It Takes a School Read online

  When he was nine, word came from his grandmother that she needed help. She was living in a refugee camp, and the camp was counting family members present to determine how much food each would be rationed. The refugees had been living there for years, having been driven out of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, during the civil war with Somalia. Thousands of people had been forced to flee Hargeisa, its residents relocating to the homes of relatives or to camps run by the United Nations and other humanitarian aid agencies.

  Mubarik joined a hundred people to walk thirteen hours across the desert in order to boost his family’s numbers. He had never seen this many people in the same place at the same time. Everybody, even the children, walked through the night, beginning at seven p.m. and arriving at eight a.m. the next day.

  The refugee camp had a semipermanent look to it. There were tents, but there were also houses, traditional Somali structures of clay with thatched roofs. Mubarik stayed for about a week. There were kids about his age who, like his grandmother, had been forced out of Hargeisa. They were playing soccer, the first time he had ever seen the sport, and he wanted to join in. The kids started making fun of him, saying nomads were barbaric. He had no idea why they were insulting him like this, until his grandmother explained that these children attended school, something he knew nothing about. In fact, there was a school at the camp that went up to the fifth grade.

  When Mubarik went back to his family, he told his parents that he wanted to go to school, too. His mother was sympathetic, but his father said no. No one in his family had ever been to school, and no one had anything good to say about getting an education. So his father thought he was a weak child because he didn’t want to walk with the animals.

  Mubarik was stubborn, and although it would be disrespectful, he thought it was necessary to defy his father. He told the family that if they didn’t allow him to attend school, he was going to run away and never return. He didn’t have a plan, but his mother, concerned that he would carry out his threat, convinced his father to let him study with a nearby community of Sufis. Sufis were Islamic mystics who taught Arabic and Islam in exchange for goats, a little money, a little food, anything a student might be able to offer.

  Mubarik stayed with the Sufis for less than six months, which he counted by the moon. He didn’t like it there; it was not the lifestyle he had in mind and not the kind of learning, either. Ever since he had seen the trucks crossing the desert, he had his mind set on learning how to build one. He wasn’t going to go back to the nomadic life, so he ran away from his school and traveled to the spot where the refugee camp had been, hoping to find his grandmother. But the camp was now closed and his grandmother had returned to Hargeisa.

  He found a truck leaving for the city and hid in the back. He had no idea that the ride to Hargeisa would be longer than an entire night and into the following day. Making it worse, he had been very sick and hungry even before the trip started. When the truck finally arrived in the city, Mubarik was discovered by the driver, who wondered where this ill child had come from. The driver asked his age, which he knew was ten or eleven, but he didn’t know for sure because age was counted by the seasons, beginning in the spring. Every time the rains came, you just knew you were a year older. The driver wanted to help him find his grandmother, fearing that he might collapse or die at any moment. It took days, but eventually they located her.

  Mubarik’s arrival in Hargeisa marked the first time he had been in a city, and it was overwhelming. Donkey carts rode down the middle of busy roads; goats ate garbage and wandered into traffic; chickens, baboons, wild dogs, and throngs of pedestrians rushed everywhere. Trucks, the rare wonders of his childhood, were now in the middle of congestion, overloaded with passengers and cargo.

  Fascinating people filled Hargeisa’s roads, including schoolchildren clearly identifiable by their uniforms. Mubarik didn’t know where the schools were yet, but when he found his grandmother, he determined that his next stop would be school. He also couldn’t believe the garbage. Where he came from, there were no manufactured products, so there was certainly no manufactured trash. Now everything reeked—the food, the exhaust, the open sewers, the burning garbage. Mubarik held his nose for three days, to very little avail.

  The long-awaited reunion with his grandmother was gratifying, although she was very upset that he left his family and then stowed away to the city. Somehow, she got word to his father that Mubarik was with her, and of course he wanted to take his son home. Mubarik remained defiant. He told his father he would rather be homeless than be a nomad. The desire to go to school was his driving force, and with his grandmother’s help, he managed to enroll in a private religious school in Hargeisa, taught in Arabic, which he found intellectually unfulfilling.

  Mubarik stayed with his grandmother for about a year, until she became gravely ill and needed to move in with her daughter. Now he was essentially homeless. When he could, he stayed with people he knew, but he always felt like a parasite. He was often hungry and in the streets looking for food. He enrolled at a public school after he received permission from the principal. The curriculum was in Somali, so now he had to learn to read and write in that language. Whereas Arabic was read right to left, Somali was read left to right with a completely different alphabet, which was challenging, but Mubarik picked it up quickly.

  In eighth grade, like all eighth graders, he took the national exam and scored high enough to qualify for the entry exam given by the SOS Sheikh School. Mr. Darlington had left Sheikh a couple years after Siad Barre’s coup, and the school closed down altogether during the civil war. In 2000, SOS, a giant international nonprofit, renovated and reopened Sheikh and appended its name to it. At the time that Mubarik was in eighth grade, SOS Sheikh was once again considered the best school in the country. However, Mubarik didn’t have the resources to attend SOS even if he was accepted, so he didn’t want to take the exam. What good would it do if he wasn’t able to go? But some of his school friends talked him into taking it with them.

  The test was being administered in a nondescript public school building in downtown Hargeisa. Mubarik was curious to see if he could get in, although he was already feeling guilty. If he was to be accepted, would that mean he had taken the spot of someone else who might have had the means to go? What a position to be in. He had come so far, qualifying for the SOS Sheikh test, which meant he was one of the top students in the country. But whether accepted or not, he thought this opportunity wasn’t going to work out for him. He was wrong.

  5

  RESULTS DAY

  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.
r />   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.

  6

  THE EXAM

  Back up a couple of days to when the SOS entrance exam was being given. The exam had been created by SOS. My staff and I had come to the testing site to help proctor it, as Abaarso would also be accepting its students based on this test. Only about half of the 150 students who had qualified actually showed up. I couldn’t imagine how this could be, when the national opinion of SOS was so high. How could some students travel from the far regions of the country and others not even bother to come? When the paltry turnout was confirmed, walk-ins were allowed to sit for the exam. I was baffled by how these walk-ins knew to be here. Maybe this poor turnout happened every year, I thought—which I soon learned was indeed the case. But how could random walk-ins possibly compete with the top students in the country? I guess the exam results would speak for themselves.

  Those who had come were mostly boys. There were some girls, too, but the split was 85:15. Nor did SOS have the dorm space to take many girls. In Billeh’s day, it was boys only, and while girls were now welcome there, they were a small minority.

  Students would list their first choice—SOS or Abaarso—then after the scores were tallied, the top students would get their chosen school until one of the schools filled up. Then everyone left on the list went to the other. Foolis
hly, I thought we would fill up first. Boy, was I wrong. Local society was not aware of my dream to build a world-class school that would develop the future leaders of the country, nor would they have granted my idea any credibility had they been aware of it. My vision wasn’t even credible to my friends back home.

  I had a lot to learn about the ways a war-torn society is broken, and the exam itself would provide my first big lesson. The 126 students who were taking the test were spread over a handful of rooms. Each room was equipped with table-like desks, and each desk had a short bench, which jammed in three students. The kids were literally sitting shoulder to shoulder. In each room, there was a monitor from Abaarso and a monitor from SOS. Even then, proctoring so many students who were so closely packed together would not be easy.

  No sooner had the test begun than the rampant and blatant cheating started. I had never seen anything like it. If you just walked into the testing room, you would assume a group project was in session, with the students beautifully joining forces to share notes and ideas. Of course, it wasn’t a group project. It was a straight-up, independent examination with students engaging in the most overt cheating imaginable.