It Takes a School

by Jonathan Starr

  After breakfast, Mohamed heads to his first class. A full day is six hours of actual class time divided into eight subjects: two different English classes, Arabic and Islamic Studies, two math classes, history, a science class, and computers. The first year, the subjects offered had been shaped by which teaching skills were available, but with time, the schedule had more or less settled down.

  Most kids have a favorite class, and Mohamed’s is history because it quenches his thirst to know more about the world; more important, it is the first time that he is taught Somali history. He would never have imagined that the only place he would learn Somali history is in an Abaarso classroom with a foreign teacher. The history class has instilled in him a deep sense of pride in his identity as a Somali. Moreover, it lights what will be an inextinguishable fire within him to critically scrutinize the education system that is failing to inspire Somaliland students.

  The classrooms at Abaarso are good-sized, with off-white walls, tile ceilings, and whiteboards up front. The desks are the individual seats with the arm table, so every student has his or her own personal work space. Girls and boys sit on opposite sides of the room, which happened starting on the first day, without any prompting from us.

  Classes end just before two p.m., at which point students eat lunch. This is now traditional siesta time in Somaliland, as the sun is too hot to do much, but you’ll rarely find Mohamed resting. Around four p.m., the campus will come to life again with sports, science club, community service, and student jobs on campus. Mohamed joins a few of his classmates to play pickup soccer on a cement tennis court between two cement basketball blacktops. On the regular soccer field, he plays right back for the Abaarso team. Prior to a game, he prays the afternoon prayer in the mosque, and then he immediately goes to the field. He plays until sunset, when evening prayer time comes.

  After evening prayer, he rushes to the dining hall to beat the dinner line. After dinner, he attends an all-school study hall from eight to ten p.m. in the school’s spacious auditorium. Finally, he goes to bed around ten thirty p.m. to prepare himself for a very early wake-up before the morning prayer at four thirty a.m. Then it all starts over.

  Mohamed is gaining at least three academic grade levels each year. And he’ll need that, having started ninth grade at first-grade English and third-grade math. Far removed from the boy in my office twenty-one months earlier, Mohamed ends his tenth grade at Abaarso by getting close to a high school level. Few people would push themselves the way Mohamed has, but he shows no signs of tiring. To the contrary, he seems to be just getting warmed up. Energized by his success, he believes the sky is the limit and sees nothing that can stop him.

  Mohamed is the kind of student to build the program around. We publicly reward him, praise his tenacity, and challenge others to follow in his footsteps. He leads the students by the strength of his example. Tenacity cannot be taught in a classroom, but it is a lesson that a school can promote every day.

  13

  STRAIGHT TALK AND MOTIVATION

  Walking across the campus, I spot Qadan Mohamed, a student admitted in our second year, fifty feet away. It is time we have that talk. Qadan was born with one arm, a disability that made her a burden to her nomadic family. She was one of twelve children, but she would be unable to do the physical labor that their way of life demanded. Her family believed she would be a failure in the role of the traditional Somali woman, and she would be less desirable for marriage. When she was six years old, her mother took her to live with her aunt in Burao, more than six hours from their nomadic base on the border of Ethiopia. Her mother thought that at least in Burao, a city of over one hundred thousand, she could get an education and maybe, with an education, have a life of some sort.

  Qadan, though, felt abandoned and unloved. She didn’t see her mother or father again for nearly six years, and after that, only sporadically. She was appreciative that her aunt had taken her in, but this woman had older children of her own, too old for them to be companions for Qadan. With her disability and enormous sense of abandonment, she sometimes felt like she didn’t fully belong, that the world would be better without her. Nonetheless, her aunt faithfully oversaw her early education, which began in Quranic school, followed by primary school. Her score on the entrance exam was good enough to get into Abaarso, although her first choice had been SOS Sheikh, something I often playfully remind her of.

  Qadan’s uncle is paying her Abaarso tuition despite having more than twenty-five children of his own spread across four different mothers. He isn’t rich, but he takes his responsibilities seriously, and he wants to see his niece educated. A year later, he will move his son from SOS to Abaarso and bring two daughters as well as another niece to the school. In time, he’ll have a dozen of his children and nieces at Abaarso.

  I have decided to deal with Qadan’s handicap the same way I deal with most of the students’ issues, by being caring and frank. I am sure Qadan spends a lot of time feeling self-conscious about her arm, and I’ve seen her trying to hide her handicap. But there’s little she can’t do, having gotten so good with the other arm that six months in, many of the teachers didn’t even notice that one was missing. When I mentioned her disability to a teacher, her shocked response was quickly echoed by several others sitting within earshot.

  “Can we talk a minute?” I ask Qadan, causing her to pause. “I hope you don’t mind, but I want to ask you how you came to have one arm.”

  She explained that she was born this way, so it was not an injury, an illness, or an accident. She has never known life any other way.

  “Well,” I respond. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.

  “You are making a great effort in and out of classes,” I continue. “The teachers tell me you are very bright, and I know you are even playing sports with the girls. So I’m going to tell you something important and I hope you’re listening.”

  “Okay,” she replies, focusing in. By the nature of my position as headmaster, I tend to get attentive audiences. It is likely all headmasters do, which is an opportunity they should not waste.

  “You are intelligent and you have a great work ethic,” I tell her. “Most people would love to have those. I can only imagine that you spend time wishing you had both arms and envying people around you. You’ve been given important gifts, and you’re headed to be so well educated. Don’t waste your time thinking about what you don’t have or wishing you were someone else. Many of them should be wishing they were you.”

  No one has ever said something like this to her before, and it sticks with her. She will still quote the conversation years later.

  I can see a social worker being horrified at my bluntness, but then, they might feel that way about countless of my other direct conversations and confrontations. I talk to students like the adults I want them to be. They have enormous obstacles ahead, and they need encouragement and advice. Qadan already has the deck stacked against her, and she can’t afford to add unnecessary psychological or self-pity blocks to the mix. None of the students can. Maybe my approach wouldn’t work with everyone, and it is probably not the right one for kids from greater privilege. But so far it is working with Abaarso kids. Most appreciate that with me they know what is what and I don’t sugarcoat any of it. They don’t like an overly politically correct approach, either, and find coddling to be wishy-washy or seemingly fake.

  Like most of the people I knew, I grew up knowing I had a safety net. While my father was always on the verge of bankruptcy and my mother always worried about money, I still grew up middle class. Among other things, I always knew I’d be able to access higher education. Being an American citizen does provide you with a number of safety features, such as access to federal funding for college in the form of grants and loans. Colleges also give substantial financial aid to qualified American students who can’t otherwise afford it. I am not arguing whether or not there needs to be more, just pointing out that college is realistic for an American kid who achieves. An underprivi
leged student might feel hopeless, but it is that feeling that needs to change more than the reality. Higher education is available.

  Compare that to Qadan and the other Abaarso students. They have no education safety net. The U.S. government doesn’t fund foreign students to come to American colleges, and the universities in their home country are of such low quality that few graduates are employable as professional workers. I know several of the leading businessmen in Somaliland, and despite the massive unemployment of the country’s youth, the businessmen have no choice but to fill their technical positions from beyond their borders. This leaves the young Somali graduates frustrated and looking for something better. In some parts of Somalia, they’ve joined Al Shabaab, the Islamic terrorist organization, at least getting money and some respect. In Somaliland, the kids leave by the dozens to perform Tahrib, the Somali word for illegally migrating to Europe. Some will die on the horrifying and dangerous trek. Capsized boats have claimed untold numbers of lives since this migration began. Some will get no farther than Libya, where profiteers will take advantage of them, and even those who successfully cross will probably end up in refugee camps. I learned that one teenage girl who had visited the school drowned off the coast of Malta. Only a few years earlier, she had represented Somalia in the Olympics, running track and field. I haven’t gone across the world to have Abaarso students suffer the same tragedies. They want more, too, and they don’t want me whitewashing conversations. I have a knowledge and background that they don’t, and they want me to lead them until they reach the point when they can lead themselves. Shouldn’t guiding children to self-sufficiency be a major goal of education?

  I have another terrific kid, a girl named Muna, who arrived at Abaarso at only twelve years old, with our average ninth grader being more like sixteen. When she plays basketball with the other girls, she gets blocked on every shot she puts up, but it doesn’t stop her from trying and smiling the whole time. She is like everyone’s little sister, and the whole campus adores her.

  Muna was on a fantastic academic rise and well on her way to success, but then I heard from teachers that she had suddenly not been herself. She was no longer diligent, no longer focused. Her father was dying back in her home village, and that now had her mind.

  The next time I saw Muna, I sat her down to relay one of the most powerful events from my teenage years. My mother had a great friend in Worcester, who had a nice husband and two good children, the older girl college-age and responsible, the teenage boy sweet but rebellious and wild. I remember seeing Jurassic Park together, when the boy declared out loud to the theater that it should have been called “Jurassic Fart”—he had that kind of sense of humor. He just wanted to have some fun.

  Then, when he was still a teenager, he overdosed and died. For his parents, the worst nightmare had come true. Figuratively speaking, his mother pulled a blanket over her head for month after month, unable to cope. But she herself wasn’t well. She had a liver disease that needed to be managed with medication. When her pills ran out, she didn’t have the will to refill them. Maybe a half year later, she visited the doctor, but he told her it was now too late. Not long after, she, too, died, leaving her husband and daughter, both of whom still needed her. In her last days, she told my mother, “I never meant for this to happen.” As for me, I never forgot those tragic words of regret.

  I send Muna home to spend time with her father, telling her to make sure she talks to him about everything she ever wanted to. I tell her that when she returns, she needs to focus again. Every father wants to know that his child will be okay, and she should work to do him proud. When Muna comes back, she is her old self again. She has resolved her panic about never seeing her father again, and she knows there is no unfinished business. Months later she comes to me and, with her typical charm, says, “Don’t worry. I am taking my medicine.”

  Between them, our students have been through everything imaginable and then some. One orphaned boy lived with his grandmother along with his aunts and cousins. When he is in our eleventh grade, one of these aunts goes crazy, setting herself and her two little children on fire, killing all three. How could anyone not cry for that kid? Or for the girls who have constant headaches because their older brothers have been kicking them in the head since they were little? They know I care, listening to what they have to say, sometimes not holding back my own tears. They need empathy, but they also need strength. I hope they can see that I relate to them, and that no matter how sad the past or how rough the present, together we’ll work until they are at a place where they are in control, a place where they can stop other children from suffering the same tragedies. I think that’s why they listen to me when I push them to strive for something better.

  In their world, which has no safety net, Abaarso becomes a buoying presence that will give them back everything they put in. It isn’t unconditional support; in fact, our conditions are steep. But, in time, students come to learn that if they follow the three Abaarso values—tenacity, critical thinking, and integrity—then Abaarso will always be there supporting them.

  Even the very best students need extra help. Deqa is a dominant student who loves all aspects of learning, but she has her own demons she needs to face. Many have personal issues, and two of my advisees, Amal and a boy we will call Hassan, are not meeting reasonable expectations. I can’t do their work for them, but I can work on their attitudes. Specifically, that everything is someone else’s fault.

  Amal furiously walks through the hall toward my office. “Jonathan,” she barks, “I need to talk to you.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “That b____ just gave me a D.” Amal’s English is strong and her cursing fluent.

  Hassan uses a different version of the same “fault deflection.” I am meeting with him at the end of the term to go over his grades.

  “Hassan, you are much better than this,” I say, presenting him with his report.

  “Let me explain,” he answers. “A proper grade weighting system would take the following into account.… The history teacher is not weighting his grades properly.…” and on and on, one excuse after another.

  I have decided tough love with both Amal and Hassan is the only way. I tell them that they’ve both told me the last excuses I am ever going to listen to, and I cut them off every time they try to tell me another. Succeeding at Abaarso is on them, and they need to do better.

  From this I develop a mantra, which increases in intensity over the years. “The world doesn’t care about your excuses. In fact, it usually doesn’t give you a chance to tell them.” I am not arguing whether a student’s excuses are legitimate; I am not denying the pain of the student’s past, and I am not saying that I don’t care. The student could come to me at any time to talk, but I won’t be the one evaluating his or her future college or job applications.

  14

  FAHIMA’S ROCKS

  I walk out of the teachers’ compound on a Wednesday afternoon at four thirty, the beginning of a Somaliland weekend. The sun is no longer at its peak, so hopefully with sunglasses and a hat, my pale skin won’t burn. The day is so predictably warm and windy that it could be any day of any month, at least one that doesn’t have rain. I, too, now have my predictable routine.

  We have established a project to make pathways between our buildings, a great effort because the area is blanketed with rocks of all sizes. As usual, my work partner is already digging her sabrat, her iron spear, into the earth, pulling up another rock that had been tarnishing the path. She’s covered up, like all the girls, but her skinny fingers show that she probably weighs only eighty pounds. I hand her a carrot, one of the few foods I know she’ll eat. I don’t know how a human can survive on so little food, never mind one who brings the intensity to a day that this young woman brings to each hour.

  “Hmm,” she says, looking up at me for a second. She says this with a huff that is hiding a smile. She’s clearly glad I’ve arrived but is also implying that it is about time I show
ed up. She has brought a sabrat for me, too, and now the two of us are digging up rocks.

  “Why do we do this?” I ask, testing her.

  “Because it is worth making our world even a little better,” she replies, adding, “The rocks we move don’t move themselves back.” My protégé has been listening.

  The civil war in the late ’80s and early ’90s left Somaliland all but uninhabitable. Siad Barre’s Somalia military regime had fighter planes taking off from Hargeisa Airport and flying missions to destroy every rooftop and every farm in the region. From what I could tell, they succeeded, the evidence still present in village ruins across the country.

  With much of the population fleeing the country, many to refugee camps, survival, rather than investment or development, became the focus. The roads are so marred by potholes that driving seems like controlling the handset in a dangerous video game. Transportation is by old cars, donkey cart, or trucks. Hargeisa Airport is a relic, something you could picture in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night when commercial travel to remote areas was new. The cities have electricity, but much of the country is dark. Huge parts of Hargeisa are not on a water line, and the water is insufficient where it is available. This leaves people trucking water from wells at far greater cost, with the weight of the heavily loaded trucks further damaging the roads. The University of Hargeisa, the largest public university in the country, didn’t open until September 2000.