The 100 block of East Geer St is a healthy food corridor, flanked by our Bull City Cool Food Hub and what appears to be a normal quick-stop convenience store. But wait— convenience store food isn’t healthy… or is it?
Turns out it can be! Hill’s corner store has been carrying fresh produce for years… and now they’re showcasing it with a colorful mural by local artist Patrick Phelps-McKeown.
Get to know our neighbors here on Geer St with this guest post by Holly Bourne, an amateur photographer and student at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke who’s focused on food, farming, and sustainability.
The brightly colored retaining wall catches your eye upon approaching Hill’s Market, a convenience store located on the northeast corner of Roxboro and Geer St. in downtown Durham. The wall displays a freshly painted mural of carrots, watermelons, and a big yellow sun. It’s a colorful advertisement for a small selection of fresh produce offered at Hill’s Market. Just inside the entrance a set of wooden shelves holds wicker baskets meant for fresh apples, oranges, bananas, and onions. This small bounty sits in a prime traffic spot in front of the cash register counter, where Wafi greets his customers.
A native of Yemen and a resident of Durham for 14 years, Wafi Alzibaidi is the manager of Hill’s Market. He was approached by Peter Skillern of Reinvestment Partners to become a healthy corner store. Reinvestment Partners, a Durham based non-profit working towards economic justice is also located on Geer Street, just a stone’s throw from Hills Market. Together with the Durham Health Department, Reinvestment Partners has initiated multiple projects in this neighborhood, one of them the development of a healthy and local food system. The group partnered with local artist Patrick Phelps-McKeown to paint the fresh food mural, which brightens up the otherwise nondescript street corner. The health department also provided slick, new banners to hang above the cold cases, featuring children eating fresh tomatoes and carrots, with positive messages such as “The First Wealth is Health.” When Wafi talks about Peter’s involvement he smiles. He tells me that some customers have come in asking for fresh food after seeing the mural.
The feeling outside of Hills Market is energetic, but Wafi tells me it was not always this way. He has worked at Hill’s for 4 years and has witnessed major changes in a short time. Many of the buildings around him were abandoned or used for illegal transactions. He says, “The buildings are being rebuilt, and people feel safe here. They are out exercising, and walking their dogs.” And although today the produce baskets are mostly bare with just onions remaining, Wafi tells me some weeks the produce moves quickly, bananas being the top seller. Other weeks are slow and Wafi takes the unsold food home to his family.
During our meeting Wafi greets a handful of customers, most of them friendly and know him by name. Wafi and his connection to Reinvestment Partners is one piece of a larger movement happening in many streets of downtown Durham. A movement of economic revitalization, improved food systems, and community development.
– Holly Bourne, Student at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University