(ERGO) – Retired teacher, Mohamed Sheikh Osman, has moved to Waradoy IDP camp in Mogadishu’s Garasbaley area to pursue his passion for teaching children from poor families who do not have access to education.
Five days a week, in a small enclosure without a roof in the camp, Mohamed teaches around 100 children aged seven to 13, giving lessons in secular and religious subjects.
He retired from a 30-year teaching career at Mogadishu and Plasma universities a year ago and noticed how many children were hanging around the camp or working in odd jobs, without going to school. “I took some of them out of shoe shining jobs to teach them,” Mohamed told Radio Ergo’s local reporter. “I only want the children to get an education so that it can help them in the future.”
The bus fare to Waradoy from his family home in Karan district is $3 day, which he could not afford on a regular basis. He chose, therefore, to live in the camp and go home to see his family on Thursdays and Fridays when there are no classes.
Another reason for living in the camp is that sometimes when the sun is hot, he teaches in the evening and very early in the morning, and he fears if he goes home he would not arrive in time.
Mohamed says the parents are happy to see their children attending lessons, although he is worried about the conditions without a proper classroom. Sometimes he sends the children home when the sun is too hot to bear.
He gets help from four high school graduates, two young men and two young women in their early 20s, who were unable to continue their own education to university level due to lack of funds.
Amina Ali Abdi, one of the teachers, finished at SYL high school in Mogadishu three years ago and has been teaching the children as an unpaid volunteer since the initiative began last August.
“Learning was not easy for me and I am very happy to be teaching these students as I don’t have anything else to do. Sometimes the students come to my house and I teach them. I also hope to continue my education to university although I haven’t managed to get a job or further education,” she said.
Amina and her family of nine were pastoralists in Wanlaweyn, Lower Shabelle, who arrived in Mogadishu in 2009 to escape conflict.
Mother of six, Sadiya Shegow, is very pleased that three of her children are learning at Mohamed’s school. She washes clothes for a living and struggles to get money to buy books and pens for them.
She and her family were displaced from Jowhar in 2015. She approves of them attending classes whilst she goes out to find work, although she would prefer that they had a proper classroom.
“Sometimes the children complain. One says his back aches, another complains about his eyes as they study the whole day out in the sun. They also come back hungry, and we cook just one meal a day,” she said.
Sadiya said most of the parents are in a similar situation, struggling to earn enough money to afford basic food, and hoping that they can get help to erect a proper classroom to enhance the school and continue the children’s education.
