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 showed 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.
To Fahima, born after the civil war, habits such as littering without considering damage to the community are all she has ever known. She is the norm, as the majority of the population hasn’t reached eighteen years of age yet. The aid industry isn’t helping this mentality, either, with its handouts and quick-fix programs, none of which seem to provide much in the way of lasting solutions. Even if they do a great job, it isn’t possible for a few dozen foreigners to rehabilitate a country left in ruins. The whole country’s mentality needs to change away from mere survival. Millions have to join Fahima, deciding to invest their effort in making their world a little better.
I couldn’t reach millions, but I could reach our students, and perhaps their perspectives could eventually go viral. This afternoon’s effort already does more than teach only Fahima, which becomes clear within minutes.
Three boys walk by us on their way across campus. They stop at the spectacle of their headmaster and a frail girl spending their afternoon doing hard manual labor. One makes a motion for Fahima to hand him her sabrat. He starts working on a small boulder, the kind that isn’t going to come out with just a few stabs. Even the least competitive among us doesn’t like to lose to a rock, so this boy is certainly not done until it is out. Now one of his friends also wants to take his whacks, so he grabs the sabrat for a minute, making the first boy hungry to get back in. The third boy relieves me of my sabrat and now we have three boys doing this work. They are so focused on this particular boulder that they haven’t noticed Fahima going in for more tools. Soon, all five of us are at work, “making our world a little bit better.”
Some afternoons it could look like a chain gang: twenty students and teachers sharing sabrats, shovels, sledgehammers, even dirt-filled wheelbarrows to fill in the holes left by the removed stones. Soldiers, the guards on duty at the campus’s gate, temporarily put down their guns and pick up a tool, not wanting to be left out of the action. Staff who live in the village, having finished their day’s employment on campus, might put in fifteen minutes of hard work on the grounds before starting their walk home. This rock-clearing project isn’t a punishment or even a plan, at least not by anyone other than Fahima and me. It may not have been traditional fun, but it is satisfying and it is a team effort. And the rocks you removed didn’t go back. The students, teachers, soldiers, villagers, and I are working together, transforming our own campus.
Fahima got to Abaarso in the way that a lot of the students arrived, having not gotten into SOS. Like most of the others, she has realized her luck even in this very first year. But Fahima is an extreme child, and this fate is not one that in my view she takes lightly. For her good fortune, she seems to feel obligated to repay Abaarso by working tirelessly. We first started this rock removal when I realized that every afternoon she was voluntarily mopping the floors around the school. “Someone could come visit,” she’d say, “and I need to make sure that the school looks great.”
I believe Fahima feels that way, but I also think there’s more to it. In time she would tell me about her childhood, the type of youth that no child should ever experience, the kind that can make you cry thinking about it. She is now in a new place, one that makes her hopeful, and maybe Fahima believes that if she shows all the love she can to Abaarso, then it will love her back.
Other teachers respond to her passion by telling her that she has to be less intense and try to have some fun. This only makes Fahima angry. To her, these teachers don’t understand. Which brings us to another reason why we are outside cracking rocks in the midst of a small group. Fahima will be intense and extreme regardless, so at least I can involve her in a more public and social activity. Another clause in this implicit agreement is she would eat the food I bring her and work on some mental math problems. “It is now five thirty p.m., and we are eight hours ahead of New York. What time is it in New York?”—this kind of question.
Students and staff fixing up the campus started during the first days at Abaarso. Before the buildings went up, Abaarso was an empty hill riddled with rocks. It was treacherous to even walk around the land. The construction labor had cleared the rocks from each building’s footprint, but you could sprain your ankle going between them. I probably could have hired a bulldozer to clear it all out, but the campus problem was less urgent than developing the “investment” culture, having the kids believe that their input makes a difference.
When Abaarso started, it was a microcosm of the problems throughout Somaliland’s society—for example, the idea that littering is tolerable. Our students always threw their trash wherever, and I needed them to stop it. I used shame if I had to, letting the culprit know that his action damaged our whole community. Why should we come all the way across the world to help students who don’t care enough about the school to take care of it? Heavy-handed? Probably. But also true, and these students need to hear it. Abaarso School isn’t a handout. Again, Abaarso’s love comes with conditions.
In the beginning, I made sure that every student came to an area of campus and started clearing it. Most hated it and didn’t work hard. Those who put in the effort were referred to as “Jonathan’s slaves.” Some even hummed slave songs they’d heard in Glory, an American Civil War–themed film we showed on “movie night.” Fahima’s example of volunteering is the pinnacle, but it isn’t the first. That credit goes to Tom, the excellent early math teacher, who gained a loyal following among the boys.
With Tom’s guidance, Haibe and Zakariye, two other students, tied string to two stakes that they hammered into the ground, to make sure the path was straight. Other boys looked for large rocks that could line the path right under the string, as Zakariye, pencil hoisted behind his ear, was going to test the width at different points to make sure the two sides of each path run parallel. Tom had them measuring, calculating, and being precise. They felt like engineers. Character-wise Fahima, Haibe, and Zakariye are on their way, having already developed a love for seeing their world improve.