The Good News About Somalia Thread

[-Nomadique-]

This is a thread that will be dedicated to good news about Somalia and Somalis all around the world.

 

It's very easy to dwell on all that has gone wrong for Somalis. Here is a thread that will highlight all that has gone right, and all those who do right. If you're ever having one of those bad days when you think the nightmare for Somalis will never end, hopefully this thread will be of help. If you ever come across something worthy, please post it right here.

 

From a sister who cares.

[-Nomadique-]

Kenya's "Alternative Nobel" winner pledges cash for peace

 

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A woman awarded one of Sweden's "Alternative Nobel" prizes for her mediation work in a conflict-riven region of north Kenya pledged on Thursday to use her $77,000 prize money to found a "Peace University."

 

Dekha Ibrahim Abdi will travel to Stockholm in December to receive one of the four 2007 Right Livelihood Awards for her work since the 1990s promoting solutions to feuds and deadly conflicts in Kenya's remote and neglected north-east.

 

 

 

"The award money is a recognition for the work I have done, and that work I did not do alone, but with my fellow Kenyans, especially with the people of Wajir," said Abdi.

 

The Kenyan activist was born in Wajir in 1964 when the region was immersed in a bloody conflict called the "Shifta War", as the newly independent government in Nairobi sought to crush a pro-Somali secessionist movement.

 

"I hope to use the money as an endowment fund for the Peace University in Wajir," Abdi added, saying she would work to build up a pro-peace higher learning centre from scratch.

 

At a news conference in Nairobi, Abdi said her motivation for conflict resolution among the mainly nomadic local population came after she failed to sit her high school exam because her family had fled their home due to fighting.

 

"The night before, state security agents burnt the villages around us and everyone had to flee to a local school," she said.

 

In their citation, the private Right Livelihood foundation said Abdi's peace negotiation methods have been copied around Kenya and other trouble-spots in Africa.

 

"Her comprehensive methodology combines grassroots activism, a soft but uncompromising leadership, and a spiritual motivation drawing on the teachings of Islam," the citation said.

 

Abdi, a mother-of-four, shares this year's Right Livelihood awards with a Sri Lankan scholar and expert on nuclear threats, a Canadian couple who have worked on threats from genetic crop engineering, and a Bangladeshi solar energy company.

 

SOURCE: Reuters, November 29, 2007

 

Masha'allah Deqa.

[rudy-Diiriye]

wow! sista is gold, Allah bless her. a shining star. I wonder if she has any organization setup there.

 

All the depressed faraaxs, observe! may be its about time to pick your jewels of the ground and stand up like a man.

[-Nomadique-]

From Refugee Camp to Princeton: Against the Odds.

 

From A Prison to Princeton

 

His dorm room was 'beautiful,' he says. 'I didn't have to use my kerosene lamp.'

 

When Abass Hassan Mohamed was born in Somalia in 1982, his father honored the event with a variation on a traditional Somali ritual. Instead of tying the umbilical cord to a goat or wad of money—in hopes that the child would prosper when he grew up—Hassan Mohamed Abdi tied it to a book and buried it near a school. "A book and a pen. I did that for all my children," says Abdi, a bearded man of regal bearing. He was convinced that his progeny, members of a scorned minority tribe, would need a strong education to make their way in the world.

 

Little did he know how far his son would go. Abass is now a junior at Princeton University. And he has become something of a legend in the refugee camp where he was raised, for having blazed a path out of a sanctuary that is also a kind of prison, where young people languish with little hope for a productive life.

 

Abass's odyssey began in Ifo—one of three refugee camps carved out of the Kenyan desert and collectively called Dadaab. He and his parents, grandmother and five siblings fled there from Somalia in 1992—a harrowing journey by foot, truck and bus. The camp is a depressing, dry and dusty place. Their new home was constructed of twigs covered with a plastic sheet. There were no beds, no toilets and no schools. Instead, a fellow refugee convened classes under a tree. "He didn't have chalk. So … he would write in the sand and we'd copy," says Abass.

 

His father had long revered education, crediting his modest success and even his marriage to a woman of higher clan status to his own schooling. Abass and his brothers were very much their father's sons. Once camp officials built a bare-bones elementary school, they were always at the head of the class. When Abass and his younger brother took the test for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, they scored first and second highest of all those in Dadaab. A few years later Abass received the highest score in all of northeastern Kenya and the eighth highest in the nation on his high-school exams.

 

Of the roughly 170,000 refugees who call Dadaab home, a handful make it to Western schools each year, thanks largely to a program operated by World University Service of Canada. Since 1978, WUSC has sent close to 1,000 students from around the world—including Abass's brother Osman—to Canadian universities. Abass found another route out. A visiting professor from Princeton heard about his academic success and sent a Princeton application to Dadaab officials. CARE, which administers the camp and its schools, arranged for Abass's first-ever plane ride so he could take the SAT in Nairobi.

 

Months later, when his acceptance package arrived at CARE's offices, Abass was ecstatic: "I didn't want to cry—that would be unheard of for a Somali man—but I was extremely overjoyed." Two staffers in the Dadaab office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees prepped him, instructing him on American customs and manners. One of them even dipped into her purse to pay his plane fare to America (which he eventually repaid). Hearing he had no money for a visa, Somalis at the United Nations in Geneva sent $100 to help out.

 

In August 2005, Abass landed on U.S. soil. He moved into a tiny dorm room: the most magnificent dwelling he had ever seen. "The room was very beautiful, well furnished with a bed, with a mattress, with a chair, with a table, with electricity. I didn't have to use my kerosene lamp anymore," he says. It took Abass weeks to figure out the radiator on the wall. He also had to learn how to use the shower. His first day in the dining hall, he was astonished at the amount and variety of food: "I thought it was part of Princeton's hospitality welcome … Then I realized that was the same thing that was being served almost on a daily basis." He found two jobs and quickly adjusted to the strange new place.

 

Now a junior studying environmental science, Abass is still working two jobs and sending money back home. But he's also settled in. "I miss my family … but I feel at home in Princeton," he says. Earlier this year he was approved for political asylum, which means eventually he may be able to marry a girl in the camps he has his eye on, and even bring some family members to the United States. That hope makes their lives so much brighter than the lives of tens of thousands of their neighbors, who see only desert sand stretching into infinity.

 

For kids in Dadaab without Abass's diligence and luck, options are few. Even if they can get into a Kenyan university, they're prohibited as refugees from taking jobs in the country once they graduate. If they are not awarded a precious resettlement slot in a peaceful country, or spirited away by a program like WUSC, they essentially have three choices. They can languish, vanish into the illegal netherworld or return to violence-racked Somalia. An estimated 7 million refugees worldwide are similarly "warehoused"—separated from society, deprived of basic rights, trapped in a stateless limbo. That number gives only a hint of the daunting odds a would-be Abass has to overcome.

source.

 

Masha'allah.

[RedSea]

This news is not from Somalia Nomadique. Kenya, America, Britain..etc.

[Nephissa]

Nomadique, no news here sweety, just a Proud Somali. I'm with the 'ELL ya group!

 

This banana doesn't dance for nothin' ya know.... He dances the dance of Somali Pride.

 

It's sad when others aren't so proud.

[Xalimopatra]

Masha'Allah to them all.I sent a msg to Abass via Facebook

[-Nomadique-]

Originally posted by Red Sea:

This news is not from Somalia Nomadique. Kenya, America, Britain..etc.

As I said in my original post, the news I hope to be posted up will be about Somalia AND about Somalis around the world. Cheer up walaal, there is hope for us yet.

 

Neph, Let's go team! :cool:

 

Xalimopatra, how sweet of you, I might just do that too.

[Baashi]

That's the spirit Qallanjo.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Saas aa lagaa rabaa abaayadiis.

 

There are some few youngsters on this site who might not even remember how Soomaaliya was or never set a foot, and yet who still have this positive view of Soomaalis and Soomaaliya. Our Nomad sister is one them, others Daa'uud Samaale and Buuxo.

 

Keep the good cause and work, sister.

[Blessed]

Kudos@ Nomadique.

[Fabregas]

good news= dead ethiopian soldiers, no

[-Serenity-]

Clinging onto straws?

[-Nomadique-]

^Oh stop being such a party pooper.

[Jacaylbaro]

NAIROBI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf is in "serious" condition at a hospital in the Kenyan capital, a security official said on Tuesday.

 

"He is what you would classify as a serious condition. He flew into Nairobi this morning and went straight to Nairobi Hospital," the security official said on condition of anonymity.