Mother, Daughter Take Two Paths to Help Homeland
1998, after six applications, Ashkir won the lot-
tery. The Guled family reunited in Virginia and
then North Carolina.
The night that Hodan Ibrahim Guled ’00 fled her home in Somalia, “it was very
chaotic.” She was 13, and of all the things she
could have carried, she took her make-up.
The six Guled children all went to college
and entered a more secure world, but Ashkir
had trouble finding a job in North Carolina. In
2008, she took a position as a nurse at the
Cedar Riverside People’s Center Medical Clinic
in Minneapolis. She serves people from her
“Where have we come? Are
we in the right place?”
“We had been moved to a house close to
the airport, and we ended up walking to the airport. I just remember people walking, and I was
wondering why. … It wasn’t clear what was going
on.”
Guled heeds the pull of
adjustment in another way.
She laughs: “I took
beauty stuff, which is
ridiculous.”
That night in 1991 was
part of Somalia’s long civil
war, a violent era for the
country’s 9 million people.
Its president, Mohamed
COURTES Y OF THE PEOPLE’S MEDICAL CLINIC
Siad Barre, had been over-thrown, but in the 18
years since that time, no
clear leadership has
emerged and no responsible government has
formed. Fishermen and
out-of-work farmers have
become infamous for piracy; the stable Somaliland
area is not recognized by
foreign governments.
For Guled and her
mother, Asli Aden Ashkir
’ 87 (MPH), despite nearly
two decades of living elsewhere, these conditions
still shape their lives.
Guled’s generation are professionals, housing
like Cedar Riverside brings problems unknown
to the first-generation refugees: drinking, drugs,
teenage pregnancy and even gangs. “Because it
is something that we don’t accept, it makes us
fearful,” Ashkir says.
MARLO HERRING
equatorial homeland.
“Refugees were brought to
In fleeing, the family
went to Kenya, where
Minnesota from the camps in
Ashkir’s husband, Ibrahim
Guled, had business connections. They did not
have to cross the border
by foot and live in the
refugee camps, but were
soon scattered.
Ashkir used her master’s degree credentials to get a job in the
Kenya,” Ashkir says. “There are
almost 100,000 Somali people
in the state now. Initially they
were assigned because the
state was low in population, but
the amazing thing is they did
not leave,” Ashkir muses, think-
ing of the house she refuses to
sell in North Carolina. “This win-
ter, I say to myself, how can these people
adjust?”
— Susan Simone
profile
Following her mother’s lead, she earned her
master’s at Emory University and worked with
CARE International, publish-
ing Preventing a Potential
HIV/AIDS Crisis in
Somaliland: A Handbook
for Non-Governmental
Organizations. She now
works for the Research
Triangle Institute as a data
manager for a pregnancy
risk-assessment monitoring
project for the Centers for
Disease Control and
Prevention. She is mostly
assimilated and talks in an
amused tone about her
experience as an “African
African-American”: “I am
always explaining who I am
and where I come from. At
times I hate being so differ-
ent, and at other times I
am glad I have all these
experiences to share with
other people.”
Guled wants to assure
her parents the choices
they made were good. She
also wants to ask her U.S. friends and Somali-
American friends not to forget the homeland.
This year, she formed a project she calls
Horseed Inc. ( www.horseed.org; horseed means
“pioneer” in Somali). “Our mission is to help
rebuild education and infrastructure in the
whole of Somalia,” Guled says, “to provide
financial support to local initiatives already
working on education. I am in the process of
identifying these groups, and we have started
doing fundraising. I am hoping to involve UNC
as I streamline the process.”
United Arab Emirates, taking her daughter with
her. Ashkir had her eyes set on a return to
North Carolina, so every year she filled out the
forms for the green card lottery, a system that
allows a randomly selected group of people
from distressed countries to enter the U.S. In
Adjustments for Somali refugees involve
more than climate. While many in Hodan
Ashkir and Guled are two generations with
two styles of coping. It is not easy. “Sometimes
I give up hope that it is ever going to get better,” Guled says. “I see a story on the news
about these kids from Somalia in Minneapolis
going to train and serve as terrorists. I am looking for a chance to speak out and say those
kids don’t represent our values.”
Asli Aden Ashkir ’ 87 (MPH) works on diabetes management with
Mumin Boshire, former Somali health minister. Ashkir, who fled
violence in her homeland, works with a Minneapolis clinic serving Somali refugees. Daughter Hodan Ibrahim Guled ’00, left,
helped publish a guide on preventing HIV/AIDS in Somaliland.
As a member of the board of governors, Steele also
will serve on the board of directors of the NCBA
Foundation. An equity member of Wishart Norris
Henninger & Pittman and board-certified specialist in
real property law, he also has been named as co-recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the
real property section of the NCBA. u Stanley
Thomas Wearden (’ 87 PhD) of Kent, Ohio, has been
promoted to dean of the College of Communication
and Information at Kent State University. Wearden,
who has been at Kent State for 25 years, was previ-
ously director of the School of Communication Studies.
; obituaries
Karen Bradshaw-Phillips (’ 87 BSN), 45, of Upper
Marlboro, Md.; April 11, 2009. Phillips served in the
Army. u Christopher Earl Coker (’ 87 AB), 44, of
Charleston, S.C.; Aug. 7, 2009. Coker was a real
estate broker. At UNC, he belonged to Pi Kappa Phi.
u Dr. John Leonard Wood (’ 87 DDS), 57, of State
Road; July 22, 2009. Wood, a dentist, had a private
practice in Elkin.
’ 88 Eugenio Henry Viola (’ 88 BSADJ) of Charlotte has been promoted to supervi- sory deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in the Charlotte office of the Western District of
North Carolina.
’ 89 ; family addition Sara Levin Washburn (’ 89 AB) and D.
Mark Washburn of Jacksonville, Fla.; a son, Aidan Jay
Washburn, on June 10, 2009.
