The 80-km stretch of road between the Liboi border point and the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Garissa County is as dusty and bumpy as it is fraught with the risk of attacks by Al-Shabaab terrorists. However, for the refugees fleeing the violence that has rocked Somalia since the ouster of President Siad Barre in 1991, this road makes the difference between hell and heaven.
Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Somalis have used this road to escape the fighting and find refuge in Dadaab, which today hosts 209,606 refugees. Of these, a vast majority — 201,496— are Somalis. Interestingly, slightly more than half of the total population are children of schoolgoing age. One of them is Hussein Abdi Ahmed. Ahmed is much more than just a number. He packs a penetrating gaze. His angular face is set with determination. His pink shirt is clean and well-pressed. And although his English vocabulary is severely limited, he is neither afraid nor embarrassed to initiate a conversation.
Before he came to Kenya in 2008, Ahmed, now 16, used to herd camels in Mogadishu but violence forced him and his family to flee to safety in Kenya. He had never been to school. This changed when he got to the Dadaab Refugee Camp, where he enrolled in a class taught by what is known in Dadaab as ‘incentive teachers’. These are refugees who have some form of training or an interest in teaching. Usually, they are Form Four leavers who are given a short induction course and then sent to class in the hope that they can help to impart knowledge to their charges. Next month, Ahmed will sit for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination.
Although he is fluent in the Somali language, he cannot speak Kiswahili at all. This notwithstanding, he will be sitting a Kiswahili paper in the national examination, competing against candidates who have spoken the national language most of their lives. “If I was taught (and examined) in Somali language, I would pass the exam because I could understand better,” he says through a translator. REPATRIATION Given the challenges he faces, it is not surprising that his ambition is to become a teacher. Dadaab has 22 primary and six secondary schools, 22 early childhood education centres and nine alternative basic education centres.