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Ethiopian native owns half of DC’s gas stations

Posted on by EthiopianReview.com

Joe MamoTo hear him tell it, Joe Mamo’s move from Ethiopia to North Dakota in 1981 was accidental. Mamo’s father, Yenberber Mamo, was a public transit mogul who manufactured buses and ran the first fleet to provide service across Ethiopia. The operation made his father’s Mamo Kacha bus line a household name in the East African country. It provided a nice life for his family. But it rendered him distinctly unpopular with the Marxist junta that ruled Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991. The elder Mamo was jailed two or three times by the regime. Some of his property was confiscated. As his son approached draft age, the patriarch looked for ways to send him overseas.

That’s how Joe, at the age of 13, found himself attending Catholic boarding school in North Dakota. “He didn’t know the difference between North Dakota and New York City. We didn’t know until we got there,” says Joe Mamo, whose given name is Eyob. But he got used to the cold winters and moved to Chicago after graduation. While he attended community college there, he got a job pumping gas.

By 1987, Mamo had moved to Washington, where an old friend had settled among the region’s large Ethiopian community. This too was “an accidental move,” he says. “I didn’t know Washington that well but I liked it here because it was much more diverse than Chicago. There’s a lot of Ethiopians, a lot of different cultures.” And while Mamo remained far from home, it turned out that his entrepreneurial DNA was still intact in North America. “I always wanted to be a businessman like my father. The only business I knew was a gas station, so I decided to lease a gas station,” Mamo says. … [READ MORE]

8 thoughts on “Ethiopian native owns half of DC’s gas stations”

  1. I ´m very very glad to see such tremendous successfull ethiopians. I realy would like to congradulate Joe(Eyob)Mamo. Now I also pass my little appeal to Mr Joe(Eyob)Mamo in behalf of information hungry Ethiopians who are too poor to buy newspapers are resorting to renting them per half hour basis,to support ESAT. Please help Ethiopia & her people by supporting ESAT,The Ethiopian Satellite Television. I hope you are already doing but poor ethiopian want more help. God Bless kind people & Down with Meles Zenawi´s Tplf tyranny. The ongoing freedoms movement is definitly inevitable in Ethiopia any time soon. Weyane is in shivery state.

  3. I remember how legendary his father was. It much said and lyrics written about his dad of his early pioneering days. One of them I still remember was included in Amharic ‘Azmari’ song where it narrates how even jumped the mighty ‘Gibe’ river when other drivers retreated cowardly or found a long roundabout routes to avoid that river. I hope his son heard about those particular lyrics which spoke volumes just in two lines about his father’s feat. I can say it. But I would rather save it for his son or others who still remember the song to say it. I had used the service of his bus company to travel to Jimma and Asmara many times in the early 60’s and it was the fastest and most punctual service available then in those ‘stone age’ moments in our country. He was also said to own the most modern auto garage in Africa in the 1960’s.

  4. This is a great peice on Ethiopians in America, but this quote just shows how shady politicians are for money and favors.

    “Around the time Mamo needed city officials to wave lot size requirements for his plans to build a Shell station on Maryland Avenue NE in 2007, Mamo and his brother Tamrat donated $1,000 apiece to Kwame Brown’s campaign fund, the maximum allowed. Besides those contributions, seven of Mamo’s companies donated an additional $1,000 apiece. Total take for Brown: $9,000.”

  5. ITS real great to see house hold name like mamo kacha to hear from ethiopreview becouse i alwayes passing by teklehaimanot and wondering why this mamo kacha businese went from house hold name to nothing.

    good to hear if mamo kacha stile servive.
    when i was a child we alwayes hear this poam…atobisi mamo kacha yetehedale gebre guracha sent yekefelale sumuni bicha….

    good luck joe..

  7. Oh man what a wounderful family..Iremember when I was a child the lyrics

    Atobici Mamo Kacha!
    Yettehedale…Gebregurucha!
    Min Letameta…
    Mare Beselicha.
    Sint Tikeflalhe—Simuni Bicha

    My mother and father generation used to travel with this wonderful’s man Buses..I wish you all the best and one day you will go to your father land and serve your people like your father did–

    Keep it up
    Good health and long live

  8. I am proud of you. Mamo Cacha is/was a well known Enterprise. Your sucess is all Ethiopian sucess. Mother Ethiopia is always happy to hear that.
    Keep it up!!!!!
    Let us follow him. Let’s be influencial.
    Let us wipe the Dictators in ‘ midri habesha’.

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