'd get to miss this place instead. After you've lived in a certain area for a long time, it just becomes your home."

Putting Down Roots

But it is tougher today than it was thirty years ago to make a home--as the Portuguese did--in Cambridge. Despite praising Cambridge for its acceptance of new cultures, for instance, the Haitian immigrant community is slowly leaving after 20 years in the city.

But Argaw says the Ethiopian immigrants are determined to make this place their home.

When Argaw's first niece was born in Cambridge, she had to be baptized in an Armenian church, since there were no Ethiopian churches in the area.

"I was worried," Argaw says. "Religion gives you some guidance. I didn't want the first generation born in Cambridge to grow up without religion."

Argaw says she contacted an Ethiopian priest, and they organized services in Ethiopian. For months, the congregation moved from church to church. They currently hold services at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Central Square.

But it's not the same as having their own place.

While a traditional Ethiopian service begins early in the morning, for instance, at St. Peter's they have to begin their service at noon.

But it will not be like this forever.

Argaw says the congregation was recently able to raise enough money to buy a church in Boston, which they will call the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Debreselam St. Michael's Church. They will be able to hold services at whatever time they want.

It is a sign, Argaw says, that they've arrived.

"We are empowered," Argaw says. "We know the enormity of the problems we have, but we are working to deal with them."

"Cambridge is my home," she continues. "I feel it. I know my way here."