Exotic delights from around the world

KENT— By some accounts, Foreign Cargo, located in the first floor of a large 1886 Victorian house and celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020, wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

Jeff Kennedy, 59, has run the store for 22 years now, overseeing the exotic antiques, clothing, and jewelry. 

He said the shop was the brainchild of his mother, Olga Kennedy, in 1970. 

 Kennedy, a Kent resident who is now 97, still does the business’ daily bookkeeping. 

In 1970, her son said, “My older brother was in college at the time taking marketing classes, and he did a market analysis for her. At the time, nothing was going on in the area.”

According to the survey results, the store was not going to work.

Nonetheless, Olga went ahead with her plan to showcase and sell the Far East items she had acquired through various shopping expeditions to Thailand. 

“She had the vision of what this would be,” Kennedy said. 

In 1970, Foreign Cargo opened in the corner of a store at 38 North Main St., now the home of the Kent Station Pharmacy. She was given the space free in exchange for watching the shop while the owner went home for a siesta every day.

When the store’s current location became available in 1971, Foreign Cargo moved into the first floor of the sprawling tan-colored house with its inviting front porch. 

Olga and her husband and their seven children lived upstairs. Kennedy said there was a gallery upstairs showing African tribal art at one point.

He said Foreign Cargo began decades ago while his family was living overseas.

“In 1951 we lived in Palau {in Micronesia]. My father was a doctor who worked in tropical medicine; he worked with the U.S. government in the USAID.” The acronym stands for the United States Agency for International Development, which administers civilian foreign aid to developing countries. 

“Later we lived in Southeast Asia and then in Africa, in the Congo. My parents would spend weekends antiquing. They did it in New England, and abroad they did the same thing.”

Although he grew up in Kent, Kennedy was born in Cambodia. When he was 3 years old, they moved to Laos. The family was there when Laos fell in 1975 and was under house arrest by the Communists at the American school they attended there.

Eventually, after they moved, Kennedy said, “As the youngest of seven children, I went on their buying trips from Connecticut to Bangkok to Hong Kong to Kathmandu. They would ship things back to Kent. The store comes out of our family experience.”

The store was run over the years by Kennedy’s older siblings: Jack, who now divides his time between Maine and Indonesia; Gretchen, who lives in Sharon; and Clytie, who now lives in a Buddhist monastery. 

Following in his siblings’ footsteps and with an economics degree from the University of Vermont, Kennedy took hold of the reins of the store, following years of playing guitar in various African and reggae music bands. He now lives upstairs with his wife and two children.

“We have everything from jewelry to antiques to women’s clothing,” Kennedy said of the store. “There are unusual things you wouldn’t find ordinarily, and they are reasonably priced.”

He explained his shopping-expedition philosophy for the store: “Wherever I go, I look to the aesthetic of what the country is best known for. I choose the best artists, the best quality and the newest designs before other people find them. I work with people who I feel are treating their employees well with regard to fair trade and educational opportunities.”

Passing by a 5-foot-tall Buddha statue made of gold-leafed teak wood in the store’s bay window, Kennedy pointed out some holiday-themed gifts at the store.

There are fair-trade tree ornaments, including Nepal wool felt decorations with gingerbread men on snow sleds; reindeers; and various angels and birds in flight. There are also recycled tin-can ornaments from Zimbabwe and Christmas nativities made of banana-fiber and soapstone from Kenya. 

For clothing, there are alpaca sweater and shawls from Peru and Ecuador and cashmere hand-embroidered shawls from Kashmir.

“We have so much stuff in every nook and cranny, and lots of stuff on the walls,” he pointed out.

Some of the mainstays of the store include copper-and-brass hand-hammered bells from India that range from 1 to 6 inches in diameter. 

“We’ve been selling those since the 1970s,” he said. 

The exotic music instrument collection is comprised of djembes (African percussion); bamboo flutes; red cedar wood kalimbas; and Chinese wind gongs in various sizes.

Although its nearly a half century old, the store continues to attract new shoppers and to be a favorite of loyal customers.His mother’s vision for the store continues to reward.

 “She was a kind of pioneer,” Kennedy said, “as was my father, for taking the family abroad.”

Foreign Cargo is located at 17 North Main St. and can be reached at 860-927-3900. The hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.