Fadumo Dayib-Somalia's First Female President Candidate
Reportage Fadumo Dayib September 2016
Text: Valeska Hovener
Photos: Jan-Joseph Stok
I am very sure that I will be president of Somalia, whether it be now, in ten or in twenty years. says Fadumo Dayib (44). Calm and in control she walks the streets of Helsinki, going in and out of taxis, constantly having Skype-conversations on her phone. Dayib is always dressed in very bright colours, giving her an almost majestic appearance. She also comes with a courageous message, wanting to be the first female candidate in the presidential elections of Somalia, a country where women have little say about their bodies, lives or love. A country ripped apart by war, poverty, drought and corruption. A country where Islamic fanatics, such as the militant group Al-Shabab, regularly threaten Dayibs life because ?women belong at home or in their graves, but not in politics. In spite of the danger, Dayib will be returning to Somalia in October. This is not a suicide mission: believe me. I am doing this for my country, for my people. Dayib has a difficult task. She is running for office even though Somalia has not had any democratic elections since 1967. The current electoral system is based on the 4.5-clan structure, meaning that 135 clan elders - who are only men - appoint 14 thousand representatives that can vote for the 275 members of parliament who will select the president. One person, one vote does not exist. Dayib needs free and fair elections to be voted for president. That is why she wants to begin with a social movement that fights against corruption, human rights violations and democratizes the country. My goal is to generate social change to ensure that we have democratic elections in 2020. More than 80 per cent of Somali s do not want the clans to be in power. They feel that they have hijacked politics and their sense of Somali identity, of us being one country, one people, one language, one religion. She stands before a red building, looking for the studio that is going to record a small film clip for the Finnish Ministry of Education. She has to go up a freight elevator, but the large steal door will not open. Two men rush to open it, while Dayib does not step out of the way. When the elevator reaches its destination she succeeds in getting the door open by pushing with all her body. The men applaud, and she smiles. An hour later she continues the conversation. ?We should give people the ability to vote for the people they want to see in office. They do not want a bunch of clan elders, who are the political elite, to decide on behalf of 12 million Somali s. However the political elite is heavily corrupt. Millions in internationally subsidized funds disappears in to their pockets every year. My aim is not to get rich from this as most of the politicians do when they come into office. For them that is their primary reason for entering politics. If the security component is taken care of, I do not need them to pay me a salary. Also as president I will stay the same: accessible, down to earth, positive and still solitary, she laughs. Dayib was born in the seventies in Kenya to Somali parents. She is the twelfth of fourteen children, all but the last three dying of treatable diseases. Dayib was an introverted and serious child, a mini-adult as she calls herself. Left behind by her mother several times at an early age, once because she had to take care of a sick family member and again because her mother was in need of medical care that she could only receive abroad, Dayib is taken out of school, used as a child labourer and subjected to horrendous abuse inflicted by her aunt. I still carry the scars on my back because of those beatings, she says. In 1989 the Kenyan government deports her mother, both siblings and herself back to Somalia. Two years later the dictator is ousted from power sending the country into a brutal civil war causing thousands of Somali s to flee the country. Her mother sees no other solution than to put her children on a plane to Europe where they are granted asylum by the Finish government. With the situation in Somalia exploding, as a refugee Dayib decides to make use of every opportunity she gets in Finland. Although she was illiterate until the age of fourteen, she managed to earn masters degrees in Public Health, Health Care, and Public Administration, the last of which from the prestigious Kennedy School at Harvard University. In 2005 she started as a health care specialist for the United Nations in Africa, eventually returning to Helsinki to work on refugee issues and doing research as a PhD-candidate on the political participation of women in post-conflict countries at the University of Helsinki. My strength comes from my mother, she says that evening when meeting her at her favourite bench along the water, a place where she often sits to reflect upon her life and challenges. I am wearing my traditional attire, she jokes at first and then becomes serious again. My mother always pushed my boundaries and tested my limits. If I said: no, I cannot. She would say: what do you have to loose? Try it, try! Strolling along the rocky coast, she remembers her mother who died in 1995, three years after being reunited with her children in Finland. She was my best friend and would always lead by example, she says. Do you know that she became literate right before she died? As a mother and on the verge of leaving her four children behind Dayib finds that her life has become very similar to that of her mothers. I do take my task as a mother very seriously, but serving my people is my vocational calling. I believe there is a greater meaning to my surviving. Dayib first began to contemplate a life in politics when she saw a mother on television, carrying her sick child on her back for hours on her way to a field hospital. Arriving only to learning the child had already died. I felt deeply ashamed, because that woman symbolized my mother. I realized that the problems in Somalia were much bigger than health care alone. It was interlinked with education, security and many other things that I was not doing anything about. She started writing about her own ideas in her blog Womanhood. However as a woman whose thoughts go against the status quo in male dominated Somalia, she causes anger and tension. I receive death treats on a daily bases. Even my son is being asked in the Mosque to try and control his mother or they Photoshop my face on a pornographic figure, she says, just to give a couple of examples. Still she sees no reason to stop her social media campaign; debating on twitter and Facebook about women?s issues, corrupt politicians and her vision for Somalia. It is there that she receives her support, particularly from young Somalis, women?s organizations, intellectuals and progressive men. On her way to Radio Helsinki, followed by broadcasting hostess Amkelwa Mbekeni, she tells how she went back to Somalia last January to meet civil society. There she traveled in a guarded terrain wagon, straight through Al-Shabab territory, where two hours later an attack was launched and over twenty people died. ?There I finally realized how strong I was. I had no emotions and no fear. I was ready to move back home. After an hour of talking on the radio about displacement and migration, she sits down on a terrace in front of the studio with her sister Khadra Dayib and two representatives, Mohamed Abdi and Ahmed Abdulle, from a youth organization in Helsinki. They want to present their future president with an award for her courage. Normally I do not tie myself to these organizations because of clan affiliations, she says, but for now she makes an exception. This is due to the fact that 85 per cent of her future voters are below the age of 35 and 67 per cent of the youth in Somalia is unemployed. Abdulle explains: the youth in Somalia have no future and have three options; risking their lives going to the EU, attacking the government or killing the person whose job they want. For these people Fadumo brings hope. The same goes for Queenselena Selase, or just Queen. She is a transgender who Dayibs meets the next day for the first time in the media building of Helsinki. How can I convince you to stay in Finland? Queen asks her, almost begging. She tells her about her time in Saudi-Arabia where she was sent of by her parents to deal with her so-called demons. It is very painful when others think you are crazy, Dayib says understandingly. But I am not crazy, and neither is Queen. Dayib believes that Somalia is about to break, there will be a revolution and it will happen soon, she says, also when it comes to womens rights. Women are tired of being raped - the numbers are so high that is it a daily occurrence. They are being mistreated - 98 per cent of them have been genitally mutilated, she says passionately. People who commit these crimes should be tried in court. She looks back at the time when Somalia was still a dictatorship. Before the war the president was always talking about womens emancipation. He created the Family Law that allowed women to own land and forbid genital mutilation, she says. But now we have a second generation that has seen nothing but war, an urbanisation of the rural population, and a severe brain drain. These three factors manifest themselves in the way women are treated. Dayib likes to point out that women in Somalia always have had a strong, but informal role within society. When the nomads are moving, it is women who erect and dismantle the camps. It is women who collect funding for the clans, who put food on the table and organize peace talks. The time has come for women to formally lead this country, and that is why I am running for president. Currently, the elections in Somalia are planned for October 2016. If nothing changes, the parliamentary elections will take place from the 24th of September until the 10th October and a new president will be elected on October 30th. (1710 words)
To use this article prior authorisation with journalist Valeska Hovener is needed. The photos in this series are for editorial purposes only and can only be used for articles related to Fadumo Dayib. None of the photos in the series may be used as illustrations for articles that are not related to the person Fadumo Dayib.
