Nyan Aung loves for Americans to get a taste of the country where he was born.

So, when he heard that a group of Fort Wayne residents studying Beginning Burmese was having a get-together to celebrate the end of their classes, he was quick to organize the food and entertainment.

In addition to certificates, the students were presented with homemade samosas – tasty triangular fried dough dumplings filled with onions, potatoes, meat and cabbage.

Two young girls wearing glittery blouses and long patterned skirts performed traditional dances.

And Aung narrated a video of scenes from his homeland’s annual Water Festival, when people frolic in water sprayed from fire hoses to beat the heat and gain good luck.

As a founder of Fort Wayne’s Burmese American Society in 2010, Aung has become an unofficial ambassador for one of Fort Wayne’s newest ethnic communities – people who in recent decades have fled the Southeast Asian nation formerly known as Burma, now Myanmar.

Estimates are that about 6,000 refugees from that nation now live in Fort Wayne, making them a high-profile minority. But they’re hardly the city’s only new arrivals, says Fred Gilbert of Fort Wayne, founder of InternationalFortWayne.org.

The organization’s website includes information about 15 different nationalities and ethnicities now living in Fort Wayne, from Somali Bantu, to Japanese and Afghani, to Bosnian-Herzegovinan.

“We have five (groups) alone from (the former) Burma,” Gilbert says.

Indeed, when Gilbert, 64, looks at Fort Wayne, the retired social worker doesn’t see the stereotypical image of a mostly white, Midwestern city.

Asked how he would describe Fort Wayne, he thinks a minute and pulls an image from his past, when he lived in Turkey for nearly five years while in the military and working for the U.S. State Department.

“It’s kind of like a bazaar – it’s like the open market in Istanbul,” he says. “Anything you want you can find it here.”

Todd Pelfrey, executive director of Fort Wayne’s The History Center, says it has long been like this.

Even in Fort Wayne’s earliest days, the lure of the frontier, and a railroad and a canal needing workers, brought immigrants from a succession of European countries – France, England, Scotland, Germany, Ireland.

“Fort Wayne has always been one of the great melting pots of the state of Indiana, and even going back to before the start of European contact, this was always an incredibly diverse center for trade and commerce and political alliances among a number of Native American tribes who intermixed here and were living at the confluence of the rivers,” he says.

“One of the things we see here is every generation experiences an influx of new peoples from other parts of the country and the world.”

In the last century, many of those arrivals were from Mexico, says Rosa Gerra, executive director of United Hispanic Americans in Fort Wayne. They were drawn by factory jobs and nearby farm work, she says.

The 2010 census placed the number of Hispanics in the city at slightly more than 20,000, or 8 percent of the population, with 75 percent having roots in Mexico.

Fort Wayne also has families with roots in Macedonia, with residents here publishing a Macedonian-language newspaper.

There’s a Korean Presbyterian congregation that meets at First Presbyterian Church downtown, and a group of Hindus from India are building a temple on Yellow River Road in Allen County near the Whitley County line.

Roman Catholic priests from Sri Lanka have served several local parishes, and Saigon, a Vietnamese restaurant on South Calhoun Street, is a favorite lunch spot for downtown workers.

This year’s Fort Wayne Newspapers Three Rivers Festival is reviving an attraction known as International Village on July 15 and 16 to highlight the city’s diversity, says Jack Hammer, festival executive director.

“What we’re trying to do is make a little microcosm of Fort Wayne, so you can bring your children and grandchildren and teach them about their neighbors and their own heritage,” he says.

The diversity at times has led to misunderstandings.

Aung says the Burmese American Society was formed last year to fight discrimination after a highly publicized incident in which a sign was posted banning Burmese from a local laundry.

But Aung says the group is more about bridging cultures and meeting urgent needs.

“Sometimes I am really sorry for Fort Wayne residents, and the government, because they had a lot of work… Six thousand – that’s a lot of people… They got hit like a big thunderstorm,” says Aung, a 46-year-old process technician.

But, like generations before them, the Burmese people want to establish themselves here, says Aung, who was college-educated in Burma and recently graduated from Ivy Tech with an additional degree.

His wife, Christina, is an American from Columbia City, and the couple have two daughters, Andrea, 14, and Alexia, 12, who want to be teachers. The family lives in Churubusco.

“The (Burmese) refugees are bringing hopes for the next generation,” he says. “Maybe this generation, we have to pay a price. There are problems – maybe we cannot fix it all. But our sons and daughters will graduate and go to college and will be on the way up.”

rsalter@jg.net