Driving change for women
Nasra Hussain Ibrahim was 11 when she realized she’d have to do something drastic if her family was to survive.
They lived in Hiiraan, a rough region in southcentral Somalia where Al Shabab, a hardline group linked to Al Qaeda, and local clans clash. The militants force children to fight, they take over and shutter schools and rape and force girls to marry fighters. Those who don’t obey face execution by stoning.
Growing up, Ibrahim and her family often didn’t have enough to eat. Her father is elderly — she estimates he’s 90. Like most women in Somalia, Ibrahim’s mother, who is at least half her husband’s age, has never worked outside the home.
Ibrahim, 18, the second-eldest of six kids, started selling snacks and farming when she was 8 to help make ends meet. Every day was a struggle.
“When I saw the situation of my family, I saw I needed to leave,” she recalled.
Ibrahim’s sweet demeanour, sparkling eyes and broad smile mask a layer of toughness. It’s this toughness that helped her survive, three years ago, when she snuck out of her parents’ house in search of opportunity. She found it in a place where women typically don’t go in Somalia: a garage.
At age18, Ibrahim is believed to be Somalia’s first and only female car mechanic.
It all began with a broken car. Ibrahim had hitched a ride east, her sights set on the Somali capital, some 300 kilometres away. By road, the trip usually takes two days and two nights. But car trouble stalled her journey, stretching out an already dangerous trip to 10 days, much of it spent along the side of the road, hungry, waiting for the car to be fixed.
Her mother cried tears of relief when Ibrahim called to tell them she was alive and in Mogadishu.
They worried she had gone on the dangerous sea journey to Europe, like thousands of other Somalis before her, some of whom drowned. In 2012, Ibrahim’s cousin Rahma died in the water off the coast of Libya on a boat bound for Italy. She was 21.
Ibrahim might not have jumped on a dinghy to cross the Mediterranean, but she took a leap all the same. Whether at home or in Mogadishu, Ibrahim faces grim statistics on the status of women. Somalia has among the highest rates of female genital mutilation, maternal mortality and sexual violence.
Across the country, women are typically relegated to service jobs, in the back corners of shops, restaurants and homes. Doing anything out of the ordinary can set women up for ridicule, abuse or worse.
Arriving in Mogadishu that January day, Ibrahim surprised an uncle who lives in the city, crashing at his house while she looked for a job.
After months of hustling, Ibrahim discovered a garage in the centre of Mogadishu. There, a group of kind mechanics taught her their trade. Ibrahim asked the manager if she could join the team after a monthslong apprenticeship. Today, she’s on call six days a week. Her life is either “sleeping or working.” She’s become well known. “When people come to the garage they say ‘we hear there is a girl mechanic. Is that her?’ . . . I think lack of confidence is what keeps most women from doing jobs that are different,” Ibrahim said. “They believe they aren’t capable of doing this type of work.”