Mohamed's story starts with his parents' story, as most of ours do. Over a million Somalis have lost their homes and been forced to flee because of a decades long civil war. Many flee to neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen, and Kenya. The Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya is where Mohamed's family fled to and where he was born 24 years ago. It is the world's largest refugee complex. As of January 2020, the UN estimates 217,532 Somali refugees and asylum seekers are living among it's 5 camps. This is not a healthy place to birth a child, yet children make up 58% of the camp.
According to the UN website, Africa Renewal, Dadaab is described as being originally built only as a temporary haven for around 90,000 refugees who were fleeing clan fighting in 1991. It is now a sprawling complex of 5 tent camps that even house makeshift movie theaters and soccer leagues. It is counted as the third largest city in Kenya, after Nairobi and Mombasa. Technically, the camps are overseen by the UNHCR, but practically, it is self-reliant, run democratically by elected community volunteers.
According to an article in the Star Tribune in June 2019, 52,333 people living in the Twin Cities in Minnesota claim Somali heritage. Somalia is one of five countries that together produce two-thirds of the world’s refugees according to the UN. Sadly,
the Pew Research Center cites the number of Somali-born people living outside of their homeland has doubled to 2 million between 1990 and 2015.