It Takes a School

by Jonathan Starr

  We were already giving the Secondary School Admission Test, which boarding schools required, and following very strict procedures. At the completion of the exam, we had to burn the tests on camera, so that the SSAT people would know we had destroyed the materials and they didn’t have to worry about the contents being leaked. Still, our application to establish an SAT test center was rejected again.

  From the start, Abaarso’s mission included preparing students for a university education abroad, a goal that neither Somalilanders nor Americans, it seemed, could even take seriously. We did not need everyone to be accepted to college this first year, but we couldn’t afford a shutout, either. This first graduating class had to make a statement, and given everything else they’d gone through, it was only fitting that they’d need tenacity to even attend the most important test of their lives.

  The College Board had a position that a student should never have to cross a national border to take the SAT, but if we couldn’t give a test in Somaliland, then our students would have to do exactly that. We ended up having to make two trips on two different testing dates. The majority of our students had registered for the October 2012 exam in Addis Ababa. The second, a smaller group of six students who had missed that deadline, had to travel to Ethiopia several weeks later.

  The trip required multiple days of travel, using several different modes of transportation. We began by busing our kids to the Ethiopian border, where they boarded minibuses to Dire Dawa, a small city halfway between Somaliland and Addis, where they spent the night. From there, coach buses we had arranged took them the rest of the way.

  For most of these students, this would be their first time visiting a foreign country. Somaliland is a conservative Muslim country. Addis Ababa, and most of Ethiopia, is overwhelmingly Christian, and this in itself would be a culture shock. Our kids saw men and women walking together, holding hands and kissing. People were drinking beer, which is illegal in Somaliland. Women were also not covered, something new for our kids of both sexes. Ethiopia also has dangerous areas, so we admonished them to stay in groups and not to wander off. We also warned them of pickpockets and thieves, neither of which are found in Hargeisa.

  It was a terribly unfair position to put these kids in, having them travel to a foreign country for the first time, with the added pressure of taking an exam that literally would decide their futures. My mother reminded me of a conversation she had when driving my sister, Beth, to her junior year SAT. “How are you doing?” Mom asked. “Well,” my sister answered, “considering that my entire future depends on the next three hours, I guess I’m all right.” And that’s how a middle-class student in the United States felt waking up in her own bed and taking the SAT in her own high school ten minutes away. And if Beth didn’t do well, she could have gone back a couple of months later to take it again.

  We did the best we could to soften the experience for our students, scheduling in an extra day in Addis so the kids could visit the location where the test would be administered and also get some much-needed rest. Thankfully, many of our teachers were familiar with the country. Abaarso teachers often spent their vacations in Ethiopia: it is much cheaper than Somaliland, and in Ethiopia the teachers can let their hair down, socialize, go to a nightclub, and take a break from campus life. The teachers were extremely helpful in terms of finding suitable accommodations for the students and knowing where to move about in the city.

  It took a lot of coordination, including getting all the kids passports and visas. It was such an important trip for our students. Abaarso was new, so with no experience analyzing an Abaarso transcript, colleges would look extra hard at these SAT scores.

  With the emphasis the College Board had placed on test “security”—that being the reason we couldn’t make Abaarso a testing center—I expected there to be no cheating on this exam. Instead, I was floored by reports from our teachers of the test center’s complete mismanagement of the registration. Even more shocking were reports from our students that Ethiopian students were cheating. Apparently, the test center was packed with students and desks that were nearly touching each other, a blatant violation of the testing codes, while the administrators only walked around the room to give a five-minute warning. Students in the exam were sharing answers, talking, working on answers during the short rest period between sections, and even going back to previous units after they discussed the answers with other kids during the breaks. The behavior made it clear that this center knew they could act with impunity. I was proud to hear that our students didn’t participate, but I was also disgusted. We’d spent years telling them that cheating was always the wrong road, and now they had to watch others benefit from dishonesty on the most important of exams. I never wanted to send a student back there again.

  Of course, I fired off a letter of complaint and again lobbied for an SAT testing center in Somaliland, this time enlisting the help of EducationUSA, the State Department’s organization that promotes American education around the world. They managed to get negotiations started again, and in April 2013, it seemed the College Board was eager to collaborate with us on allowing access to the SAT by establishing a center in Hargeisa. However, to date, we still do not have the SAT in Somaliland, as the College Board rejects us for the same reasons time and again. Fortunately, the ACT (American College Testing), SAT’s rival, stepped up and provided us a center. They were every bit as easy to work with as the College Board was difficult. Future students would benefit from this access, but for our first college admissions, by far the most critical, we’d be relying on results achieved under the most unfair of testing circumstances.

  36

  DEPORTATION

  It is December 2012, nearly three and a half years since launching Abaarso, and six months since the Burao exam disaster. I have just completed my whirlwind tour of American colleges and have landed at the airport in Berbera, where I board a bus for the several-hour ride back to Abaarso. I am settling into a seat in the empty back row, when suddenly I see a soldier with an AK-47 walking up the aisle toward me. He does not speak any English. There is a man with him, someone with a uniform that indicates he is from Somaliland Immigration, and he does the talking.

  “Get off this bus!” he commands me. “You must get off this bus now!” He is already having my bags removed from the top of the vehicle.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “You will get off this bus, and we are sending you back to your country on the next plane.”

  “I have a visa.”

  “You will get off this bus now!” he repeats.

  The solider now makes an angry sound, motioning me to get up and leave. I am the only one in my row. My flight had landed in the port town of Berbera about forty minutes earlier, and while I faced some trouble with Immigration then, too, it was nothing like this. Actually, the people in Immigration seemed confused at that time, stopping me but not being sure why. I had put them on the phone with Munir, the same Abaarso supporter who helped Harry with the visas, and he’d gotten me through. But those weren’t officials. They were just employees confused by their orders. The immigration officer in front of me now must be their boss, this time determined to do the job himself. The armed soldier with him should have made it that much more menacing, but I was too pissed off to care.

  “I’m not leaving a place where I’m wanted, where I’m contributing a great deal, just because one or two selfish people don’t want me here,” I say. I then lie down on my seat, so they will understand that I am not leaving. I am not going anywhere.

  “Get off the bus!” he demands.

  “If you want me out of the country, then you’ll have to carry me onto a plane and hold me there. If you think I’m going to help you, then you are very mistaken.”

  For the last two years, I have felt like a character in my favorite college book, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It is the story of the movers and shakers of the world getting fed up with the abuse they are subjected to. Rand had initially titled it The Strike becaus
e the characters decide to do just that. They stop producing for a world that demonizes them and obstructs their progress. While I may not be a mover and shaker of the world, I think I am building something real in Somaliland. Abaarso’s success, proven by our students’ ability to thrive in historic American prep schools, is a true contribution to a society desperately wanting to rebuild. I am giving it everything I have, funding the school whenever necessary, working nonstop, thinking of nothing else, and calling in every favor that could possibly help.

  And just as in Atlas Shrugged, my reward is abuse. The Ministry of Education official puts every obstacle in the way of our visas. We had to fight Khadar for the right to volunteer at Abaarso and fund the school. They tried to arrest us in Burao for administering an approved exam. Perhaps like Rand’s characters, like my hero Francisco D’Anconia, I, too, should go on strike. I could leave Abaarso and watch it collapse while I start a new school over the border in Ethiopia. That way everyone can see that Khadar is a complete fraud. Is that the right move? There are certainly people who deserve that outcome, those who have behaved badly and those who have not stood up for what is right.

  But there is a strong reason to fight on—the students. Not just to help their futures, but because every injustice we suffer teaches them another lesson in integrity and tenacity. My driving thought is that when they are in charge, they will not be a Khadar, nor will they be someone who watches a Khadar without stopping him. Our students are growing up to be ethical and effective leaders in a place that desperately needs them, and that is a cause worth suffering for.

  By the time I was in flight to Berbera, I had already decided that Abaarso must make peace with the government. I no longer believed the government was the enemy. Khadar was the enemy. The Burao incident had been a great injustice, but I had overreacted in my response and incorrectly read it as the government not stopping until they gave Khadar the school. While I didn’t know the true explanation behind what had happened in Burao, Abaarso’s destruction was not in their interest. Governing in Somaliland is complicated, and where Khadar was in conflict with Abaarso, officials just didn’t want to show loyalties.

  Lying down on the seat of the bus, I try to focus my racing mind to solve this mess. Obviously, this government official is the pawn, but who has given the order? I am sure Khadar is behind it, but is the Ministry of Education, too? Am I wrong, and have they finally decided to give him exactly what he wants?

  As soon as this trouble started, I called Harry. Harry then pulled our handful of students with influential parents out of class, so they could start making phone calls. In the meantime I wait, with no intention of going anywhere.

  It is of course possible that this soldier will shoot me. I can’t completely dismiss that. But I have also learned something else in my years in Somaliland. I’ve learned that few civil servants have real conviction about their jobs, and this is even truer for the police. This man with the AK-47 is probably paid $100 per month, not a lot of pay to engage in violence. Keeping the peace is what this country is about. Even though guns are widespread in Somaliland, people are not quick to use them. If they were then the clans would still be at war. I doubt this soldier would pull the trigger even if ordered.

  “Somaliland is peaceful and wants to be recognized,” I say to the immigration officer. “Do you want to be the one who shoots the American who donates his money to educate Somali children?”

  My aggressors do not know what to do. They clearly have their orders, and they just as clearly have no idea how to carry them out. “Get off the bus!” one of them yells. But I am not complicit, and without my help he is lost.

  Now, the other passengers on the bus get involved, and for the immigration officer and the soldier, their involvement makes matters worse. The passengers are siding with me and yelling at them to leave me alone and let me go on my way. It isn’t that they are impatient, that this confrontation is delaying their travel; Somalis are the most patient people I’ve ever met, willing to wait hours without complaining. It is a matter of justice. They have not seen me do anything wrong, I have explained to them who I am, and they see there is no defense for the hostile actions. While the bus isn’t cleared to move, the immigration officer and soldier step off to regroup and seek guidance.

  Harry, meanwhile, has gotten through to the vice president of Somaliland who has gotten through to the Ministry of Interior. Immigration falls under Interior, and the ministry confirms that no order has been given to send me out of the country. The minister of education is also contacted, and she says the same. Not long after, my bags are put back on the bus, and we are cleared all the way to Hargeisa.

  Shortly after getting back to Abaarso, I receive an e-mail from a relative of Khadar’s whose friend was with Khadar at the time of the deportation attempt. The relative wants to make sure I am safe. The e-mail reads:

  It was Khadar who was calling the Immigration on that minute, and who told them to deport you. Be on the alert for any possible harm from his side.…

  It continues, adding that Immigration thought Khadar was calling from an official position.

  The witness was with him at that moment and first Khadar declared his happiness to him, saying that he just talked to the immigration and that you are being deported out of the country.

  When Immigration called back to say the minister of education had told them to let me go,

  He became extremely mad at that news and he almost made an accident in his car! Khadar is angry at you for exposing him, and for showing the world who this person is. He hates me because I supported you.… Work positively and change your anger into the love for these poor kids. His cunning can no longer work.… Please also use safeguarding mechanisms against him and anybody else he may send to do harm to you, to the teachers and even to the kids.

  We had dodged yet another attack and now were beginning to see alliances change. The relative of Khadar’s who had sent the e-mail, the vice president, the ministers, and even the passengers on the bus have stood up to Khadar. In the deportation battle, Francisco D’Anconia’s strike has succeeded.

  37

  THE FULL ARSENAL

  The same night as the Berbera deportation incident, the situation Khadar has created becomes dangerous. Khadar controls a newspaper that we will call Gollis, which he has led since I’ve met him. Gollis is based at Khadar’s office and everyone considers it to be “Khadar’s paper.” This had actually been the source of grief for us early on because Gollis had been extremely critical of the government. As people then viewed Abaarso as Khadar’s school, the government had in turn been unhappy with Abaarso.

  After Khadar fails to have me deported, Gollis publishes a story that alleges that an Abaarso teacher has made comments against Islam to an Abaarso student. The article posts a photograph of the teacher who is a U.K. citizen but refers to him as an American. It also says there is a marijuana “drug culture” growing at the campus. It goes on to say that the government isn’t stopping the school, so the people have to. Another news site that we’ll call Daallo picks up the story and takes it even further. It calls the school staff Christian missionaries out to destroy Islam.

  The Gollis and Daallo articles are then picked up by several other Somali news sources. In this conservative to extremist Islamic country, these statements create an extremely dangerous situation for the school. Several comments made on the websites confirm this. One comment reads, “If we kill four of the Americans, then the rest will go home.” The staff at Abaarso is put on high alert.

  Billeh contacts Khadar to see if he can resolve the situation. Khadar claims that he first didn’t know that his newspaper had run the article; that whoever published it has taken it from another news site; and that he removed the article immediately upon discovering it. However, he then shows knowledge of the situation, claiming to have spoken to the family of the student making the accusation and having been provided evidence that seems to substantiate the claim. According to Khadar, the evidence can be fo
und in a Facebook conversation between the student and the teacher accused of expressing the anti-Islamic point of view.

  We know the accuser is not a student of Abaarso at all but rather a student from various other educational programs we’d been running in Hargeisa, which we will collectively refer to as the Hargeisa Programs. I had started and managed these in the fall of 2010 for two purposes: one, to provide a service to the community; and two, to have a source of funding for the Abaarso School. Just as we had not taken a new ninth-grade class after the Burao exam, we had also stopped the Hargeisa Programs, meaning our English-language program for adults, our tutoring service for grade-school children, and our college classes. However, without our permission, Khadar had opened a new office, using the same name we had used for our Hargeisa Programs. Khadar’s operation recruited whomever it could from among our students, used our logos, and took credit for all we’d done while literally Photoshopping me out of the picture.

  The so-called Abaarso students making the accusations are in fact Khadar’s students, not Abaarso School students; it would have to be a heck of a coincidence for them to show up in his newspaper without his knowledge. Furthermore, the more inflammatory Daallo article appears tied to him as well. It turns out that a close relative of Khadar’s owned Daallo, and Somalis we talked to believe that the European news site could only have gotten information about a student at Khadar’s Hargeisa Programs from Khadar himself.

  Attacks do not end here. We hear from our students that Khadar has sent a couple of his Hargeisa Programs students to recruit kids who had left Abaarso over the years, to help him in the attacks on us. These recruits are generally dropouts or expelled kids, and according to our own students, these kids are promised everything they want if they agree to speak out against the school and the American staff. One dropout even informs Mubarik of Khadar’s offer before stepping in front of the cameras to speak out against Abaarso. With every day, the tension on campus increases. Teachers are on guard, and it is increasingly difficult to think about anything else.