Now that we’ve accepted the compromise report of the Higher Education Commission, which clarifies the role of Khadar and me, I return to the business of running the school. Although Khadar is difficult to work with, I put in my best effort. However, I am insisting that he and the board take on proper financial planning and accountability rather than just thinking I’ll fund every shortfall. Khadar, however, wants my money to come without any real stipulations.
The kids are making incredible progress. To choose our incoming class in our fourth year, we decide to forgo the shared exam with SOS Sheikh and conduct our own. We will write it ourselves and administer it in two locations, Hargeisa and Burao. Because Abaarso is inconvenient for much of the country, it isn’t fair that some students should have to drive ten hours to take our exam. Burao is much more centrally located. The people of Burao are excited to learn we will hold an exam in their city. Even the mayor of the city is eager to host us. To ensure the exam goes off without a hitch, we prepare in every way possible. Two months before the test day, Harry goes to the Ministry of Education, where he gets a signed letter giving us permission to hold our test there. We also secure a testing site at a public university in Burao. A few days before the exam, Harry; Mike, our finance manager; Michelle, a teacher; and I travel to Burao to make the final preparations. The country’s lack of infrastructure makes it impossible to drive directly from Hargeisa to Burao, so we must first travel three hours northeast to Berbera, and then two hours southeast from there. The only direct road is a brutal drive that will not save any time.
We are going to stay at the home of a Somali doctor who has spent the last forty years in Germany and is now back in Somaliland. We have also arranged for a handful of our students from the Burao area to help register students for the exam—ensuring that there is no cheating is of utmost importance.
In Burao, we spend some of the day visiting local schools and getting potential students excited about coming for the exam. We then go to the university, where we spend several hours arranging the exam room, which requires separating and numbering all of the desks. We have invited the test-taking students to show up to have their pictures and physical measurements taken. This is a precaution to close up a cheating loophole that Harry had discovered at our exam the previous years.
Harry has had lots of testing experience. By this point, he has learned almost all the tricks cheaters use. At our testing site in Hargeisa, he goes from testing room to testing room to monitor the teachers and students and address any issues or requests that might arise. One year, when he stepped outside to buy some soft drinks for our proctors, he recognized one of our male students sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car. This struck him as odd, so he walked over to see what was going on. In the backseat was another of our male students, as well as a boy he didn’t know, who was introduced to him as a relative of the other two. When he asked what they were doing there, they told him they were waiting on a friend who was inside taking the exam.
Harry didn’t think anything of it until several days later when he saw this same young man, the supposed “relative,” reporting to Abaarso School as one of our incoming ninth graders. Harry then realized that he had used a substitute to take the exam for him the day that Harry had seen him in the car. Of course, we could not let the boy enroll at our school under those circumstances. Future checks revealed that many times, potential students were sending substitutes to take the exam for them. To prevent this, we started announcing in Somali that we were checking all names and photos, and anyone found taking the exam for someone else would be brought to the police. I remember one guy who dashed full-speed out of the room and compound after the announcement. Now we photograph and measure all of our test takers prior to the exam to quash this kind of fraud. The same face who registers needs to belong to the one who takes the test and the one who shows up at the school on registration day.
In Burao, my teachers, our volunteer students, and I spend much of the afternoon feverishly working to get the exam room ready, registering our potential test takers, and setting out test books for the following day. To curb the cheating, we have printed up hundreds of test books with different orders of questions and answers so students sitting near each other cannot copy off another’s paper. After hours of setup, we are finally ready. Locking the doors behind us, we head to dinner, charged up for the coming day.
The following morning, we arrive at the university to see hundreds of kids waiting outside to take the test. But we quickly learn there is a problem. The grounds people are telling us that the Ministry of Education has not sanctioned us, and we aren’t going to be allowed to administer our exam. Soon, soldiers armed with AK-47s arrive and tell us the same thing. I start calling all of the local people I can think of who support Abaarso to show up and help us. Well-connected and respected people begin to come to our aid.
We try to get in touch with contacts at the Ministry of Education, but we can’t reach anyone. We hear that there is a government official in town, and we arrange to have him and others, including Harry, meet at the mayor’s office in Burao to figure out a solution. The mayor wants the test to proceed as planned, but he is in a quandary, as he seems to be receiving contradictory orders. Harry goes to the meeting; I stay behind at the university with the teachers and students. Harry proceeds to tell those in attendance at the meeting our side of the story, hoping to convince them that what is happening is unfair. He explains that we are trying to give the people of Burao and eastern Somaliland access to our school; hundreds clearly want it, but someone is obviously blocking us.
The government official and the mayor tell Harry to give them five minutes to talk, but when ten minutes pass and they have not returned, Harry grows unsettled. Finally, the mayor reenters the room, where the others in attendance begin speaking to each other in Somali. Harry does not have a translator and cannot understand what is being said. Finally, he stands up and looks outside the office, hoping to see the government official on his way into the room. Instead, he finds the hallway empty. He searches the area but can’t find him, so he asks a watchman by the front gate if he has seen anyone leave the premises. He learns that the official just left in his car, so he reports this to the mayor. When the mayor reaches the official on the phone, he finds the gentleman well on his way back to Hargeisa. We will receive no help from him.
Deflated, we all return to the doctor’s house to regroup and figure out what to do. The government thinks we are at a hotel, and we learn that someone has sent police to search the hotels so they can arrest us and send us back to Hargeisa. Eventually, we report to the police ourselves, and they tell us we must get out of town. We comply and make the long journey back, our car filling with dust every time we slow down, because on top of everything else, the back windshield accidentally shattered when we closed the trunk that day.
Back in Hargeisa, the U.S. embassy in Djibouti has heard about the situation and calls to check on our safety. Although this is reassuring, I know they can’t do much about it. We stop at a restaurant to eat and discuss the situation. Why did this blockage of our test happen? Was it Khadar using his clan connections in the government to disrupt Abaarso’s recruitment efforts and make us look like outlaws? Was it the director of the exam board seeking revenge against us for not giving him more respect? Was it someone at SOS Sheikh, thinking we were trying to steal the brightest students from the Burao pool? Or someone from the for-profit Burao schools angry that we were taking their students?
That evening, we learn that someone from the Ministry of Education has gone on television to explain how we tried to break the law by administering the entrance exam without permission. Right or wrong, I’m now convinced that we will not receive any justice in this country.
I make the decision to go to war with the ministry, too. I felt wronged by them, and I couldn’t tell if they and Khadar were joined together against us anyway. I give a group of reporters the official letter, signed by the Ministry of Education, approving the administration of our exam, and they publish it the following day, along with our side of the story. Only later will I realize that embarrassing the government has probably been a strategic mistake. My moral outrage at the injustice had allowed me to tell myself otherwise.
I call a consultant at the Ministry of Education and tell him he knows we are right, and it is his responsibility to fight for a just outcome. When I run into him a week later, he is furious at me for “blackmailing his conscience.” That one line sums up my view of what is being done to Abaarso. They know we are right, they aren’t going to do anything to help, and they are actually angry with me for pointing out their moral obligation. My head rings with the Einstein quote often repeated by Fahima, a favorite student of mine: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
After the Burao exam disaster, I decide I will look at moving Abaarso to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, where Somalis also live and are welcome. This is a crazy idea, to start from scratch in a new country, one that doesn’t even allow free speech, and to invest my heart and soul in a new place. But it is the only way I see of getting away from a seemingly unwinnable situation, in which everything we’ve created will ultimately be given to a man who has neither the ability nor the desire to sustain it. It seems that in Somaliland neither contracts nor letters of permission matter. There seems to be no rule of law here other than Khadar getting to call the shots on his clan’s land, even without the support of the people who live there. I can’t keep on building something if the country is going to let him knock it down.
We keep the school open and continue to run it for those students currently enrolled. Despite Mubarik’s success at Worcester Academy and several other students following him to the United States, we do not take a new ninth-grade class of students for the fall of 2012. This is a decision that will affect the lives of the many young people who hope that admittance to Abaarso will change the course of their lives. Many see Abaarso as their only option, the only escape route. I later hear one story in particular from a student whose childhood friends had taken the Abaarso entrance exam the year before but had not scored well enough to gain admittance. The two boys had studied hard in preparation to try again this year. Upon learning that Abaarso will not be taking an incoming class, the two young men saw no other option but to leave Somaliland. They boarded boats for Yemen, hoping to eventually reach Europe. One died during the crossing; the other became stuck at a refugee camp in Italy, where he still remains, unable to secure the paperwork necessary to leave the camp. Stories like this are heartbreaking. But how can we take on more students, promising them an education, when it seems their country will not allow us to fulfill that promise?