by Abdi Warfa
Thursday, June 5, 2014
About twenty years ago, I held my first job in America flipping burgers at McDonald's in Denver, Colorado. I can’t remember if the pay was $4.25 per hour or $4.75. To make ends meet, I would run over to Wendy’s at Alameda Street to clock in additional hours and then off to Burger Kings across the street.
The French fries were tasty but the working hours exhausting.
In those early months in America, I was more than content with frying nuggets or wrapping up big macs. You see, just a month prior to coming to America, the most valuable thing I had was United Nations papers affirming my identity and status as a refugee.
Coming to America, as luck would have it, was the best second chance in a life any refugee could dream. And here I am, some twenty years later, a proud holder of a PhD — a testament to the virtues of second chances in life.
In a time when political pundits and commentators of all stripes question the value of college education in America, I recently set to reflect on this journey and how education made a difference in my own life.
How I got from refugee to PhD is not that complicated: I simply saw college education as the antidote to scrubbing dirt off the floors of McDonalds. I was also on a mission to live the American dream, chasing it all along on its tail!
I can also proudly say my parents’ demand during my school days in Somalia that I excel in my studies “if I want be something in life” paid off dividends.
My parents did not have an opportunity to finish school. My mother never learned how to read or write although she owned and managed flourishing business that had her crisscross international borders. And colonial politics and struggles for freedom in 1950s Africa curtailed my old man’s chances to go beyond grade eight.
Nevertheless my mother’s illiteracy did not stop her to go “tiger mom” on me. My life in Mogadishu bears witness.
As a teenager growing up in Mogadishu, the only constant change in my afternoons were private lessons on chemical reactions and the world of physics. I must admit all the talk about measuring the angles at which a light refracts or the Pythagorean Theorem was yada yada and yibrish to my parents. So was my exuberant talk about meiosis and cell division.
But they did foot the bill to my afternoon educational incursions.
Other minute things made more sense to them. And I was to follow them to the letter.
Walking to school was given. But contrary to the popular picture of barefooted African teenager walking miles to school on an empty stomach, I recall a well fed teenager on ironed white shirt, with a splash of blue dye, and khaki pants. So was lining up in the morning and singing in unison “Guulwadow Siyaad, Aabihii dalkoow [Benevolent Siyad, Father of the nation]” in praise of Dictator M. Siyad Barre. Didn’t matter if you thought he was or despised singing it.
Those were the rules. The expectations.
Parents like mine who could afford sent their kids to afterschool programs for enrichment activities. Soccer, or football, as it is known the world over, was the other stable thing in my afternoons. I grew up watching and mimicking Diego Armando Maradona on the streets of Mogadishu — I now find watching American football much more entertaining, with its sacking and touchdown dances and all. Just saying.
All that normalcy came to an abrupt end in January of 1991 when bullets rained from the sky and the streets of Mogadishu emptied in search of covers and invisible bunkers.
Following the eruption of that nightmare out of the blue sky, my family embarked on a journey through the southern terrains of Somalia and life as refugees in Kenya, our southern neighbor.
In the camps, education took the back seat — there were other pressing issues to worry about, like water and wearable shoes. To be fair, my family and I were more fortunate than many of my countrymen and fellow refugees — we had family members abroad who could afford to send back some money to sustain our lives.
Others were less fortunate. But the whole experience of being in limbo and landing in “no man’s land” was PSTD-inducing, what the Somali refugees called “Buufis.”
So, scarping dirt of the floors of American fast-food restaurants was about getting a second chance in life.
On the night we landed at JFK, in January of 1994, there were snowflakes falling from the sky. I remember wondering “how people live here.” After weathering through several snow storms in Minneapolis, it all makes sense now.
But the math of working multiple fast-food restaurants to sustain life did not add up for me.
It wasn’t the American dream I imagined. And it didn’t align well with my childhood vow to become a “doctor.” Besides, getting a second chance in a life dictated that I re-live my childhood dream.
In the scheme of my live experience, getting college education was no brainer! And no, I didn’t become a medical doctor but Abdi Warfa, PhD, does have a nice ring to it.
Abdi Warfa, PhD, now calls Minnesota home and teaches at Metropolitan State University in St Paul, MN
This article was originally published in Medium.com