The day after the SOS Sheikh exam in September 2009, Mubarik returns for the results, which are going to be read aloud at the same school where the test had been administered. The examination board had invited the top 150 students from the national exam, which had been given in the spring. From this pool, SOS Sheikh is going to pick its incoming students. I had gotten permission to piggyback on this test to populate my own incoming first class at Abaarso. We have been working on the school for sixteen months and are finally ready to admit students.
Mubarik joins the crowd in the open-air courtyard at the center of the building. He is with his friends, but many students have more significant support teams with them—parents, siblings, grandparents, clansmen, friends, even some principals and teachers from their schools. People had traveled great distances from all over Somaliland to take this exam. Those from Billeh’s home city, Erigavo, had driven at least twelve hours, much of them over harsh terrain one can barely call a road.
One young lady, named Amal Mohamed, had come from Burao, Somaliland’s second-biggest city, four hours away. With her for results day are her primary school teachers and her best friend, Zaynab, who has also taken the exam. Her mother had stayed back in Burao with Amal’s eight siblings, but Amal will call her as soon as she gets the results. She is looking forward to being accepted at SOS, a boarding school with a great reputation near her home. She wants to be close to her mother, brothers, and sisters.
Amal had been born to Somali parents in Saudi Arabia, where her father was working for the government. Her schooling was in Arabic and the family spoke Somali, so she grew up speaking both. She loved the sitcom Friends, which was broadcast in English with Arabic subtitles. She’d faithfully translate what was being said to what was written, and in this way she taught herself English, which she wanted to speak with an American accent. In 2004, her family returned to Somaliland. Amal didn’t discover until they were at the airport and her father boarded a different flight that he was instead going to Ireland. She hadn’t seen him since. He will be proud that she has taken the SOS exam, and she hopes she’ll be able to deliver to him the same good news that she will be delivering to her mother.
One parent, Amran Abdi, has no student with her. She is the mother of Deqa Abdirahman. Amran has a college degree, rare for a Somali woman. A year earlier, she had graduated from Hargeisa University, having returned to college after raising her family as a working single mother. Deqa is not with her mother because she is boycotting results day.
Deqa had been outraged at her ranking on the national exam. She had finished eleventh overall, and while eleventh out of ten thousand should call for celebration, she was sickened by the unfair process. Through her teachers at school, she heard that bribing had skewed the results. She also heard that people had been buying the exam ahead of time. She knew she was better than some of the students ranked higher, and she was disgusted to have worked this hard and still not receive her due credit. She decided she wasn’t going to go to high school, period. Education isn’t mandatory in Somaliland, and a lot of kids, especially girls, don’t go past intermediate school. The education system had turned off a great student.
Deqa’s mother had convinced her to at least take the SOS exam, which she reluctantly had done. But she hasn’t accompanied her mother for the results because, in her opinion, this test will be rigged, too. To be here in the crowd, her mother has taken off a few hours from her job at Somaliland’s central bank to hear her daughter’s fate.
SOS is taking only 50 students out of the 126 who have taken the exam, so tension is high. It is all a low-budget affair, no podium or microphone, just school and examination board officials standing on a raised porch with a crowd waiting below. Kids who know each other are chatting, but even then, the conversations are uneasy. What if your friend gets in and you don’t? What if you dash the hopes your parents have for you? What if you never have the chance to fulfill your dream of getting a decent education? There is always public school, and there are other private schools, but this group is the best and brightest in the country, and SOS is in a league by itself.
Things quiet down suddenly when the head of Somaliland’s examination board, a tall, amply bearded man named Daud, takes his place to read the list of students heading to SOS. One by one the names are read. With each name, cheers and whoops sound from wherever that child and his constituency stand. After a short time and many names, the sense of impending disappointment grows.
Amal starts to cry. Oh God, please say my name, she says to herself, clutching the hand of her friend, who is also still waiting.
Zaynab’s name is called. “That finishes SOS,” Daud says in conclusion. Amal’s friend is the last person to get into SOS this year.
Mubarik’s name isn’t called, either, which doesn’t give him relief like he thought it might. He doesn’t know it, but he has just missed the cut for SOS by an alphabetical tiebreaker. The boy who is chosen ahead of him is named Mohamed Ahmed Abdi, whereas Mubarik is Mubarik Mohamed Mohamoud, so Mohamed Ahmed Abdi gets the final spot.
As for Deqa, her name hasn’t been called, but her mother, Amran, doesn’t mind at all. She is waiting for Daud to call out the next list, which names the students selected for Abaarso. Deqa’s principal had been impressed by what he had heard about my new school and suggested that Amran and Deqa consider it seriously. Amran had even instructed Deqa to list Abaarso as her school of choice on the cover of her exam. Out of the 126 examinees, Deqa is one of only seventeen to do this. Most of the students have never even heard of my school.
By the time Daud calls out the Abaarso list, the excitement has faded. It is almost like the next list is for the leftovers, the booby prize. People are more bewildered than enthusiastic. Amran isn’t; as she hoped, Deqa’s name is on the list. Mubarik’s and Amal’s names are called, too, but they don’t share Amran’s thrill. Their first choice, SOS, is now full. They are directed to a classroom where they are to meet their new school’s administration and find out enrollment details. Mubarik isn’t sure he even wants to go in. Amal’s reaction is even worse.
I am just about to enter the room to meet my new students when I see a round-faced teenage girl with black eyes sitting on the steps of the courtyard, crying hysterically. Even through her tears, Amal’s spoken English is terrific. I want to know why she is so distraught.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I wanted SOS,” she says. The way every Somali pronounces “SOS,” it sounds like “sauce.”
“Why?” I inquire.
“I just wanted SOS.”
Grading the results the night before, I had seen that 87 percent of students had chosen SOS, and forty-four out of the top fifty. This was the first time I’d realized how revered SOS was in Somaliland thinking, in Amal’s case apparently beyond even needing a reason. I know my Abaarso School will be better, but my business background should also have prepared me for how slowly consumer preferences change; brand loyalty is a very real thing. Amal hasn’t told me that her best friend had been selected to SOS, both separating them and possibly creating jealousy.
I sit down next to her so as to be on her level, and I stare at her with a ferocious seriousness. My eyes are focused on this unhappy girl, who may never have seen green eyes before, nor ever had a man sitting next to her. “Look at me and listen to me,” I tell her. “It just so happens that I’m extremely smart, and I’m going to make this school better than anything you can imagine. Your not getting into SOS will be the luckiest thing that ever happened to you. That’s a promise.” I may have been guilty of arrogance but not of misleading or overpromising. Indeed, I expected our results to blow away SOS. I fully intended to make sure of it.
I don’t know what is going through her mind, but she gets up and we walk into the classroom together to join the thirty or so other students, most of whom had also wanted SOS over Abaarso. I will never hear a peep about “wanting SOS” from Amal again. The others in the room have no idea what they are even doing in here, but I have their attention. Step one to achieving my mission is getting them onboard, committing to enroll in a school they haven’t chosen and don’t know.