Warda’s story

I can’t say my Somali is perfect, but I like to think it’s sufficient for me to communicate (verbal and written). I was born in the motherland and lived in Mogadishu in my early years, so you could say Somali was my first language. When I became a mum in London, teaching my daughter Somali was very important to me. I spoke to her primarily in Somali when she was a baby & toddler and she had a good understanding of the language.

When she started nursery school, I found that she picked up English very fast and Somali became less and less her preferred language of communication, so much so she would stare at me blankly when I spoke in Somali and hoped for a translation.

Despite my husband’s insistence on speaking Somali at home, for a variety of reasons, her Somali did not grow and advance like her English.

When the Covid19 pandemic hit and everything grinded to a halt (and we had to become the teachers and find creative ways to keep the kids occupied), I registered her for online Arabic and Quran lessons with an Egyptian teacher.

Eight months into her Arabic and Quran journey, I was so impressed with the progress she was making that I set out to find her a Somali teacher through family contacts. We found a teacher and he started to teach her Somali. Every time I would mention this to family or friends, they would implore me to help them find a teacher too and echo the same concerns and fears about their children and the Somali language and the lack of available avenues to help them.

While our Somali teacher was good, I noticed a difference in how he taught vs how our Arabic teacher taught Arabic. Our Somali teacher made up the lessons as he went along, and he also didn’t have resources to share with my daughter during lessons (he literally prepared PowerPoint slides with a white background!) while our Arabic teacher had loads of pdfs, visuals, audios and games to aid her teaching.

It’s at this time that I approached my long-time friend Zahra about starting an online Somali School for young kids and beginners and painstakingly preparing resources in collaboration with experts in the field. It was by no means an easy journey and we have been told along the way that it was ‘too big’ of a task but by the will of Allah, we have succeeded in coming up with an exciting beginners Somali course with a set of hand-picked and bilingual teachers.

My hope is that not only will my daughter benefit from this programme (I’ve trialled with her and she is doing great, I’m so impressed with her reading in particular, it melts my heart 😊), but your children will too and we will give them an opportunity to strengthen their identify and feel at home, whenever they return.