Text: Leena Mäkitalo
Amran Mohamed Ahmed, 50, is an important person to Somali children in Vantaa. She speaks Finnish and Somali, is acquainted with the Finnish way of life and knows almost everything about Somalia.
Mohamed Ahmed, who has lived in Finland for 15 years, works as a Somali and remedial teacher at Hakunilanrinne School.
Amran Mohamed Ahmed arrived in Finland through Russia with the first group of Somalis in the spring of 1990.
– The war in Somalia began in 1988. Hargeisa, my home town, was completely destroyed. In spite of all the terrible things I thought I might return there soon. But it has proved otherwise. A refugee has a difficult path. It´s the path I´m still following.
Mohamed Ahmed thinks that being a refugee means inequality.
– Refugees are a tribe of their own. There is a special identity that unites all refugees, she says.
– In Somalia I was an educated person with a job, I was just like anybody else. Becoming a refugee, all that was swept away. My self-confidence collapsed. On the Russian border when I gave away my passport I felt I was nothing, I was nobody. On the other hand, my situation was then and is still better compared to many refugees because I can speak English.
Mohamed Ahmed escaped with her husband and baby while her four children remained in Somalia. In Finland the family was first located in a reception centre in Joutseno.
– In 1991 I was granted a residence permit and I moved to Kerava. I was active and participated in courses. I asked the authorities about everything because my knowledge of English made it possible, she recollects.
Her mother and children came to Finland
A year later Mohamed Ahmed´s mother and children came from Somalia to Finland through family unification. At the same time she separated from her husband.
– As a single parent I tried to help and do everything to make my children adapt and find their place in Finland. However, two of them returned to Somalia because they didn´t have the strength to stay here.
Mohamed Ahmed´s son, attending the upper grade, and her ten-year-old daughter returned to Somalia to stay with their relatives. Their mother has been in close contact with them. In 2002 she met her children in Dubai.
In 1995 Mohamed Ahmed moved from Kerava to Vantaa where she found a flat and work. She was first engaged in a project on immigrants for a couple of years and after that she has been working in different schools of the city.
This spring she started a part-time job in a project called MoNaTuki by Monika-Naiset, the Multicultural Women´s Resource Center. MoNaTuki helps immigrant women and children who encounter violence in the eastern part of Helsinki. In the project Mohamed Ahmed works as a support person with whom they can speak Somali or Arabic. Her work as the immigrants´ spokeswoman has been noticed and recognised. The Finnish Refugee Council selected her as the Refugee Woman of the Year 2005.
The Somali community gives important support
Mohamed Ahmed´s youngest child is now 14 and goes to comprehensive school. Her two adult daughters are already married and both have children, aged three and four. The family spends plenty of time together.
– In Finland I have had to accommodate to the fact that I can only get help from the authorities. In Somalia most people have their family or clan as their support.
Mohamed Ahmed´s mother stayed with her daughter ever since she came to Finland. For her last few years the daughter nursed her sick mother at home. In March Mohamed Ahmed´s mother died at home at the age of 78.
– It was the worst day in my life. We were all at home, my daughters, my son and myself. For the first time I saw a person die. And the dying person was my own mother, a beloved person who had always been with me, who bore me and who knew everything about me.
Earlier that day Mohamed Ahmed had called a female Somali doctor because her mother was feeling sick and went to the pharmacy for medicine for her nausea. Her mother had been worse on many occasions. That´s why the family members couldn´t prepare for the worst. Her death came as a surprise to them. They called the ambulance, but when the paramedics came, there was nothing they could do.
– I was in a deep shock and out of my control. At the same time I felt I had to try to be strong. I called my sister in London and our friends in Vantaa and Helsinki. Our friends came at once. In a hour our home was full of people. The support and consolation from our friends helped even though it can´t remove the pain of losing a close person.
Her mother´s funeral included a ceremony arranged by Mohamed Ahmed´s brother in Somalia: there was a memorial service in a mosque and the family was invited to the memorial dinner. In her grief Mohamed Ahmed says she can now understand the significance of the Somali community more deeply than before.
– All who could make it came to my mother´s funeral in Kirkkonummi. They all came to our house. The friends read the Koran and brought something to eat and drink. Other people´s sympathy and presence help a family who is suffering.
Further training for herself
Being a part-time teacher at Hakunilanrinne School, Mohamed Ahmed´s amount of work varies annually. Last school year she taught for three days a week. In the spring term she spent most of her working hours on familiarising five new Somali arrivals, who were siblings, with the Finnish comprehensive school. Immigrant children attend a preparatory group before being transferred to an ordinary class in comprehensive school.
– As a remedial teacher I would like to have further training in some subjects. I´m not well versed in the history of Europe and Finland or Finnish environmental study. All information about the new country is for the benefit of the children, Mohamed Ahmed says.
Mohamed Ahmed teaches her remedial lessons in Somali.
– Remedial instruction in Somali is especially important if the parents can speak neither Finnish or English, she says and emphasises the importance of teaching Finnish. Besides, immigrant children have to adapt to Finnish school life as well as engage actively in studying languages to cope in school.
Collaboration with parents
Somali children support each other at school. Mohamed Ahmed had a difficult experience when her child was the only African pupil at school and he had to cope on his own.
– My son had to go through difficult times when he entered the seventh grade and was the only one with dark skin in the whole school. He felt he was picked on all the time. It was a shock to him and he suffered a lot.
Mohamed Ahmed tried to encourage her son to take one day at a time, but he didn´t have the strength and went back to Somalia.
– I reassured him that everything would be better after comprehensive school. One reason for his problems was that he was a few years older than the rest of the pupils in his class and he was the tallest of all. He said he suffered simply because he could hardly fit into his desk.
From the teacher´s point of view the collaboration between parents and school is of importance.
– It´s good for parents to hear and see what it´s like at school to be able to support school work. When I started as a teacher, the parents seldom used to visit the school, but now you can see them nearly every day, she says and feels pleased.
Besides parent events for a particular class, Hakunilanrinne School arranges meetings targeted at families coming from different cultures. Parents are personally invited to come and visit the school to discuss matters related to their children´s schooling and coping at school.
Hakunilanrinne School is a spa of cultures
Hakunilanrinne Primary School has approximately 450 pupils, 85 of whom with an immigrant background. In addition to Finnish, the native languages taught include Arabic, Bosnian, Kurd, French, Somali, Russian and Vietnamese. A pre-school class for six-year-olds operates at the school.
On a Finnish scale, the school has a long experience in operating as a multicultural learning community. At the turn of the 1980s the Vietnamese refugees started school there and the Somalis came in the 1990s. The present pupils include at least 14 different nationalities. According to Tuomo Vuorinen, the principal, his school has become multicultural by promoting awareness and increasing experiences.
A well tested tool to make school work go on smoothly is a learning plan, composed individually on the basis of a pupil´s age, height and development. An immigrant arrival is placed in class with the pupils of his age even though he hasn´t passed all the courses, due to the situation in his home country. In addition to the lessons shared with his own class, he receives special teaching in the subjects in which he lags behind the others.
In the daily life at school the class teacher, the immigrant teacher and the teacher who teaches Finnish as the second language participate in the pupils´ assessment. Hakunilanrinne School has seven special groups in addition to 17 basic teaching groups, including two integration classes, three special classes for pupils with language impairment, a special remedial class and a preparatory class as well as Etappiluokka, providing for all the schools in the Hakunila region. As a collaborative project involving the regional school and social welfare services, Etappiluokka is a small teaching group, operating on a temporary basis, and as one of its objectives, aims at returning the pupil to his own class.
For more details visit www.edu.vantaa.fi/hakunilanrinne
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