Memories

I just finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, a memoir, and I was sad to see it end.

Here’s a post about the clashing commitments among her clansmen at the beginning of her life in Somalia. Later, she became famous as a politician in the Netherlands for exposing the experiences of subjugated women from her homeland mistreatment within the national boundaries of land that outlaw such things. She sorts the Russian dolls of a culture living within a culture and brings light to the injustice of old tribal traditions in high contrast to Western freedom from harm.

Her dangerous tales of uprooting ancient and crushing traditions are attention-getting, even if safely done within modern institutions. The earlier narratives, though, stirred memories from my time in the Horn of Africa in the mid-1970s. She tells of the schoolgirls in uniforms walking down the dusty roads of Nairobi. She fills in the backstories of many fellow students during my time at Lycee Gebre Mariam.

In our first year, we were in the Accueil class, which brought our language skills to a level where we could integrate with the mainstream kids. The group was a hodgepodge of international students from Dutch to Japanese to West African. There was no common language, which forced everyone to learn a new language.