Aweis Haji Nur

Istunka, also known as Dabshid, is a festival held annually in lower shabelle, specially Afgooye town Somalia on the Somali new year. The tournament was developed during the medieval Ajuran period, and was centralized in the 19th century under the Sultanate of the Geledi. Consisting of several teams engaging each other in mock combat, it is celebrated alongside other ceremonies such as Nowruz. During the reign of Sultan Ahmed Yusuf, separate teams were established, each supported by an assembly of poets, female vocalists and dance groups throughout the duration of the contest. In the modern era, the festival evolved into a local attraction; particularly during the 1970s and 80s. It is still practiced annually in the southern Afgooye town. The event itself consists of a mock fight between the people residing on each side of the river bed in the town of Afgooye, Symbolizing the defense of one's community and honor, it coincides with the start of the main ha...

Ismahan Husen Abdalla, 18 years, is happy with her achievement. She is now able to read and write, but four years ago that seemed to her an impossible dream. She is one of the students in the only school for the deaf in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. “I am feeling happy; I have ambitions for a bright future. Four years ago I couldn’t read and write, but everything is better now for me, better than it was before,”Ismahan told me. Ismahan has a long term vision for her life now, she says:  “When I graduate from the school I want to go to Media College and work in the field of sign language on television, I want to do more for people with hearing impairments through media.” The school Ismahan attends is run by the Somali National Association of the Deaf (SONAD), It charges eight dollars tuition fees per month and six for the school bus for those families who can afford it. Almost half the 298 students are supported by bursaries available for poor families to encourage the...

Having spent most of his life in the Dadaab refugee camps in north-eastern Kenya, Mohamed Abdi Ishaq, 26, has spent the last few months since returning to Somalia setting up a school for IDP children in Mogadishu. The 84 children are from the most deprived families in El ba’ad IDP camp in Weydow village, 7 km south of the capital. “When I came here I saw these children facing a bleak future. I was not busy in any other work, so I decided to educate them as a volunteer since they are from poor families who cannot afford to take their children to school,”  Mohamed told me. In a corrugated-iron building, the children crowd in, seated on the sand floor for morning lessons in Somali, English and mathematics.  The only equipment is a blackboard on the wall. Not all the children have an exercise book. Mohamed graduated from Towfiq secondary school in Dadaab’s Ifo camp in 2014 and has not found work since then. He lives with his uncle’s family in El-ba’ad camp as they ow...

Halimo Aw-Farah has been enduring sleepless nights worrying about her 17-year-old son, Abdinasir, who is being held by people smugglers in Libya. She says the smugglers have been calling her every day demanding a ransom of $7,500 or else they will kill him. For three months, she has been travelling around Banadir from her home in Hodan, Mogadishu, asking people to contribute money so that she can secure her son’s release. “He has a broken arm and although the injury happened three months ago he hasn’t had the treatment he needs. He told me his arm is infected and swollen and that he and other  boys who were kidnapped with are punished by being made to stand in the hot sun every day,”  Halimo told me. Abdinasir was in his third year of high school when he left for Mogadishu last in June. His mother only knew he had migrated when he called her from Ethiopia. Two months later, he crossed from Sudan to Libya with the aim of reaching Europe. His arm was broken when a bar...

A youth group in Mogadishu, the Somali blood donor volunteers, is providing critical support to hospitals in the city handling emergency medical cases. The group has 5,000 registered members, 600 of whom have donated blood since the group formed in November 2015. The members include university and high school students, football players, businessmen, teachers, journalists and humanitarian workers.  They have a Facebook page to promote membership and share contacts. Omar Abdirahman Ali, 24, a co-founder of the group, graduated from Benadir University school of medicine. “The idea to do this came to our mind when we discovered the need for blood to be available to save mothers, children and other patients who risk bleeding to death in hospitals,”  he said. The members have registered their contacts and blood groups with local hospital, who can call them in case of emergency. Abdullahi Hassan Mohamed, one of the volunteers, said they are on hand whenever they are need...