It Takes a School

by Jonathan Starr

  33

  A SOMALI AMONG THE ELITE

  It is early November 2012, in Windsor, Connecticut, and it is a gorgeous day for runners, around fifty degrees and sunny, although somewhat on the breezy side. Today, fifteen of the top prep schools in New England, including Andover, Exeter, and Choate, are brought together for the Division I Cross Country Championship, sponsored by the New England Preparatory School Track Association. This is America’s elite, with those three schools alone boasting presidents and senators, from Franklin Pierce and Daniel Webster to John F. Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as alumni.

  The scene summons all of the clichés associated with prep-school America. Every prep school has a large tent, each labeled with its easily identifiable logo, where the athletes can stretch and complete their prerace preparations. Several hundred friends and family members have already parked their SUVs and BMWs, and are gathered in a football field–sized area around the starting line. Decked out in the apparel of whatever school they are rooting for, they soak in the atmosphere and thrive in the pre-competition passion that energizes these kinds of events. It surely seems to be a place where a slight young Somali might be out of his comfort zone.

  If you’ve ever watched a cross-country meet, you know that the spectator experience is different from the spectator experience at most sporting events. You are not in a seat or confined to one location. At the beginning, you see a mass of runners in their first few hundred yards, but when they disappear around a turn or into a wooded area, you move, too, hustling to another viewing spot where the runners will pass by a short time later.

  By this second viewing, the runners are sorting into groups. You see a lead pack of a dozen or so, some who are top runners, others who are temporarily pushing the pace, then a second pack, then the runners start to string out. Today, it is easy to spot Mohamed, and not only because the vast majority of runners are white. Most of the runners also have a different physique, quite tall and muscular. At five foot six and about 125 pounds, “Mo,” as he is endearingly known, looks like a boy among men. But he isn’t running like he doesn’t belong. He is up with the leaders in the first group, running smoothly and easily.

  Four months earlier, Mohamed had seen his first escalator at the airport in Addis Ababa. He had not even understood that once he stepped on, the escalator would break into stairs. He had placed his suitcase behind him along the separation between steps, and the luggage hit a very unfortunate traveler twenty feet below him when the moving stairs caused it to fall backward.

  If the modern world hadn’t shocked Mohamed enough, the lavishness of the facilities at Northfield Mount Hermon must have exceeded anything this tribal chief’s son could have imagined. The day I had dropped him off, he had been silent, leaving me hoping he was just trying to take it all in.

  When Metta Dael, the admissions officer at NMH, told me they were accepting Mohamed, she immediately wanted to know if they’d been snookered, with our best students going elsewhere. “Don’t worry,” I said, “we have a few top students with different qualities, but Mohamed is as good as any we’ve got.”

  Metta’s question probably highlighted NMH’s sensitivity to its reputation, which was excellent but not historically in the same league as Andover, Exeter, and St. Paul’s School. That is unfortunate, as from my perspective, it is an exceptional school, balancing rigor with a welcoming, nurturing environment. It is where I’d look first to send my own children. Before Mohamed even arrived in the States, he received a visit from an NMH ambassador. The school paid for Grant Gonzalez, the head of the NMH boys’ cross-country team, to visit Abaarso School. A young and energetic teacher, Grant had seen Mubarik run for Worcester Academy at a track meet between the two schools and was so impressed that he contacted me to arrange a summer visit to Abaarso. For Mohamed, Grant’s visit put a friendly face on a daunting situation. For Abaarso, Grant’s visit opened students’ eyes to the reality of these opportunities at American boarding schools.

  Prior to Grant’s arrival, Mohamed had done a half marathon for fun, hadn’t trained, and finished in the top 20. That’s not how things work for most people, and it also wasn’t typical Mohamed. When he did something, he did it with extreme focus and dedication, but while that race convinced him that he had potential, he saw no future in running. He had no coach, no running gear, and no training facility. Grant changed that.

  Varsity cross-country is Mohamed’s first time participating in an organized sport. He has told me how safe and peaceful he feels when he is running, but I think it is more than that. Cross-country and track require the ultimate in discipline, with the rigorous training schedule, the mindful self-pacing, and the careful diet. To me, Mohamed is the human embodiment of discipline.

  At Northfield Mount Hermon, Mohamed is one of only twelve varsity runners. Grant has told me that his top runner, Henry Colt, has taken Mohamed under his wing. Grant used to think that Mohamed might be able to fill the number two spot behind Henry, even in his first year. But the first handful of races have corrected his prediction. Mohamed is already NMH’s top runner.

  At today’s meet, the next viewing opportunity is right about the midpoint of the race. The front-runners appear, and Mo is still right there, running steadily in tenth place. “Go, Mo! Go, Mo!” we yell. This would be a fantastic finish if he could just hold on to it. Top 10 in his first championship race. We’ll know in seven minutes. My uncle Eli, my mother’s brother, asks me what result would disappoint me now. I say, “Are you kidding? We are watching Mohamed run for the New England Championships. This is all the house’s money.”

  Mohamed isn’t the only Abaarso student striving to make his mark in America. Deqa, now a full-time Worcester Academy student, is firing on all cylinders. While physically Deqa is as slow as Mohamed is fast, Worcester Academy has introduced her to a host of new opportunities, and she is doing the equivalent of running for the championship. At her first Model United Nations, an event held at Boston College, she won Top Delegate. She also entered Worcester Academy’s Dexter Prize Contest, which is a public speaking challenge performed in front of the entire school. I remembered this competition well from my time at WA and told Deqa to be very careful; the same students compete year after year and spend months rehearsing for their speeches. She didn’t heed my words, instead memorizing the speech the night before. Deqa was so good that it didn’t matter that she had fallen asleep before finishing her preparation. She made up a different ending and apparently pulled it off so well that she won First Prize. When I asked around if any other foreign student had ever taken this prize, no one at Worcester Academy could remember a foreign student winning. Deqa had done it in her third language.

  Fadumo, too, is rising to the challenges at her prep school. Her visa difficulties solved, she is adjusting to life at Ethel Walker, on all-girls’ school in Simsbury, Connecticut. She isn’t competing for championships, but she is fighting her own war. She has been shortchanged by the chemistry class at Abaarso, and I am realizing it only now. Our chemistry teacher had been dealing with personal struggles that were impacting the classroom, which I hadn’t noticed. The problem was compounded when the teacher left midterm. We tried to replace him with two different teachers from Hargeisa, but both were disasters. Teaching in Hargeisa involves educators bouncing between several schools each day, racking up credit hours and pay, with quality and preparation suffering in return. When these educators briefly came to Abaarso, our students, who know good teaching from bad, quickly picked up on it. “That’s a stupid question, so I’m not going to answer it,” one would tell a student in response to a question she posed.

  As a result, our top students in the States—Deqa, Mohamed, and Fadumo—are nowhere near ready for the AP Chemistry expected of them. They hadn’t had the necessary instruction and had never seen a proper lab. Participating in AP Chemistry would be like learning the basic chemistry and the advanced chemistry at the same time: maybe not impossible, but not a mountain students should be expe
cted to climb. I tell the three to drop AP and take regular chemistry instead.

  Fadumo’s schedule is plenty challenging even without this AP course. She is also homesick, missing her huge family across the world. I have gone to see her a few times because I am worried; but despite being down, she is a real fighter. I see a lot of my sister, Beth, in her: both under five feet tall, both talents, both sometimes falling down, but always getting back up and seeing the challenge through to an admirable completion. Fadumo can’t swim, but she still insists on joining an outdoor group for a rope swing into a river (with a life jacket). She’s never been in a play or even seen one, but she tries out and gets a real part. Naturally, Fadumo refuses to drop AP Chemistry.

  Slowly, Fadumo begins to see Ethel Walker as a second home. She makes new friends, perhaps having now accepted that to do so was in no way a slight of her old ones in Somaliland. By year’s end, she takes the exams for AP Chemistry and AP Calculus, scoring impressive 4s on both.

  Soorer, a girl from our second class, is also thriving at Ethel Walker, performing well in her classes and playing every sport she can. Soorer is the one who keeps the Abaarso students abroad connected, lifting their spirits if they are feeling low or lonely.

  Abdikarim—better known as CK—is bringing a new perspective to his classmates at Wilbraham and Monson Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. When the school has an “international day” with each student holding his country’s flag, CK proudly waves his Somaliland colors for all to see. When there is a bake sale, where most students typically stand behind their table of sweets to sell the goods, CK prefers taking a batch around the room, outselling everyone else. He has exactly the type of personality that Wilbraham and Monson’s headmaster likes. The student body is learning just by being around him. CK is named a proctor, and the headmaster commits to helping him get into college.

  Naima is embracing all there is to offer at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut. In terms of academic and even social rigor, Taft is about as serious as you can get, no doubt eclipsing a good number of colleges. Taft’s admissions director had asked for a spirited all-around student, and we suggested Naima for the part. Naima is gregarious and fun-loving, and within days of arrival at Taft is trying out for every activity. But Taft’s competitiveness soon takes a toll on her. She is not finding it easy and, worried about her, I go to see how she is doing.

  I cautiously ask Taft’s headmaster what he thinks of her performance. “She’s going to make it!” he exclaims, showing both excitement and surprise. “We had our review of every student in the school, and Naima is absolutely competing here.” Behind his words is a reality that he reiterates for me. Taft is ranked as one of the top schools in all of the United States. Naima is going to make it there, and that she can is in itself an amazing feat worth celebrating. Like the result of Mohamed’s race, the success of all these students means that, in the parlance of Las Vegas, we are playing with the house’s money.

  Adjusting to life in the United States hasn’t come easily. As one student said, “The United States is not a different country, it’s a different planet.” To help the students’ transition, my mom and her friends have spent weeks preparing extra special care packages for them. Each student receives sheet sets with matching comforters that will help them fit into the elite boarding school scene. Not only do Mom and her friends purchase nice room decor, but they have also studied the trending dress codes and buy or collect ski jackets and backpacks that will be in style.

  Once the kids are settled in at their various schools, Mom, her friends, and her two brothers, Eli and Bill, act as their surrogate parents. They go to parent-teacher conferences, musical and theater performances, track races and soccer games. During school holidays, the students stay with Mom in Worcester, even addressing her as “Mum” or “Mum Susan.” She manages to get them free gym memberships and refurbished bicycles and makes sure they have appropriate movies to watch.

  The learning curve in these early years is steep. Over Thanksgiving 2012, Mom is impressed at how neatly Mohamed is making his bed. It doesn’t even look slept in. In fact, it is not slept in. He is sleeping on top of the quilt, probably freezing. It turns out that we need to tell all the kids to sleep under the sheets, top sheets being uncommon in Somaliland.

  Hosting these young guests proves challenging for Mom. She is a self-described clean freak, and with all these teenagers in the house, clean is impossible. Students pull the drain out of the bathtub, break the seat off the toilet, unfurl the decorative Roman shades, turn off the oil burner, melt plastic in the oven, leave wet towels everywhere. Mom loves them all and knows they don’t mean to do damage, but keeping everything functioning is getting away from her.

  To alleviate some of the pressure on Mom, she and I start contacting Somali families living in the New England area to see if they are interested in hosting students. Some have been here for many years and are very Americanized. Others are more traditional. Many families are thrilled with the idea and want to be involved, and soon we have wonderful Somali families all over the East Coast hosting students for weeks and months at a time. Still, some seem baffled about why we are doing all of this for the students, but they, too, love these young people and want to play their part in these kids’ success stories. They provide a touch of Somaliland my mom cannot, frying traditional meat pies, celebrating Muslim holidays, and immersing these adolescents in the sights and smells closer to their traditional home.

  Our family friends have also been a great support for the students. They drive them to the train, invite them to dinner, and collect winter jackets and quilts for them. Mom’s friend Jill, a clothier by profession, is the go-to person for advice on prom gowns and graduation dresses. Several friends who have been “matched” with a student early on have developed strong mentor relationships that are just as important as their financial support. Thank heavens for the help.

  Abaarso students are not free of the typical adolescent angst. They are homesick as well as anxious to make us proud. That struggle can take its toll on students’ self-confidence and lead to not-so-unusual adolescent depression. Mom visits whoever is suffering, offers encouragement, and even gets students into counseling if the situation warrants it.

  What does it take for students to be happy and successful in boarding schools or colleges? Academic strength and perseverance are key. But the students also need to feel they belong, and they need to know how to negotiate the system. Most middle-class kids I know just assume that they will succeed in college and that their parents are behind them to offer whatever help they need. They are taught how to seek out faculty, use the college’s support system, advocate for themselves, and call home when they have questions. While all that hovering can also be a problem, it gives them a sense of safety. On the other hand, kids from underserved communities often do not learn to seek help and may not have someone to offer sound advice that comes from experience. Even American students who are the first in their families ever to go to college report feeling like a phony, wondering when someone will realize they are impostors. We will not allow this to happen to our Abaarso kids in the United States. They are foreigners, but we cannot allow them to feel like they don’t belong.

  So why did my mother volunteer for this job as “surrogate mother” to my students? She had grown up in the 1950s, reading Little Women, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, stories of children who overcame hardships. By far her favorite was Little Men, in which one of the characters, Jo March, runs a school for needy boys. Mom says I have given her the role of a lifetime—the chance to be Jo.

  In a way, Mohamed has given me the chance of a lifetime, the chance to cheer on an athlete and scholar who has proven that Abaarso can compete with the best. Eli and I are jockeying for space at the finish line at the cross-country championships, where everyone is waiting for the leaders to show themselves. They will soon pop out of the woods about a hundred yards away. It doesn’t surprise us at all to see a tall, blond, long-striding
youth in an Exeter shirt come into sight ahead of the rest. Exeter is the defending champion and is the favorite to win again.

  The next runner to emerge represents Belmont Hill School, but right behind him comes the unexpected and unmistakable diminutive figure of Mohamed. Yes, Mohamed Hussein, the Somali from Abaarso School, with less than six months of training and coaching under his belt, has taken third place in the New England Prep School Cross Country Championships, just sixteen seconds behind the champion.

  Any other kid would be over the moon after such a performance. Mohamed isn’t dissatisfied, but he also makes no distinction between the house’s money and his own. He’s had a taste, and he wants more. He tells Eli, “If I keep improving, I can win it next year.”

  The runner from Belmont Hill School will go on to be a multisport star at Harvard, so Mo is traveling in distinguished company. But Mo is no slouch. He leads Northfield to its highest finish in years and demonstrates that he is poised to challenge the world’s elite. And, like the other top finishers, Mohamed is proving no less capable in the classroom. He’s becoming a star in every way.

  In his senior year, Mohamed proves almost impossible to beat. In his penultimate race, he’d give NMH back their course record by beating the time of an Exeter student who’d previously been the fastest. Then, at the New England Championship, hosted by the prestigious 150-year-old St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, John Kerry’s old stomping grounds, Mo is ready. He wins the event while breaking a decade-old course record.

  For his efforts, Mohamed is named Gatorade Massachusetts Boys’ Cross Country Runner of the Year. In the world of elite New England preparatory schools, Mohamed Hussein has put Somaliland and Abaarso on the map.