Mohamed Salah Abdi

I want to leave two things with you. First and foremost, I want you to get educated. But education without discipline is not going to help you. You have to have both. Respect yourself, respect your teachers, and treat other people in a respectful manner. 
Apply that with education and you will not go wrong.

Mohamed Salah Abdi

My name is Mohammed Salah Abdi. I am 74 years old. I was born in Somalia. I was born into a large family of farmers. We had livestock and a banana plantation. We were well to-do.  


Living in our house like most of the Somali households, there were a lot of our relatives. 
 
Farming requires a lot of help, a lot of people working together, to produce not only their own food, but also food for market. Somalia exports a lot of goods. Banana is one of the main exports.

My father was an Italian soldier in Somalia when he met and married my mother. Where they lived, people were having a hard time crossing the river, so my parents built a boat, so people could cross from this side to that side of the river. 
 My parents were known as ‘the boat people’.

Both my parents put the highest value on education.  I have nine brothers and eleven sisters and all of them are educated. They are doctors, engineers, and educators. They are now living in different continents like Africa, Asia, Europe and here in the United States of America. My dad used to say, “If you learn, you become learners, educated, you will never go hungry. If you build wealth, you may lose it, but if you get educated, you will keep that forever!”   

In 1991 there was a civil war that broke out in Somalia. There were a lot of people that were fleeing. People were looting and killing each other. There was a lot of persecution. So that’s when I decided to move my family to a neighboring country called Kenya. I came to the United States, September 19, 1999. I started working here in this school as associate educator.  I’m still working in Sanford after 13 years.


Whether in Somalia or here in the United States of America, I have always been committed to helping younger children become educated, in order to improve their life and become the future leaders of our nation.  I helped all of my 14 children graduate from college. Eleven of them have Masters degrees already.


Both of my parents were firm believers of Islam. We all went to Koranic school, which is kind of Sunday school, where you learn the Bible, but instead of the Bible, the Koran.  We memorized the entire Koran, more than a thousand pages, at a young age.

The word Somalia is two words that became one. So means “you milk yourself”. Mal means camel! Camel is one of the beloved livestock of Somalia. If you visit a Somali family, they will give you a container that they use to milk their camel, and say, “Make yourself at home. Go milk the camel yourself.” The Somali culture is very hospitable. The same as Minnesota culture. I think this is what attracted the Somali people to the state of Minnesota.