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A Sabbatical in Somalia
by Kathleen Walker

I am back.  Now I must find a way to compress seven months into a short article.  My sabbatical was certainly challenging, interesting and different.  For those of you who do not know it, Kristen, my 10 year old daughter and I left Roberts in January to spend the spring semester and summer in Africa, returning in August.  My first stop was in Nairobi to recover from jet lag, get to know the people in the Mennonite Central Committee, the organization I went with, and learn a bit about my assignment.  MCC “loaned” me to a local Somalian NGO (non-government organization) that in turn offered my services to a Somalian nursing school in Bossaso.  Bossaso, a city between 200,000 and 300,000 people (depending on whom you ask) is in northeastern Somalia in the region of Puntland on the Gulf of Arden. 

Somalia has been without a national government since 1991 so there has been no national education, health care, security or services in over 12 years.  Puntland is ruled by a strong local warload who, most of the time, manages to keep the area fairly safe, not always using nice methods, but at least with the result that the area is beginning to grow and offer private, self-pay school and health care.  In July, the nursing school in Bossaso graduated the first nurses educated in the country in 13 years.  I taught pediatric, maternal-child and community health nursing to its 73 seniors and 55 second-year students.  The students were all young, unmarried, female, primary school graduates who spoke a bit of English.  That last statement provided one of the major challenges, since I have trouble speaking English let alone Somalian.  The students were eager to learn but like students world wide, wanted to do it without too much effort.  Of course I did not allow that and by the end of the semester was pleased to find that most of the senior students not only knew the material, but could also apply it.   (Most of the second year students did not manage that level, mainly because of their poor grasp of English.)  In reality these students could not function as registered nurses anywhere, or perhaps not even as our licensed practical nurses but they still knew a lot more about nursing care than before they started and can provide some basic care that is desperately needed.

Living in Somalia is in itself a major challenge.  Poverty abounds, job opportunities are limited, food is limited, and the future looks very bleak for most.  The first few months we had dependable power from 8 am to 12 noon.  This was not a whole lot of help since I was at school during those hours.  Sometimes it returned at 6 pm but that was not as dependable.  That meant no refrigerators, no cold drinks, no air conditioners when the temperature rose to 110 degrees and computer use limited to the 1 hour 45 minutes of battery time.  We cooked over a charcoal fire (and that certainly was no picnic).   If I wanted to go anywhere, a guard had to accompany me, just to make sure I was safe.  If we took a trip outside the city, at least one guard with a gun always went with us. 

Somalia is 99.6% Muslim.  We were the only Christians in the city.  Proselyting  is illegal but answering questions is allowed.  I soon realized that my attitude and behavior were the way others would judge Jesus.  In fact, most Muslims have such a negative view of Christianity that it is best to begin a conversation with, “I follow the prophet Jesus” rather than “I am a Christian”.   Just my willingness to come to Somalia, to stay there when all other “foreigners” left before the war in Iraq, to sleep on a mat on the floor like they slept and cook the foods they cooked over a charcoal fire, was a witness in itself  (Of course whether or not it was a positive witness depended on my attitude that day.)

I learned many things in those long days.  The three most important were these.  If God calls you to a place, He will sustain you in it and even, at times despite yourself, use you there, but you had better be sure that God did indeed call you before you go.  I learned that when you are alone as a Christian you had best really dig into God’s work, and He will speak directly to you from it.  And lastly I learned that even if you do not know why God wants you someplace, He knows and according to I Corinthians 15:58, your labor will not be in vain.  Pray with me for the Somalian people throughout the world, that they will come to know Christ and be used by God to bring the rest of the Muslim nations to Him.