MPR: Waiting for Somalia

Waiting for Somalia
By Erin Galbally
November 22, 2000

After a decade marred by civil war, an elected government has returned to Somalia. A newly formed three-year transitional government came together in October. Some Somalis in Minnesota are watching the situation closely, especially a family in Owatonna, who are related to the country's newly appointed prime minister.

While her husband returned to Somalia's war-torn capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since 1982, Mariam Mohamad and her children moved to Owatonna, a city already home to her aging parents, sister and a sizeable Somali population. See larger image.
(MPR Photo/Erin Galbally)

MARIAM MOHAMAD has not set foot in Somalia for 15 years. From her home in America she watched her native country plunge into anarchy. At the height of the violence, pregnant with her third child, she took an overnight job at a New York factory, sending all the money back to family members languishing in refugee camps. Mohamad now lives with her three children in a spare two-bedroom apartment in Owatonna, while her husband, the recently appointed Somali prime minister, tries to help the nation recover from a decade of lawlessness.

"I lost my sister; her husband got killed in Somalia," she says. "Because she witnessed seven family members' death, she couldn't take it and got very sick." She points her finger like a gun and moves it quickly across her body. Now none of her relatives remain in the East African country, the majority of those who survived now live scattered across America. Mohamad escaped before violence erupted, after receiving a scholarship to study in California. That was 1985. Since then she's hop-scotched across the Unites States, picking up two graduate degrees and following her husband, a former college professor.

Only recently Mohamad returned from a three-year stint in the Middle East that cast her husband into the Somali political spotlight.

"It was hard for us because though we are educated and we live in America and you always see about what is happening in Somalia and it's heartbreaking when someone who is either American in nationality or ethnic Europeans are losing their lives in Somalia, to help the Somali people, and you as an individual are well educated and not doing anything," she says.

She and her husband established a business in Dubai. That company, a telecommunications business, grew to employ an estimated 3,000 Somalis. Mohamad's husband, a former minister of industry, was soon asked to help form Somalia's new government.

While her husband returned to Somalia's war-torn capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since 1982, Mohamad and her children moved to Owatonna, a city already home to her aging parents, sister and a sizeable Somali population. She believes Somalia and rival factions are ready for peace.

"The government that is there now is not using any force," she says. "It's just trying to do the right thing. People are tired of the fighting."

Even if peace returns to the region, it will takes years to rebuild. Mariam Mohamad predicts she will need to remain in the U.S. for another decade before she can be assured a safe return for her family to Somalia.

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