When the “winter sports” season came, Mubarik decided to wrestle. I was back in the States and visiting WA where I saw the incoming headmaster, a man named Ron Cino, who would succeed Dexter Morse. Cino was a wrestler himself and had just come back from watching Mubarik.
“He’s strong and scrappy. He’s actually winning his matches,” Ron reported.
This was shocking. Mubarik is extremely thin, his chest almost concave, which is perfect for running, not so much for wrestling.
Ron continued. “Of course he didn’t get the rules at first and got disqualified from his first bunch of matches.” This I could imagine. If Mubarik got in a fight back in Somaliland, there’d be no limitations on things like elbows to the groin.
By the springtime, Mubarik had it all figured out. He was now a competitive track runner, leading WA to their best season in years and catching the attention of coaches at some other schools. He was extremely well liked by both teachers and students. He was earning As and preparing for Advanced Placement exams. On AP exams, students received scores of 1 through 5. A 3 is a passing score and considered to be a solid achievement. Mubarik received a 3 on his AP Chemistry exam, not bad for a kid who eight months earlier had never seen a lab. On AP Calculus, he scored a perfect 5. Our boy most definitely could play.
The future of Abaarso was on Mubarik’s back, and he succeeded in carrying the entire school. Ron Cino confirmed that WA was ready to take one of Abaarso’s girls for the next year. With that victory we’d at least held serve, but after Mubarik’s success at WA, we were in a position to get scholarships for more students. We needed to market his results.
Mom treated Mubarik like family, which meant he was now spending time with my relatives. When my cousin Lisa Weiss met him, she was so impressed that she proceeded to contact her old friend who was now assistant headmaster at Northfield Mount Hermon School, another East Coast prep school. That winter, I went to see its gorgeous, expansive campus in the middle of nowhere in a Massachusetts town near the Vermont border. I visited on a frosty day, armed with Mubarik’s transcript. The folks there were interested in the possibility of an Abaarso student, that was for sure, but they weren’t interested in someone for just a year. They wanted someone for at least two years, who would eventually graduate from Northfield. Great, I thought, a multiyear deal. But this set the bar higher. Staying through graduation meant college placement, too, which was a major concern for Northfield. College placement for a full-need, international kid was not going to be easy, and they were not going to be happy if it didn’t work out.
Northfield would be one of a number of stops I would make as I began meeting with boarding school administrators and even some college officers about our students. I always had some connection to the places I visited, as I didn’t think we’d stand a chance without a personal introduction. A lot of schools would no doubt assume that even the best Somaliland students couldn’t make it in their environment, just as Worcester Academy originally had feared. I was only focusing on placing top candidates, the ones who I knew could perform. It seemed we could expand from one scholarship the year before, but I didn’t know what was possible. Maybe triple that number?
I saw boarding schools in New England similar to Worcester Academy, as well as others generally considered to be more elite and selective. One of my former business partners, Tom Wieand, even gave me an introduction to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tom worked at the MIT endowment, and he put me in touch with MIT’s dean of admissions. I met with him and gave him my best sell, even though we were still a year away from our first college applicants. The idea of an Abaarso student at MIT brought chills.
* * *
A few months after my visits, the open house at Abaarso to announce our scholarships gets under way with a traditional prayer. One by one I call up the six students who have been awarded scholarships to boarding schools in the States. I tell the audience of students, parents, and dignitaries all about the schools these young people will be attending, as I project photos of the institutions onto a screen. The visuals of the New England boarding schools are absolutely glorious, and everyone oohs and aahs. Deqa is going to Worcester Academy, Mohamed to Northfield Mount Hermon, and Fadumo and Soorer to the Ethel Walker School. Abdikarim (CK) will spend the year at Wilbraham and Monson Academy, and Naima will go to the Taft School. A seventh student, Hamse, has been awarded a scholarship to African Leadership Academy, a high-quality, two-year school in South Africa. ALA is what the British call “college,” which is advanced studies prior to attending university. While still young, ALA had already made a global splash, taking top students from across Africa and then sending them on to many of the best universities in the world.
As each student joins me onstage, he or she receives a banner from his new school to hang on the wall of the lecture hall. “In the coming years, let’s cover this entire room with banners,” I say.
In the second row, I see Edna Adan, whose head is ferociously nodding in agreement. She is the world’s most famous Somalilander, renowned for her maternity hospital and her war against female genital mutilation. Edna had been instrumental in my originally coming to Somaliland. She is a friend of Billeh’s, and I had met her in New York City in 2006 when I had made a contribution to her hospital in Hargeisa. In her mid-seventies, she is more dynamic and full of life than most people will ever be, which no doubt is how she developed such an impressive résumé. She had been first lady when her husband was prime minister of Somalia; foreign minister of Somaliland from 2003 until 2006; a career nurse in the World Health Organization; and Somaliland’s minister of family welfare and social development. Now, here she is at our open house, showcasing her support for Abaarso and displaying her pride for her people.
One of the proudest moments of the day is when Amal takes the stage to congratulate her fellow classmates. I know how difficult this is for her, as she suffers from an intense fear of public speaking. In small groups and one on one, you can’t get Amal to shut up, but I’ve seen her freeze in front of crowds. She has written a heartfelt poem for her friends who are now leaving, and as she begins to read, the fright in her voice melts into sadness. Through tears, she wishes her friends good luck, while highlighting each of their special gifts. She concludes this way:
It’s coming sooner than we expected,
Soon we will all be separated,
It’s been three years,
And what a journey it has been
A path less traveled by others
But trust me, it was worth it.
This in a way does not mark the end of us,
We started being friends,
And ended up being a family,
And family never ends.
Amal herself is not going to the United States this year, but her brave and thoughtful performance stands in stark contrast to the lives of so many girls in Somaliland. She delivers an impressive send-off and in the process wins over at least one supporter. Somaliland’s most famous and strongest woman, Edna Adan, is in tears.
32
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED
Now that we’ve accepted the compromise report of the Higher Education Commission, which clarifies the role of Khadar and me, I return to the business of running the school. Although Khadar is difficult to work with, I put in my best effort. However, I am insisting that he and the board take on proper financial planning and accountability rather than just thinking I’ll fund every shortfall. Khadar, however, wants my money to come without any real stipulations.
The kids are making incredible progress. To choose our incoming class in our fourth year, we decide to forgo the shared exam with SOS Sheikh and conduct our own. We will write it ourselves and administer it in two locations, Hargeisa and Burao. Because Abaarso is inconvenient for much of the country, it isn’t fair that some students should have to drive ten hours to take our exam. Burao is much more centrally located. The people of Burao are excited to learn we will hold an exam in their city. Even the mayor of
the city is eager to host us. To ensure the exam goes off without a hitch, we prepare in every way possible. Two months before the test day, Harry goes to the Ministry of Education, where he gets a signed letter giving us permission to hold our test there. We also secure a testing site at a public university in Burao. A few days before the exam, Harry; Mike, our finance manager; Michelle, a teacher; and I travel to Burao to make the final preparations. The country’s lack of infrastructure makes it impossible to drive directly from Hargeisa to Burao, so we must first travel three hours northeast to Berbera, and then two hours southeast from there. The only direct road is a brutal drive that will not save any time.
We are going to stay at the home of a Somali doctor who has spent the last forty years in Germany and is now back in Somaliland. We have also arranged for a handful of our students from the Burao area to help register students for the exam—ensuring that there is no cheating is of utmost importance.
In Burao, we spend some of the day visiting local schools and getting potential students excited about coming for the exam. We then go to the university, where we spend several hours arranging the exam room, which requires separating and numbering all of the desks. We have invited the test-taking students to show up to have their pictures and physical measurements taken. This is a precaution to close up a cheating loophole that Harry had discovered at our exam the previous years.
Harry has had lots of testing experience. By this point, he has learned almost all the tricks cheaters use. At our testing site in Hargeisa, he goes from testing room to testing room to monitor the teachers and students and address any issues or requests that might arise. One year, when he stepped outside to buy some soft drinks for our proctors, he recognized one of our male students sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car. This struck him as odd, so he walked over to see what was going on. In the backseat was another of our male students, as well as a boy he didn’t know, who was introduced to him as a relative of the other two. When he asked what they were doing there, they told him they were waiting on a friend who was inside taking the exam.
Harry didn’t think anything of it until several days later when he saw this same young man, the supposed “relative,” reporting to Abaarso School as one of our incoming ninth graders. Harry then realized that he had used a substitute to take the exam for him the day that Harry had seen him in the car. Of course, we could not let the boy enroll at our school under those circumstances. Future checks revealed that many times, potential students were sending substitutes to take the exam for them. To prevent this, we started announcing in Somali that we were checking all names and photos, and anyone found taking the exam for someone else would be brought to the police. I remember one guy who dashed full-speed out of the room and compound after the announcement. Now we photograph and measure all of our test takers prior to the exam to quash this kind of fraud. The same face who registers needs to belong to the one who takes the test and the one who shows up at the school on registration day.
In Burao, my teachers, our volunteer students, and I spend much of the afternoon feverishly working to get the exam room ready, registering our potential test takers, and setting out test books for the following day. To curb the cheating, we have printed up hundreds of test books with different orders of questions and answers so students sitting near each other cannot copy off another’s paper. After hours of setup, we are finally ready. Locking the doors behind us, we head to dinner, charged up for the coming day.
The following morning, we arrive at the university to see hundreds of kids waiting outside to take the test. But we quickly learn there is a problem. The grounds people are telling us that the Ministry of Education has not sanctioned us, and we aren’t going to be allowed to administer our exam. Soon, soldiers armed with AK-47s arrive and tell us the same thing. I start calling all of the local people I can think of who support Abaarso to show up and help us. Well-connected and respected people begin to come to our aid.
We try to get in touch with contacts at the Ministry of Education, but we can’t reach anyone. We hear that there is a government official in town, and we arrange to have him and others, including Harry, meet at the mayor’s office in Burao to figure out a solution. The mayor wants the test to proceed as planned, but he is in a quandary, as he seems to be receiving contradictory orders. Harry goes to the meeting; I stay behind at the university with the teachers and students. Harry proceeds to tell those in attendance at the meeting our side of the story, hoping to convince them that what is happening is unfair. He explains that we are trying to give the people of Burao and eastern Somaliland access to our school; hundreds clearly want it, but someone is obviously blocking us.
The government official and the mayor tell Harry to give them five minutes to talk, but when ten minutes pass and they have not returned, Harry grows unsettled. Finally, the mayor reenters the room, where the others in attendance begin speaking to each other in Somali. Harry does not have a translator and cannot understand what is being said. Finally, he stands up and looks outside the office, hoping to see the government official on his way into the room. Instead, he finds the hallway empty. He searches the area but can’t find him, so he asks a watchman by the front gate if he has seen anyone leave the premises. He learns that the official just left in his car, so he reports this to the mayor. When the mayor reaches the official on the phone, he finds the gentleman well on his way back to Hargeisa. We will receive no help from him.
Deflated, we all return to the doctor’s house to regroup and figure out what to do. The government thinks we are at a hotel, and we learn that someone has sent police to search the hotels so they can arrest us and send us back to Hargeisa. Eventually, we report to the police ourselves, and they tell us we must get out of town. We comply and make the long journey back, our car filling with dust every time we slow down, because on top of everything else, the back windshield accidentally shattered when we closed the trunk that day.
Back in Hargeisa, the U.S. embassy in Djibouti has heard about the situation and calls to check on our safety. Although this is reassuring, I know they can’t do much about it. We stop at a restaurant to eat and discuss the situation. Why did this blockage of our test happen? Was it Khadar using his clan connections in the government to disrupt Abaarso’s recruitment efforts and make us look like outlaws? Was it the director of the exam board seeking revenge against us for not giving him more respect? Was it someone at SOS Sheikh, thinking we were trying to steal the brightest students from the Burao pool? Or someone from the for-profit Burao schools angry that we were taking their students?
That evening, we learn that someone from the Ministry of Education has gone on television to explain how we tried to break the law by administering the entrance exam without permission. Right or wrong, I’m now convinced that we will not receive any justice in this country.
I make the decision to go to war with the ministry, too. I felt wronged by them, and I couldn’t tell if they and Khadar were joined together against us anyway. I give a group of reporters the official letter, signed by the Ministry of Education, approving the administration of our exam, and they publish it the following day, along with our side of the story. Only later will I realize that embarrassing the government has probably been a strategic mistake. My moral outrage at the injustice had allowed me to tell myself otherwise.
I call a consultant at the Ministry of Education and tell him he knows we are right, and it is his responsibility to fight for a just outcome. When I run into him a week later, he is furious at me for “blackmailing his conscience.” That one line sums up my view of what is being done to Abaarso. They know we are right, they aren’t going to do anything to help, and they are actually angry with me for pointing out their moral obligation. My head rings with the Einstein quote often repeated by Fahima, a favorite student of mine: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
After the Burao exam disaster, I decide I will look at moving Ab
aarso to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, where Somalis also live and are welcome. This is a crazy idea, to start from scratch in a new country, one that doesn’t even allow free speech, and to invest my heart and soul in a new place. But it is the only way I see of getting away from a seemingly unwinnable situation, in which everything we’ve created will ultimately be given to a man who has neither the ability nor the desire to sustain it. It seems that in Somaliland neither contracts nor letters of permission matter. There seems to be no rule of law here other than Khadar getting to call the shots on his clan’s land, even without the support of the people who live there. I can’t keep on building something if the country is going to let him knock it down.
We keep the school open and continue to run it for those students currently enrolled. Despite Mubarik’s success at Worcester Academy and several other students following him to the United States, we do not take a new ninth-grade class of students for the fall of 2012. This is a decision that will affect the lives of the many young people who hope that admittance to Abaarso will change the course of their lives. Many see Abaarso as their only option, the only escape route. I later hear one story in particular from a student whose childhood friends had taken the Abaarso entrance exam the year before but had not scored well enough to gain admittance. The two boys had studied hard in preparation to try again this year. Upon learning that Abaarso will not be taking an incoming class, the two young men saw no other option but to leave Somaliland. They boarded boats for Yemen, hoping to eventually reach Europe. One died during the crossing; the other became stuck at a refugee camp in Italy, where he still remains, unable to secure the paperwork necessary to leave the camp. Stories like this are heartbreaking. But how can we take on more students, promising them an education, when it seems their country will not allow us to fulfill that promise?
It Takes a School Page 16