It Takes a School Read online

  The plane came down to a bumpy landing along a runway edged with a few similar prop planes, mostly looking like they’d been abandoned decades before. The small airport had no Jetways, just metal stairs that were pushed up to the aircraft for our exit onto the tarmac. Climbing down the stairs, I was immediately impressed by how little humidity there was, having always imagined Africa as a hot, humid place. Instead, there was only a warm, gentle breeze and bright sunlight. I was met on the tarmac by my own private greeting committee—Uncle Billeh, who had arrived a couple of days earlier, and a tall, well-dressed Somaliland gentleman I had never seen before.

  On the car ride into the city, my uncle’s companion was talking to me in a familiar way and we were getting along well, but Billeh still hadn’t introduced us. Billeh was such a quiet guy, he probably didn’t even realize he needed to. “Who is this guy?” I finally asked Billeh in a whisper.

  We will call the man Khadar Ali, and he held a PhD from a top-20 university in the United States. He’d been copied on some previous e-mails I’d exchanged with Billeh about my trip. My uncle knew him from a couple of international conferences the two had attended over the years in Washington, D.C. When Billeh told him why I was coming to Somaliland, he had asked if he could join us, saying he might be able to help with my quest.

  The road into Hargeisa was filled with billboards, mostly advertising the country’s big telecommunication and money transfer companies, but the one that caught my attention was for a nonprofit organization that cleared land mines. It was a startling reminder that I was in a different world with some very different priorities.

  Getting into the city was painfully slow. The roads were terrible and pocked with potholes and obstacles—cars, trucks, stray animals, and hordes of pedestrians both in the streets and along the narrow dirt shoulder. Also on Hargeisa’s roads were lots of schoolchildren clearly identifiable by their uniforms, with some of the girls covering their faces with a niqab. All the women were covered to an extent I had never seen before. The men mostly wore T-shirts and long pants, but some wore traditional Somali men’s skirts, similar to sarongs, called mawiis. What really struck me, though, was that grown men, some elderly, walked down the street together holding hands with interlocking fingers. No, they were not openly homosexual; homosexuality is prohibited in Somaliland. Somali men are just extremely comfortable with each other physically. I’d soon find that a Somali who shook your hand would still be holding it a minute later.

  To add to the chaos, steering wheels were on the right in the fashion of British cars, but traffic also stayed to the right, unlike in England. This meant drivers in both directions were on the outside of the vehicle, making for harrowing situations and lots of accidents. At one point, we passed a donkey pulling a small wagon with a tank of water. The man seated atop the tank was selling water to anyone who needed it.

  Water was scarce in Somaliland, and even in Hargeisa many households didn’t have access to public water. This year, the lack of rainfall was causing great anxiety. By this time, the rains should have come, and every day they didn’t caused suffering and worry. Somalilanders were desert people who depended on the rains of April and May to survive and thrive. Without them, animals and people would undoubtedly die.

  Something else impressed me on the drive into town: how much trash there was. It was everywhere. Littering was a way of life. If somebody was drinking a Coke, he would just throw the bottle wherever he finished it. Thousands of thin one-use plastic grocery bags of every color were blowing around in the wind until they finally caught on prickly bushes and trees. They were so commonplace that only a newcomer like me would even notice them. People sometimes referred to them as “Hargeisa flowers”—not that the city smelled like flowers. Without factories, Hargeisa lacked an industrial scent, but certain spots offered the distinct smell of burning garbage. Some of those trashed Coke bottles were now wafting through the air as acrid smoke.

  In town, my uncle and I were staying at the Maansoor Hotel, well located and the place to network with important Somalis and international travelers and visitors. From this home base, I would spend the next two weeks venturing out into the city and to other places within driving distance. I had a rough plan of visiting hospitals, schools, an orphanage, and the port at Berbera, a coastal city in the north, all with the purpose of better understanding the country. Billeh was often unable to join me on these “scouting” trips. Even on day one, he was already stuck at the hotel for personal/family/clan “business.” Somalis are famous for their oral society, and someone had caught wind of Billeh’s arrival in-country and his presence at the Maansoor almost before he had gotten off the plane. With that, the news went completely viral, as in Somali viral, to anyone and everyone even tangentially related to him.

  “Relatives” has a different meaning in a clan society, which defines Somaliland. It was the Musa Ismails, Billeh’s subclan, who knew that he was back in the country, and they wanted to see him. One will hear that “clan is everything” in Somaliland. Although this is a strange concept to Westerners, the clan is the cornerstone of social obligation in Somali society.

  Each morning, Billeh would go to the lobby to find a line of “relatives” patiently waiting to see him. Clanspeople helped each other and expected money if one had it and another did not. Billeh would often tell me that the flight and hotel were only a small fraction of the final cost of his trips back to his homeland. His relatives viewed him as having enough wealth to share with those in need, similar to how he benefited from clan generosity when he was younger. Even now, he was getting something in return. The clanism worked in both directions, and although Billeh was no doubt a net payer in the system, a clansman of Billeh’s had his car and driver stationed in the Maansoor parking lot every morning for our entire trip. His only purpose was to serve Billeh if needed.

  At that time, I had no understanding of Somali clan “pressure,” for lack of a better word. The clan and clan loyalty are the heart of any social, judicial, financial, or legislative decision. In some respects, it is a much broader view of family and family responsibility. In Somaliland, clan is family, and just as a Westerner is expected to side with his family, a Somali is expected to go with his clansmen. I had no idea in those early days how crucial an understanding of this system would be to my school’s survival.

  I’d arranged a guide for my trip who would take me around while Billeh was tied up at the hotel. She was the niece of a Somali woman named Edna Adan, who was world-known for her philanthropic work in Somaliland and a friend of Billeh’s, and she generously showed me around the country. I would also come to rely on Khadar, whose presence was a pleasant surprise. His English was flawless, he was highly educated, and his activities in Somaliland included controlling a newspaper. He was primed to take me around, and he seemed to know everyone in the country. In fact, he told me that he had recently been a presidential candidate before being pushed out by corruption within his party. Khadar was married to an American woman who worked for the U.S. government, and he’d lived in the United States for decades, so he also understood my world. He had his own agenda for my trip, which, given my lack of direction, could prove beneficial.

  I told Khadar that I wanted to build a great school for the most promising students in the country. He told me he knew the perfect place we could get land to build it. His enthusiasm was encouraging, as was his confidence that he could help. There was a location not far from Hargeisa that he would show me.

  The next day, we drove to a village about twelve miles west of the outer edge of Hargeisa’s urban sprawl. It was amazing how quickly we moved from city to absolutely nothing. First, we were driving along on the road, seeing buildings on both sides of us. Then, suddenly, all around us was empty space. There were open plains of emptiness, hills of emptiness, and mountains of emptiness. It was all empty. The land was rock hard and barren, and anything that should have been alive looked dead due to the delayed rains. Again, the condition of the road was atrocious, and the
car lurched through one pothole after another. I couldn’t understand why we were still driving. We’d already passed enough land to build a million schools.

  In the middle of the nothingness, there was a makeshift security checkpoint, which consisted of a rope that was tied to two poles on either side of the road, manned by some armed security folks. While we were waiting for clearance, we were approached by women with baskets of fruit for sale, mangoes, guavas, and oranges that were still green. Apparently, their business was selling to cars stopped at the checkpoint. There were a few permanent-looking buildings made of concrete in the area, as well as a few buildings that looked quite temporary and a number of nomadic cloth huts. This, I was told, was Abaarso Village.

  Khadar instructed his driver to stop the vehicle near a group of men standing by the side of the road. These guys were going to take us to the site Khadar had in mind. I couldn’t understand what they were saying because the conversation was all in Somali. But after a short time, a couple of the men climbed into the way back of the car and started directing us where to go. We turned off the main “highway” onto dirt roads, which were sometimes just unimproved paths across the dry desert. After about a mile, we stopped and got out. The ground was incredibly rocky, covered with loose stones about the size of baseballs, often on top of large boulders pushing out of the earth. You needed to watch every step to avoid twisting an ankle. Aside from a handful of acacia trees, nothing was alive.

  I couldn’t figure out why we would come to this spot rather than any other place in the previous eleven miles of desolate land we had passed getting to Abaarso. To Khadar, it made perfect sense. This was a great place to build the boarding school and these gentlemen in the car were going to be generous enough to donate the land. Apparently, they had told him, “Our father never did anything with this land, so it just sat here doing nothing. We don’t want to be the same way.”

  So here we were in Abaarso, on this empty hill with some rocks and dirt, and these people in the village saying it could be ours. I didn’t even know whether it was their land to give away. They said they’d mark the boundaries with stones, and those were certainly in supply. I trusted Billeh, and he seemed to trust Khadar, and Khadar seemed to think this was not only legitimate but also a great opportunity. He had the résumé and knew Somaliland much better than my uncle, who had been in America for decades and had never lived in Hargeisa. The land did not seem like much of a gift considering land was pretty much in infinite supply, but Khadar said it was the right land. It was completely dry but he said we could drill for water. At the time I didn’t know that abaar is the Somali word for “drought.”

  Several days later, we returned with some friends of Khadar’s who he said would be helpful to our school. For all I knew, it may or may not have been the same spot. It had all the same empty qualities, as well as all the rocks. They all thought it was the perfect place as they gushed about the virtues of this nothingness. I was thinking, If you say so, but I was dubious. All their “look at the beautiful views” didn’t help, though, in their defense, they were able to picture it after the rains, while all I saw was brown. Somaliland is very different at the end of the dry season. On this visit, I did not think Abaarso was beautiful in the least, but I desperately wanted a place for my project. We would build in Abaarso.

  9

  CLANS

  I returned to the United States to continue organizing the school from there, and Khadar sent me pictures of a dinner that symbolized the completion of the land transfer. He informed me that it temporarily needed to be put in his name. He said he’d transfer it over to the school as soon as the school’s government filings were complete.

  Like Billeh, Khadar was part of the Isaaq clan, as were the vast majority of Somaliland people, probably totaling a few million and 80 percent of the Somaliland population. I thought that there was no difference from one Isaaq to another. I thought clan was only relevant when there was a conflict with another major Somali clan, such as the Darod, who border the Isaaq on the east, or the Hawiye, who live in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. I know all Isaaq clansmen remember the pains of their civil war, when the Somali dictator, who was not Isaaq, laid waste to their cities. It is true that on this level the Isaaq clansmen are all united, but it turns out that is only a surface-level understanding of how clans impact Somaliland society.

  I approached the concept of clans from my limited knowledge of the Rwandan genocide. In Rwanda, you were either a Hutu or a Tutsi, and that was where the difference among the clansmen ended. If two people are Tutsis, then they are on the same team. I assumed the same was true for members of the Isaaq clan. But when Isaaq clansmen are dealing within their own clan, the fact that they are both Isaaq becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is their subclan. Three Isaaq might be united against a Darod, but that doesn’t mean the three Isaaq view one another as equals. If two of them are from one subclan and the other from another, the two who are from the same subclan will be expected to stick together against the third. If all three are from the same subclan, then you go down another subclan layer to where they split, and once again the two who are closer family are expected to be united. And thus it continues, through sub-sub-subclans, all the way down to choosing one’s brother over one’s cousin.

  Within the Isaaq clan, Billeh and Khadar were on different lineage tracks from the very first Isaaq split many centuries ago. I knew that Billeh’s clan led back to his home in Erigavo, but I didn’t know anything about Khadar’s, nor did I know it would be relevant. As it turned out, Khadar traces his subclans down numerous layers until finally landing on the clan whose ancestral home is Abaarso Village. Khadar had grown up in Hargeisa, but clan-wise, Abaarso is his family’s historic home and its inhabitants are his people. For better or for worse, I would build my school in his territory, though I didn’t know it at the time.

  Khadar’s clan ties to Abaarso Village had made the land acquisition for the school easy and explained why Khadar had bypassed the vast open spaces between Hargeisa and Abaarso. From his perspective, he could easily connect with the local people and make his pitch. If any of them gave him trouble, then he could call on elders in common who could sit everyone down and make peace. At the same time, if Khadar promised the school to a different village, then his clansmen would be furious and would demand to know why he’d help another village instead of theirs. Bringing a successful school to his own village would gain him glory among his clansmen. It would also gain him a tremendous amount of control, as even the Somaliland government will rarely challenge a clansman in his home village. My school being built in that village would inextricably link the school and Khadar in the minds of all Somalilanders. Given the significance of the clan connection, I would regret not knowing about it sooner.

  Next Khadar connected me to a Somali architect in Atlanta, Georgia, to draw up the plans for the multibuilding complex. The architect was also clan-connected to Abaarso Village. The architect, a man by the name of Amin, provided some early drawings free of charge. I liked Amin and felt he truly cared, and while I didn’t go with all his designs, we did use his drawing for the main school building. This would include six classrooms, a larger lecture hall, a library, a staff office, and a cafeteria. It was to be the first phase of construction, and with designs in hand Khadar said he would get quotes from Somaliland construction companies.

  When Khadar came back with the construction quotes, the numbers were much higher than he’d first estimated. Rather than building our school for $500,000, which he had told me was sufficient, the price for full construction was now looking to be at least $1 million. This was a major setback, but Khadar assured me that my $500,000 was more than enough for me to personally donate. He said Somalis were used to talk of projects that never happened, but once they saw our construction starting, they’d come up with wood, cement, and whatever else we needed. If I started it, then the Somali community would come up with the rest. I didn’t know if I believed this, though I certainly wanted
to.

  At the construction site, the first thing built was a perimeter wall. Then ground was broken for the school’s academic building. Khadar would periodically send me pictures, and I loved watching the progress, as well as the construction methods, which were so different from ours. Rather than using machines to dig, workers used hand tools for all the construction work. They even made the concrete blocks on-site, mixing the cement and putting it into molds. Trucks brought in dirt and rocks, as well as stacks of cement bags. When they weren’t transporting materials, they were transporting workers. Dozens of laborers were now transforming the hilltop. Outside the school’s new walls, a tiny economy of makeshift shops had formed to serve the workers.

  Despite the promising start, work didn’t progress as quickly as I had hoped. Before long I made another trip to Abaarso. I spent a couple of weeks in Somaliland working out the remaining phases and details of the project. Khadar and I discussed where to get the furniture and supplies; how to contract with purveyors for food; how to outfit the school with day-to-day supplies, water, power; and everything in between. Feeling assured that construction would continue apace, I returned home to Boston and kicked into overdrive. With less than three months until my next trip to Somaliland, I needed to pack up my life in America, prepare our teachers for travel, and ship supplies and books. I had discovered Books for Africa, an organization whose mission is shipping books and computers in order to end the “drought of books” in Africa. It would still cost us almost $10,000 for the shipping costs, but it was worth it to fill the library in one stroke. I also had to figure out how to deal with the remaining construction delays. Then I would be moving to Somaliland to assume my role as headmaster of the Abaarso School.

  10

  TEACHERS

  To no one’s surprise, recruiting teachers would prove challenging. Folks were not all lining up to work in a not-yet-constructed, armed compound for a not-yet-started school in a breakaway region of the world’s number one failed state. What I could sell was the promise of the school and Somaliland’s track record for safety.