It is September 2012, and one year has passed since the open house at which we announced Mubarik’s scholarship to Worcester Academy, and once again parents, students, and dignitaries are filling Abaarso’s big hall, eagerly awaiting the next scholarship news. They are about to witness nothing less than a referendum on Mubarik’s performance at Worcester Academy—and, in turn, on Abaarso’s mission.
I had kept up with Mubarik’s progress during infrequent Skype calls with my mother. Mubarik stayed with her during school vacations and holidays, which was a learning experience for both of them. For Mubarik, being in the United States had been a culture shock. He had never seen landscaped lawns, lush forests, extravagant gardens, and so many trees and flowers. He may have been the only person to ever declare Worcester, Massachusetts, to be a place of unparalleled beauty. Upon seeing a landscape crew working on a lawn in Worcester, he remarked something along the lines of, “There’s so much grass here, you cut it. Why not use goats?”
Everything had been new for him, even the toilet. The first time I had seen a squat toilet, which is flat with the ground and has no toilet seat, I had absolutely no idea what to do. Mubarik had been no different with a seated toilet. He broke the seat soon after arriving at my mother’s house. For my mother, having Mubarik stay with her meant developing a whole new reservoir of patience. To slow the tide of household mishaps, she’d eventually put Post-its on things that needed explanation, like NO METAL on the door of the microwave.
During one of our Skype calls, Mom expressed concern at what she felt was the weight of responsibility I had placed on Mubarik’s shoulders. “I know Mubarik feels like the entire future of Abaarso is on his back,” she told me.
“Good. I’m glad he was listening,” I replied.
“Is that fair?”
“For better or for worse, it is the truth and he needs to treat it that way,” I told her. “This is about much more than just Mubarik.”
Originally, Worcester Academy hadn’t wanted to put Mubarik in an Advanced Placement Calculus class. The teacher, coincidentally one of my old math teachers, felt Mubarik had lots of holes in his knowledge. I agreed with him but asked that he give him a shot anyway, insisting that Mubarik’s intelligence and perseverance would help him close the gaps. He’d work overtime to do whatever was necessary.
With the first report card, we got the very good news that our boy could play. He’d caught up in AP Calculus, and the teacher was no longer concerned. AP Chemistry was a struggle, because he’d never done real labs before, but the teacher, a wonderful woman who had previously taught at the college level, adored Mubarik and was patiently working with him. For that matter, all the teachers were patient, especially with him not always being easy to understand. Spoken English had not come quickly to Mubarik, and he still had a lot of trouble with pronunciation.
Worcester Academy isn’t a “rich kids’” school per se but, compared to Mubarik’s upbringing, even the middle-class students seemed like billionaires. With such a difference in backgrounds, Mubarik could have been isolated and outcast, but he wasn’t. Students and faculty embraced him in every possible way. They even had a special day where they added a Somaliland flag to the ceiling of their cafeteria, and they made a Somali meal for the whole school. Their “goat stew” was given Mubarik’s Somali stamp of approval.
For his first Thanksgiving, a former Abaarso teacher flew him out to Santa Clara, California, to spend the holiday. When he got back, Mom took him to Walmart for a few necessities. Standing in line to get a soda, he announced that his “reward had just come in the mail.”
“What reward?” she asked.
“The reward from California.”
“You got a reward? What did you do?”
“I came in ten,” Mubarik said.
“Ten in what?”
Mubarik, getting a little frustrated, started to talk louder. People in the line started to take notice. “Ten in the race.”
“You were in a race?”
“Yes, Christine entered me in a race and I came in ten.”
“Wow,” Mom said. “How many runners were there?”
When Mubarik answered “ten thousand,” everybody in the Walmart line started clapping. It turned out that he had run in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot, the largest “Turkey Trot” in the United States.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that our former nomad was as good at running without goats as he was with them. Mubarik was fast, and the WA cross-country team had a strong season with Mubarik immediately becoming one of their two star performers. Somalis have a storied history as runners, and in fact, the fastest distance runner in the world is a Somali who competes for the UK. There are endless theories on Somali/Ethiopian/Kenyan dominance, but it seems to come down to superior long-distance-running genetics. On his first day, Mubarik outran others who’d been training for years.
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.