My Friend and Hero from Rainier Beach High School: Hussein Mohamed Abshir
1. Tell us a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it. Living in America is difficult for new immigrants, but it has not been nearly as hard as getting here. I came from Somalia, a country where gunfire and violence are not unfamiliar to people. When one tribe’s greed and lust for power corrupted the government, everything fell apart, politically and economically. With the onset of civil war, my mother decided to flee with the children. Traveling with three children and being a female made it a difficult voyage. We were in a group of about forty families fleeing the violence. We survived on little more than water until we were able to reach villages on our path. All the males including my father where told to remain behind to fight the attackers, thus giving us a presumed safe passage. However without males in our party, many of the villagers in our path took advantage of us—robbing us and raping the women.