Saed Haji Narrator

Ibrahim Hirsi Interviewer

January 13, 2015 Saint Cloud, Minnesota

Saed Haji -SH Ibrahim Hirsi -IH

IH: This is Ibrahim Hirsi recording for the Minnesota Historical Society Somali Oral History Project. I am interviewing Saed Haji in Saint Cloud. The date is January 13, 2015. Saed, first of all, thank you very much for your time here with us.

SH: You’re welcome. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak with you as well.

IH: Great. Thanks! First question, Saed, if you could tell us where were you born?

SH: I was born and raised in a small town in called Garissa, and that is my root. There is a small river that runs through that small town. It’s called River Tana. And most of my childhood, up to now I still have fond memories of where I come from and that small town.

IH: Saed, you were born and grew up in Kenya, but you’re Somali.

SH: Yes.

IH: If you could tell those who don’t know, how did you end up in Kenya?

SH: Excellent. So, basically, what it is is there is a huge population, a huge area that encompasses to be part of Kenya that happened when the colonial British left parts of . They handed up part of the Somali territories and included them to be part of Kenya. And that’s why the Somali population happened to be in parts of the Kenyan territory. It was a Somali territory, the Somali lived in that area, but it’s under, it’s considered to be the territory of Kenya by the demarcation of the border by the British. So there is a significant population of Somalis, it’s significant land. For example, I can say it’s what happened between Mexico and the United States in parts of California and also parts of Texas, where you have areas that were given up by Mexico to the US. And also this is the same thing that happened—that there are land areas, Somali-inhabited area that was given up to the Kenyan government.

IH: So you’re what they consider Somali Kenyan.

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SH: Yes, I am Somali Kenyan, and always proud to be a Somali. So Somalis do live in parts of Kenya. They also live in parts of . There’s a whole region called Ogadenia—that’s the name they give. But it’s part of Ethiopian territory, just by the border, yes.

IH: So tell us a little bit more about your childhood years in the area that you lived. What did you do for fun and how was education like and what was life like there? And a little bit of background of your family, too—your parents.

SH: As I explained to you, I have a lot of history, very rich history, dating back, way back. So in this part of Kenya that is Somali-inhabited, there are three major towns—Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera. These are the three major towns where there is a significant population of Somali Kenyans. Garissa itself is a small city with a population of about a hundred fifty to two hundred thousand people. Recently it is about a million now. Because after the civil war there was a lot of refugee settlements that are coming across the border from Somalia that came to settle that part of Kenya. You have one of the biggest refugee camps there as well—Ifo and Hagadera [Xagardheer], which host a huge number of refugees from Somalia, significantly. But there are also refugees from Sudan, South Sudan, and other parts of Africa as well—eastern Africa, that is.

Garissa, growing up, I went to a primary school called Garissa Primary School. I studied there until Standard Six. They have a different system of education. More so they use the British form of education—that is English and Swahili being the languages that are spoken in the system. I did my Standard Six, and then after that I moved on to a different school. It’s a boarding school and young Muslim children’s home. And when I moved there I started from Standard Six to when I finished Standard Eight. Standard Eight, I did my final exam. After eight years in that primary school you do an exam, then you go to high school. Then I went to high school down in Kenya in the Rift Valley. It’s one of the biggest provinces in Kenya. I went to a school called Nakuru High School. I did my four years there. After I finished, I applied for further studies in the UK and the US, and I happened to come to Florida to do my studies there as well. Then I moved to Minnesota.

Doing fun stuff—I mean, there is a river there. It’s almost similar to the Mississippi. It’s not in size in length, but in size. But it’s very wild. It’s not like the Mississippi—we have a lot of crocodiles, hippos. And we used to swim there, growing up. It’s a very hot region, just as hot as Arizona during the summer, and we used to frolic and dance in those rivers. And we’ll come out every afternoon after we get off school, we will go and have a dip in the river, you know, play around, dangerously getting close to the crocodiles sometimes. We’ve lost a couple of friends, growing up. I’ve seen a couple of people die in the river, but it’s just a normal, people just saw it as a normal life. Across the river there are just women that are washing clothes, beautiful clothes influenced from India, saris, just glittering in the sun. Amazingly, very beautiful. Growing up, I have beautiful memories growing up in this town. Running barefoot and dodging and running away from mosquitoes at night. Just being a young man. Being naughty, throwing stones, fighting and getting scratched here and there, and just having fights and just being a young Somali boy growing up in a Somali region. So I have a lot of memories in that.

IH: And we’ll come back to your personal life and your memories in Somalia. I interviewed people for this project, I mean, a lot of them told me that they left Somalia because of civil war,

2 and some of them came to the USA through Kenya. So I’m just wondering how did those people kind of influence other Somalis in Kenya and life in Somalia in general? How were they seen? What was their story like?

SH: So, Somalis are Somalis—like Somalis in Kenya, Somalis in Ethiopia, Somalis everywhere they live. Somalis share one religion, they share one language, one culture. There is a variance a little bit in how they speak, in the tone and the way they pronounce some of the words, but they completely do understand each other. There is no significant difference in languages and culture and religion. That’s something that they have in common. They’re all nomads. This is historically. They have been known to be nomadic people that moved from one place to another, always looking for greener pasture for their animals. They have cows, they have cattle, they have camels, they have sheep. So they intermarry, they move from one region to another, they meet, they talk. Linguistically, we are very rich, we are very poetic, Somalis, and that’s across the region in East Africa. That is one thing that is very common.

Now, slightly there is a difference. People that live in Kenya, the Somalis were closed out because of the borders, Kenyan borders. That basically said, they divided the Somali into different groups. That is, Somalis from Somalia and then there are Somalis that live in Kenya that are Kenyans, but sometimes they are Somalis. They have that heritage there. So after many years—because this border demarcation goes down a long time ago—so after many years, Somalis and Kenyans kind of have taken on some of the cultural aspects of other communities— very diverse, different. There are almost forty-two tribes in Kenya, while in Somalia it’s just one. So with that, they developed. They kept their culture—the dance, the music, the religion, the language was there—but they also included, borrowed language and other things that became part of their culture. And their behavior as well changed. They were more subdued, more just worrying about what is in between them—and when I am talking about right wing on the Kenyan side of the border—they influence each other that they can do things a certain way. Just plain working hard, going to school. You know, that you don’t have to be really a nomad. You have other options that you can get into.

Then the civil war happened, which was a sad thing. We had an explosion of people running away from the war, that fell to victims of war, running all the way from Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia, coming through the Kenyan border and coming to the Somali regions, inhabited regions of Kenya. And with their arrival, they brought in new ideas, the idea of thinking outside the box, the idea of being independent, the idea of, you know, you don’t really have to stay in one place, that you can go to other places. You can go to Europe, you can go to the US, you can go to so many other countries. They brought a totally—because they are one people that were really divided for a long time. It’s like evolution, you know, Darwin’s theory of evolution, where if you leave an animal or thing in an island, it will adapt and grow and you know… So that’s basically those, that separation of one people for a long time. And each group kind of had unique traits and way of doing things. So with the arrival of Somalis, they kind of opened the eye, they opened the lead for the Somalis inhabited in Kenya, because they didn’t have access, or they didn’t know they didn’t have access to so many other things that were there, that they didn’t really concentrate on or didn’t open their minds up for. So with education and with new ideas of being independent, being business-minded and being revolutionary. Somalis in Kenya were really quiet and not problematic. But with the arrival of the new Somalis from

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Somalia, they brought in new ideas, revolutionary ideas—that you really don’t have to obey authority, you know. You have that option. It’s something that really also enriched me a lot. And I can appreciate some things in that, because I thought I was in a box, and then when they came, they opened that box and made a lot more things possible for a lot of Somalis in Kenya. Politically, also, you know. How to play politics and do things Somalis were introduced to in Kenya as well. And the idea of traveling outside the country, I know people had no idea about that.

[pause in the recording]

SH: Now we are recording. I want to start over and just say Part Two, so that you know which part it is.

IH: We came back after our interview. Haji had to go somewhere, but now we are back, and he’ll continue from where he left over earlier. Haji, do you remember where we were at, what we were talking about?

SH: Yes. I think we were talking about the additional benefits that Somali refugees have added to the local population of the Somalis living in Kenya—which is greatly appreciated, actually— and some of the things that are mentioned, including new ideas and new perspective on politics, culture, enriching the local Somalis, infusing them with the culture that they have and they have been away for a long time. So many things. The Somali population from Somalia played a big role in bringing a lot of changes to the Kenyan Somalis living in the region that is inhabited mostly by Somalis.

IH: And then, earlier on, you mentioned that after high school you went to the UK for college.

SH: Yes. Actually, I was looking for a university to attend, and I got Barry University. It’s a Catholic school in Florida. I was admitted there for about six months. I had my cousin that lived in Minnesota, and he recommended that I move to Minnesota. They have better school systems. So when I moved here, I went…

IH: When was it?

SH: That was in 2003. And I stayed out of school for a while, a couple, two, three years, and then in 2005 I moved to Saint Cloud. I went to Saint Cloud State University. I finished my undergrad in broadcasting and television, and then I embarked in doing my master’s at Augsburg College, which I did leadership course.

IH: So, before we talk about your journey, your educational journey in the States here, I was just wondering, how was the transition like from Kenya to the UK, and then we can talk about from the UK to Minnesota. I mean, how was life different?

SH: It was something new to me in the UK, in that the educational system, the environment, was different. But I did live in a place where there was a huge population of Somalis that came there before, even, after the civil war. Historically, the presence of Somalis is recorded being in the

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UK way back in the early 1900s. But a lot of, more of the population came after the civil war, from 1991. So there was already a significant population. I stayed there for about two months.

IH: And that was in London?

SH: And that was in London, yes, while I was waiting for my admission to a university. Then I came to Florida, which was totally different. There are no Somalis, nobody I knew. There was a new environment. I felt like a total stranger, because it’s not like where I came from. Even there was not a significant population of African Americans that I met with when I was in Miami, Florida. After a while, from my experience, just concentrating more on my studies with no social life or anything like that, because I didn’t know, couldn’t trust anybody, because I’m new to the place. My cousin happened to be in Minnesota, and he told me, “You’ll love this state. You should move here.” I moved here. And he was already a student here, as well, at Saint Cloud State University. I moved here, and when I moved here, I moved to Minneapolis first. I lived in Minneapolis for many years. Many years I worked in Minneapolis. There was also a significant population of Somalis that were there, and there were some that were arriving at that time. Somalis were being exposed to the Minnesota life, to the local Minnesota population at that time. There was a lot of outreach that was happening in Minneapolis to welcome new immigrants.

Minnesota has been good for Somalis. They really feel at home, even though it’s cold and a lot of people wonder what are nomadic, sunny, hot climate people from Africa doing in a cold arctic winter like Minnesota? It’s not even about the weather. It’s about the people. But people can warm your heart even when it’s cold. I cannot say we live in a perfect world, but Minnesota, to a lot of Somalis, they felt welcomed. And there’s a lot of things that need to happen and change as well. We’re not there yet, but most of the Somali population that I have interacted with and I have worked with really feel at home. They feel that Minnesota is their second home or even their first home. Some of the kids were born here. So this is their home. This is where they want to make their lives.

IH: Tell me more about your time at Saint Cloud State University.

SH: My time at Saint Cloud State University when I was a student there…

[brief side conversation with a passerby]

IH: So you were talking about your time at Saint Cloud State.

SH: Saint Cloud State University—my cousin was there. So when I came, there were only about five, six Somalis at Saint Cloud State University who were students. And Saint Cloud is a little bit different from Minneapolis.

IH: And when are we talking about?

SH: We are talking about 2005, early 2005. Saint Cloud is about an hour drive up north from Minneapolis. It’s historically been known to be a small city. It’s one of the cities actually in the northern states that had slaves. It was founded by the Germans and the French. That’s where its

5 name Saint Cloud comes from. It’s French. It’s a river that goes up in the French Rhine out in France. It was a significant population of Germans. So at the beginning, the stories that I heard from the students—the Somali students, or African American students, or Latino students, or Native American students that were going at that time—some of the stories I’ve heard were that there were a lot of discriminations and issues that were going on at the university. Some of the students had it more rough than I, but by the time I got there, there were about fifteen, twenty students of color, Somali, mostly. We used to socialize among ourselves. My first year at the university it wasn’t, even during admission it wasn’t the best experience, because nobody would help me, and what other students, you know—I’m talking about the process of admission. It was very difficult. But throughout my four years, three and a half years in college at Saint Cloud State, that changed. It’s better now. It’s not like before. There’s a lot more work that needs to be done. There’s a lot of people that are doing the work that needs to be done. They are working on it, and I am part of that, part of the people that tried to change that issue of discrimination and, you know, being more inclusive and have a growing city that takes care of everybody that comes in and also that we’re all good neighbors.

So with that experience with the students, like I say, there were a lot of issues, there were a lot of conflicts. There were a lot of issues that were being raised in regards to racism, discrimination, all that. So the Somali students will stick together, be together, and do their own things together. And then from that, there was a peaceful movement started to happen. People started fighting back against discrimination, and raising the issues, and having the right people and leadership in the places where it played a significant role in reducing some of these issues.

Also in the town, the social life was difficult, because the Somali population would just stick to themselves, because they felt like they were not welcome in some places there. So they will have their own small shopping center that they come together. They will have their own small schools, places that they will share. They built their own community from that. And also in high school you have the young Somali children of refugee parents having a hard time in schools, like Apollo High School and Tech High School. There were a lot of issues of race and discrimination, and some of the students were being intimidated—Somalis being called names and all that. It’s a well-documented history of discrimination and racism that was going on at the beginning of when Somalis settled in Saint Cloud, at the beginning.

So, from that, people started to have a different outlook of what Saint Cloud is and what it’s all about. They started fighting back peacefully and bringing this issue on the table, all the way in social life, in schools. So the struggle of this in Saint Cloud wasn’t just happening in schools, it was happening also in the community. You know, Somalis are not being given jobs. There were a lot of complaints of that. But they have been able to adapt and find a way to be part of the community. Things have changed now significantly from five or six years ago. It’s moving up. There’s a lot of people playing a role in changing some of those attitudes and attentions that are necessary. Here and there we have now issues, but it’s not as significant.

But there’s still more that needs to be done. There should be more opportunity for people of color here in Saint Cloud in central Minnesota. And they bring a lot, too. They do work. By the way, some of the Somalis do some of the hardest jobs here in Saint Cloud and in the surrounding area. They have places where they slaughter chicken, poultry, turkey, and some of this job is not

6 an easy job, you know—having, standing up all day, cutting up meat, and when you come home to your children, you smell like a bird. It’s a very difficult job. So some of the jobs that some of the immigrants do in Saint Cloud are very hard, back-breaking jobs. So this is a documented history that has been there for a long time, and it’s important to point out. We are still working on that to get things the way they are supposed to be.

IH: With all those things here in Saint Cloud, what drives the community to Saint Cloud? As you said, there are more people, there are more Somalis right now than five, ten years ago.

SH: Yes, we have a population now about thirteen or fourteen thousand.

IH: What do you think drives it?

SH: The driving force is the countryside simplicity. You know, everything is accessible in Saint Cloud. It’s not like Minneapolis. You have to drive so many miles to do so many different things. And also the other driving force is jobs. They have a lot of jobs within Saint Cloud and outside Saint Cloud. You have a lot of factories. You have Willmar, which is not very far away. Minneapolis and Willmar are very far away, but Saint Cloud to Willmar is about one hour drive. You have a lot of factories there that people do work. You have factories here about twenty minutes from Saint Cloud. There is another city down here that people slaughter chicken and poultry and turkey and stuff like that. You have local factories situated in Saint Cloud itself. Electrolux is one of the biggest manufacturers of refrigerators, and basically they do make fridges for cold storage and all that. It’s one of the biggest employers here in Saint Cloud. And when a small population comes, other populations join, because of such opportunities and also because there is already a presence of our community that they can come to and can settle and be a part of.

IH: How many people would you estimate live in Saint Cloud—Somali community?

SH: About thirteen thousand, population-wise. And they are hard working and have different kinds of jobs. They are working at jobs, like I said, that a lot of Americans don’t want to do. But they are doing it. And a lot of people don’t understand Somalis. The Somalis in central Minnesota are not here illegally. I mean, they are here legally, you know. They didn’t come to the US funny ways. They came through the proper channel, because the United States is a signatory to the United Nations. The United High Commissioner for Refugees is under the United Nations, and through that, some of the programs, they have been able to come to the States. The other thing is there are a lot of churches, like the Catholic Charities Church and the Lutheran [Social] Services that are bringing some of the immigrants to central Minnesota. It’s an outreach, in a way, to help some of those people that live in a very bad condition and that have been traumatized by the civil war.

So it’s an obligation the United States has taken upon itself, to be part of the United Nations, to take care of refugees. And that is something that people should understand—that these people are not here by their choice. They wouldn’t want to be in a cold place. But you have to understand the history where they come from. They come from a country that has been plagued by civil war for the last twenty-five years. If they had a choice, they would want to have a

7 peaceful country. They would want to live in Somalia. It’s a beautiful place to be in. But they can’t. The Somali and US government have been allies for a long time. In the Cold War, the US considered Somalia to be an ally. So you know, when people ask, “What are you doing here,” they are not here by choice. They are here because of what has happened to them. That’s why they ended up being here.

IH: Right. And also in the news I’ve been reading some political movement within the Somali community here. There are people who ran for public office.

SH: Yes. Like I said, there’s a lot of significant changes that are happening from about seven years ago when I came here up to now. You will see that people are running for political office. And that comes from Minneapolis setting an example—you know, the election of Abdi Warsame in the district down in Minneapolis as a city councilman. The election of other people—there were other people that ran as well, but they were not as successful. But by that example, people looked up and said, “If they can do the same thing in Minneapolis, we can also do the same thing here in Saint Cloud.” We had about two Somali candidates running for city council, and we had another Somali candidate who was running for the school districts, to be in the school board as well. So they did very well, actually. They didn’t win, but they were close. And hopefully in the next election cycle, they will have more significant people moving here, because we have more coming. And that might change the number, and we might have somebody from Somalia being elected here in Saint Cloud.

IH: And earlier on you told me you went to Saint Cloud State University. You did broadcast journalism there. What motivated you to go into that field?

SH: What motivated me to do broadcast and television at Saint Cloud State University basically is I have always wanted to be in the media since growing up when I was young. I used to listen to the news a lot. I used to read a lot, newspaper a lot. And I’ve always been fascinated by media. I always wanted to be part of it. I always wanted to be an anchor. I always wanted to be a reporter. And that comes from a guy by the name of Mohamed Amin. He was a very well-known photojournalist. He died in a plane crash when his plane was hijacked over the . It was an Ethiopian airline heading to the Seychelles, Mauritius, and he died. Mohamed Amin is very well-known in Africa—Mohamed Amin, not —Mohamed Amin. He is an Asian Kenyan, of Asian descent. Mohamed Amin is known, is the person who broadcasted the great famine of Ethiopia, and that’s when the song “We are the World” came about, because of his video and photos that he took because of the famine. Millions of Ethiopians were dying, and he showed the world. And also he was present when there was a civil war, the , when the rebel movement was overthrowing Haile Mariam from power and he ran away. So he is known. He is known to be a humanitarian, he is known to be one of the greatest photojournalists coming from Africa. I mean, he saved millions of lives by telling the story of famine in East Africa that was happening at that time. And the world saw, and that’s when people got together, like Michael Jackson and the greatest musicians came together and made the song “We are the World.”

So that is where, growing up, I knew who Mohamed Amin was. Everyone knew who Mohamed Amin was. From him, people used to tell me when I—I used to just take photos and do videos of

8 weddings. People used to call me Mohamed Amin, because I would pretend to be like him and do stuff like that. So that is when my love of journalism came about. I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to make a difference, and I think I did. My story has not been finished yet. I’m still writing my story and everybody else is writing their story in this great country of the United States. Our history is being written. So the history of Africans and East Africans in Saint Cloud and central Minnesota is still being written. The narrative is not done yet. Just like other communities that came here—the Germans and the French—the diversity and the power and the community in the United States is still being written. The book is not done yet.

IH: Right, right. And where do you see the Somali community in Saint Cloud in the next five, ten, fifteen years?

SH: There will be a new generation. It’s not going to be the parents. The parents came here, they don’t speak English, they cannot read, they cannot write. But there’s a significant young American Somalis that are being born, a huge number. And I see them adding to the great diversity of the United States, especially here in central Minnesota and Saint Cloud and the state of Minnesota. They are going to contribute a lot, because they’re going to see what their parents have gone through to get them educated. They know that some of their parents are not home at night. They are working out at factories, doing hard jobs, doing heart-breaking jobs, doing back- breaking jobs. So, sooner or later these young kids that are being born now, that are growing here, are going to contribute significantly to the American Dream. They are also going to be writing their stories, and they are going to be part of this growing community here in Saint Cloud.

IH: One of the last questions that I have for you. You have a young son right now?

SH: Yes, yes.

IH: About a year?

SH: One year old. His name is Ahmed. He is one year old. He was born here, at Saint Cloud Hospital, in December 2013. And I’m going to give him the best opportunity to succeed and be part of this American Dream as well, be part of the Minnesota dream as well, yes.

IH: Anything else that you would like to add to our interview here?

SH: I always say that Minnesota is home to many people. Minnesota is home to diverse groups of people. People from Germany, from France, from Sweden, from Norway. People have been here before the Somalis. There is a history of the African American struggle in this country and also in the state of Minnesota, and that makes up, just spices everything about us as human beings. It just makes us more interesting, more curious to learn and to know about each other. Because of our past, we don’t want to make the same mistake moving on to the future. And I believe we as Somalis will contribute to the betterment and to the success of the state of Minnesota and the United States. The Somalis are not here to harm the United States. Somalis are not here to harm Minnesotans. Somalis are here to make a dream for themselves and for their children. They have found things that they never imagined in their whole life that they will ever

9 find—and that is the freedom to express themselves, the freedom to be whatever they want to be. To educate, to express, to talk, to demonstrate, to express their views. This is significant. It’s very few countries that you will find somebody having that kind of… Somebody especially of color. So it’s very important that people be open and get to know who Somalis are. Go to their homes, go to their restaurants, talk to them, get to know them, be curious. And you will learn more about them, and you will know why they are here, how they came to be here.

And the other issue that I also wanted to touch on was about ourself as a community of Somalis. My advice would be if you are a journalist, if you are a lawyer, if you are a teacher, if you are a student, if you are an elder—anything, any profession—a doctor—that the most important thing for us Somalis is to speak for ourselves, because nobody else will speak for us. I advise each and every Somali to fight and speak for their fellow Somalis. To know where they are, what they are doing, and how they are doing, and also to remind them about the American Dream and what it is all about. And I think that’s very significant. We want us to be like the Cuban community in Florida. We want to be like the Jewish community in New York and many other places. The Irish community. We want to be successful just like they have. The only way we are going to do that is to speak whatever position we are in in life—whatever work, business that we do. And the most important thing is that we speak for Minnesota, we speak for the Somali Minnesotans.

IH: Great advice. Thank you very much for your time.

SH: You’re welcome. Any time.

IH: Appreciate it.

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