Ottawa officer strives to give ‘hope’ to hometown

OTTAWA — Ottawa police Const. Mahamud Elmi wants to build a school, and so, like any respectable builder, he’s compiled a list of things he’ll need, starting with materials such as cement, bricks, doors, electrical wiring, toilets, windows, desks and blackboards. Also on his list are: cheap labour, a project manager, permits and a security guard. Eventually, too, he knows he’ll also need teachers, administration, books and school supplies.

Elmi, though, also keeps a list of what he calls “assumptions,” those conditions that must be in place before a spade can turn the first clump of earth. At the top of that list, he’s written “No civil war during the course of the school infrastructure building.”

For the city Elmi wants to build his school in is Bursalah, in Somalia, the country where he was born and where stable governments and public schools are in extremely short supply.

“There are no public schools there,” he said Saturday night as he prepared to host a fundraising dinner at the Ottawa Police Association on Catherine Street. “There are no public hospitals. All the public institutions you have here in Canada don’t exist there. Everything is privatized.

“You notice it. During the daytime, during school hours, kids are just wandering around. Children are everywhere.

“Families can’t afford school,” he adds. “Either you feed your children or put them in school. That’s your choice. Which one are you going to choose?”

Ultimately, Elmi is hoping to raise $40,000 to build the seven-classroom elementary school — Rajo Academy he plans to call it, using the Somali word for hope. There, he expects upward of 200 children to get a basic education in English, regardless of their tribal affiliation or economic background. He’s hoping to have it open by 2012.

“And this school is going to be different because it’ll be in English,” he says. “When you speak English, you’re on par with the rest of the world. If you ever get out of Somalia, you can easily integrate.”

Elmi fled war-torn Somalia as a youngster almost two decades ago, and only reunited with his family last April, when he returned for a visit. It was while travelling through the country, he says, that he became alarmed by the lack of opportunities afforded children there. Somalia’s public-school system collapsed with the government in 1991, and it’s estimated that 65 per cent of Somali children — and nearly half of the country’s population of 10 million is under the age of 15 — don’t attend school, while 62 per cent of those 15 and up are illiterate, including three of every four women.

“It’s important,” he says. “When you have an education, it opens a lot of doors.

“Every child has a right to be educated, and that right has been stripped away by the civil war.”

Elmi was only 10 years old when, on May 5, 1991, he watched throngs of panicked residents surge through the streets of Kismaayo, the Indian Ocean port city where he lived, as rumours circulated that one of the country’s clans’ militia was advancing on the city. Somalia’s dictator Mohamed Siad Barre had been ousted from Mogadishu by rebel warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid only months earlier, and the nation had fallen into anarchy, with regional tribal warfare replacing any kind of central government, and violence, famine, drought, fuel and electricity shortages and hyperinflation wreaking havoc.

Years later, Elmi told a refugee panel in Canada that he feared for his life. “I was afraid that I might be slaughtered,” he said, “and I ran.”

Separated from his parents and five brothers and sisters (he now has eight siblings), Elmi travelled by truck to Kenya, where he found Fadumo Khalif, a maternal aunt. After two years in a refugee camp there, Khalif came to Canada, while Elmi stayed with another aunt in Kenya. In 1996, after efforts to locate his family failed, Elmi was sent to Ottawa to join Khalif and her family.

Two years later, a Canadian refugee panel denied Elmi’s request to stay in Canada, claiming there were places in Somalia where he could go without facing persecution from rival clans. The Federal Court of Canada overturned the deportation order, however, on the grounds that what might be merely inconvenient for an adult could be considered undue hardship for a child. “How can you expect of a child what in many cases you would not expect of an adult?” asked lawyer Chris Killoran in 1999, while representing Elmi at his appeal.

He joined the Ottawa police as a civilian in 2003 and became an officer in 2006. Saturday night’s event, at which he hoped to raise $6,000, was the second fundraiser that Elmi has organized. Last September, he hosted a softball tournament at Carlington Park, at which police, firefighters, members of the Canadian Forces and other participants raised $6,000.

And he’s confident that his school will be built. “I’m a big believer in overcoming a lot of obstacles,” he says.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m not saying it’s going to be a cakewalk, but it’s going to get done.”

By Bruce Deachman, The Ottawa CitizenMarch 8, 2009