The campus mosque calls out the four thirty a.m. prayer. Mohamed Hussein hears it and comes to life. A lot to do today. A lot to do every day, including five daily prayers. Mohamed sleeps in the mosque as well as prays there. He has been selected by his peers to be one of the mosque leaders, a great honor. In fact, by choice he now sleeps in a small room behind the big prayer space instead of in the dorms with the boys. Each morning, he goes down to the boys’ dorms and knocks on each and every door to wake them up. The prayer lasts for ten minutes, after which most students go back to sleep. But Mohamed spends the next two hours before first period studying. He finds these two hours to be the most productive of the day. He memorizes new vocabulary, does SAT (which stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test, now Scholastic Assessment Test) math, and finishes some other homework. Almost two years in, he now knows advanced words, the kinds one finds in the books he wants to be reading. His slang and jargon are still catching up, and there are holes in some of his basic English, but they are getting filled in with practice every day.
Mohamed couldn’t speak any English when he arrived at Abaarso; he didn’t understand a word I said in our first meeting, and his writing skills in the language were extremely limited. Although his parents support his education, they aren’t educated people. They always motivated him to excel in school, but they couldn’t provide much assistance.
Mohamed’s father lost his own father at the age of three. By the age of twelve, he was financially supporting his mother and younger brother. He worked at a carpentry shop until noon and then went to school until the evening. At the age of eighteen, Mohamed’s father married and acquired full ownership of the carpentry shop. That year was indeed his last year of formal education, and he dropped out in the middle of his senior year of high school.
Mohamed’s mother was born in a small village deep in the countryside. She grew up tending to the cattle of her nomadic family. Like many Somali nomad families, her family herded their cattle all year long. The prospect of receiving an education was at best an improbable dream. Nonetheless, his mother moved to Hargeisa in her early teens in hopes of going to school. Yet the Somali civil war soon left the country and her dream in shambles.
Mohamed’s parents sacrificed to ensure that he and his seven siblings had schooling from an early age. Though they struggled financially, his father made sure the children didn’t miss a day of school, paying whatever school fees he could afford. Mohamed credits his parents for instilling in him a great work ethic, a deep sense of gratitude, and an insatiable appetite for learning.
Mohamed thanks God that he has gotten into Abaarso, although here the pressure is on, especially with the all-English policy, which threatens to overwhelm him. Soon after arriving, he called his father to say it was too hard for him and he wanted to quit, but his father told him he must stick with it.
I’ve started hearing from teachers that Mohamed is memorizing every word for every object, that he is memorizing the words from the dictionary along with their definitions. Whenever I see him, he is either studying or memorizing words. If he goes to play soccer with the other boys, he has his flash cards with him for before and after the game. One time, I ask him about objects in the room. I give him the word “pillow,” and he gives me a textbook definition. I say, “Yes, Mohamed, but you could simply have pointed to this,” as I pick one up to show him. For “bed,” he says “A long piece of furniture with four legs that people lie on to sleep.”
On most days, Mohamed gets to breakfast a little before his seven a.m. class. The lines for breakfast are always long and the atmosphere very competitive. Breakfast is usually laxoox, a spongy, pancake-like bread similar to the Ethiopian injera. It is served on a metal plate, accompanied by a cup of tea, Somali-style, essentially overly sweet black tea with ginger, a couple of other spices, milk, and a preposterous amount of sugar. Most of the kids eat the meal with their hands, cupping the bread like a spoon; some mash up the laxoox and pour the tea on it first. When we had built the cafeteria, we had intended for it to be coed, but not long into the first quarter, we learned that the girls didn’t like to eat where the boys can see them, so now we’ve set up a separate cafeteria for the girls.
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.