African, Worcester Schools are now Partners in Learning

Jacaylbaro · January 10, 2011

WORCESTER — Spend an hour with Jonathan M. Starr, and you might forget the city where you’re sitting. His descriptions of life in Somaliland and the school he founded there are so engrossing and different from life here that he can barely get it all in.

Mr. Starr, a 34-year-old Worcester native, Worcester Academy alumnus and former investment banker, was in the city last week to visit his mother, to speak at the academy and to help announce a sister school relationship between the academy and his school, Abaarso Tech.

The students at Abaarso Tech are the same age as Worcester Academy’s high school students and they know how to use Facebook and Skype, but there’s also a world of difference between them. All of Abaarso’s students are Arabic, and the girls must cover almost all of their bodies except their faces when they’re in class. During girls’ basketball games, there are always a couple players adjusting their veils, Mr. Starr said.

Abaarso is co-ed, but contact between the genders — even speaking — is strictly limited. On the other hand, the boys and girls treat each other better within their own gender groups than you would typically see in the U.S., Mr. Starr said.

On Friday, he visited John Murnane’s advanced placement world history class and, with Abaarso student Sulekha Hashi Elmi on speakerphone, told the class a little about Somaliland, a section of Somalia that has its own government but which the United States has not recognized as a separate nation. Somaliland has a president but is largely overseen by clans, who are a check on the president, run their own welfare systems and oversee even minor things, such as how Abaarso will replace two of its cooks. They will probably have to hire two others from the same subclan, Mr. Starr said.

“It’s Wild West,” he said.

Mr. Starr, whose uncle is from Somaliland, has a healthy respect for practices that have helped keep the peace in Somaliland, such as dividing top political posts among the clans rather than the president bringing in a full slate of his own people.

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