Mohamed Hussien had worked his way up from turkey plucker to cabdriver to dream job -- being a reporter for the BBC. Now, an event he never could have anticipated has thrown his achievement into limbo.
Mohamed Hussien was living the kind of up-by-the-bootstraps American dream that would have prompted Horatio Alger to turn a cartwheel. Until a month ago, when his plans suddenly got put on hold.
After emigrating from Somalia to the United States in the early 1990s, unable to speak a word of English, Hussien's remarkable career path began on the night shift at a poultry plant in Moorhead, Minn. It peaked less than a year ago, when he landed the job of his boyhood fantasies -- Somali-language correspondent for the prestigious BBC, a primary source of news for Somalis everywhere.
He was happy, healthy, on top of the world. Then, on Jan. 27, as his flight from Minneapolis neared the East Coast, he suddenly felt weak. When the plane landed in Philadelphia, he got up to retrieve his bag in the overhead bin, and fell down. He tried to stand, and fell down again. "That's when I knew I needed some help," he said.
At age 37, with no prior health problems, he had just had a stroke. He was rushed to a hospital, the extent of the stroke's damage unknown. His wife, Farhiya Mohamud, a public-health nurse with Dakota County, flew east to be with him. The couple have four children and live in Burnsville.
"It was terrible, waiting," she said. "We didn't know if he would be able to move or speak."
He was soon able to do both, but with difficulty. Because of his relatively young age and otherwise good health, he has made greater daily gains than do most stroke victims. But as he sits at the kitchen table in his cozy town home, surrounded by family, it's clear he still has some way to go. His right arm is still stiff -- he's learning to write with his left -- but his handshake is much firmer than it was the week before.
Before the stroke, Hussien was fluent in English, which he also needs for his job. He now speaks it in short phrases, briefly pausing to focus before each comment. Sometimes he speaks a few words in his native Somali, which has come back more easily. His wife translates.
"I know most of the English words in my head, I just can't say them," he said. "Like when I was first in the hospital, I could understand people talking, I just couldn't answer."
Hussein, a skilled and passionate communicator, can't tell his stories.
Running with the big boys
In early January, before his stroke, he recalled his journey from daydreaming child to international broadcaster. As a young man in Mogadishu, Hussien and his uncle listened to the BBC on the radio every day. "I always wanted to work for the BBC," he said in an interview before the stroke. "It's where the big boys play, the place to be once you've reached your greatness. I thought the announcers talked like elderly cousins. I would imitate their voices."
Yusuf Garaad, head of the London-based BBC Somali Service and Hussien's boss, says Hussien's humble broadcasting days in Minnesota laid the necessary groundwork for the demands of his current job, but that his background and connections haven't hurt.
"He has knowledge of African affairs as well as the challenges of the Somali-speaking community in the U.S.," Garaad said. "He also has a very good Somali network from all walks of life including academicians, community organizers, Imams, and past and present politicians."
Hussien grew up in the northern part of Somalia. Following the civil-war violence that scattered so many of his countrymen, he was sponsored to come to the United States in 1992. Nineteen years old, with a new bride working in Germany, he hopped a Greyhound to Minneapolis when he heard there were jobs. "I didn't know anybody, just that some Somalis lived here," he said.
His first weeks in the city were spent crashing on the floor of a new acquaintance's apartment and working daily temp jobs. He soon got a $6.10-an-hour night-shift job cutting up turkey parts in Moorhead. "I was young and skinny and unable to lift the big turkeys and hang them," he said.
His wife joined him at the turkey plant in 1993. Two years later, they moved to Minneapolis and began their upward career climb. She studied to become a public-health nurse, while he took courses at community colleges and held a series of jobs, including parking-lot attendant, cabdriver and clinic case manager.
But he hadn't forgotten his first passion. In 1997 he started volunteering on "Somali TV," a cable-access program started by Minneapolis teacher Abdul Osman. He also did on-air informational reports for ECHO, a nonprofit program that gives health and safety messages in a variety of immigrant languages.
"He was always coming up with ideas for topics; he was naturally inquisitive," said ECHO director Lillian McDonald. "He has a very good on-air presence. It's a gift."
The turning point
In 2006 he got his first big break. He tried out for the Voice of America news service, and despite his lack of professional journalism training, they took a chance and hired him to present programming on-air. Hussien's second break came the next year, when he snagged an interview with Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, then-president of Somalia's transitional government.
"I'm sitting at my desk about five minutes to transmission," Hussien said. "It was a horrible day of news, full of dead bodies. I get a call from Mogadishu offering to speak to him. I knew my boss would give the story to someone more experienced if I told him, so I just went ahead and did it."
The interview was widely disseminated, and his career took off. The BBC hired him. Somali listeners know his name. Hussien said his Minnesota connections give him professional cachet.
"People will talk to me, everywhere I go, especially politicians, because the Somali community here is so well known," he said.
On the topic of his adopted home state, he is effusive: "I cannot thank Minnesota enough. I got my education here, my first jobs, a safe and healthy place for my family."
One story sums up his feelings.
"I was going to school at MCTC [Minneapolis Community Technical College] right after Sept. 11 happened. My ethics teacher was afraid there might be discrimination against me because I'm Muslim, so he formed a discussion group with some students and they told me, 'You are one of us,' and hugged me. I always think I might cry when I talk about that."
Hope amid uncertainty
Hussien and his wife have received an outpouring of support from co-workers and neighbors as well as the local Somali community. At the kitchen table, their oldest son, Nasir, is asked if he knew what a stroke was before his father had one. "I Googled it right away," he said.
Nasir learned that with no prior personal or family history, what happened to his father is very rare. His doctor at Methodist Hospital, Leela Engineer, can't predict when he will fully recover, "but he's made a lot of improvement in just one month," she said.
Hussien goes to speech therapy four times a week. For now, his job is safe. The BBC is holding his place, said colleague Abdi Aynte, a fellow Minnesotan. Their boss, Garaad, flew from London to visit Hussien when he was in the Philadelphia hospital.
"They said they will wait for him," said Mohamud, a serene presence who observes her husband with a subtly protective eye. "I know he's a very hard worker."
Perseverance is something Hussien has plenty of, and he'll need it to get behind the microphone again. He needs his words back.
"There is so much I want to do," he said. "Somali boys missing from Minneapolis, elections in Somalia, a new American president. So much going on."
His eyes move rapidly for a few moments, trying to say what his mouth can't yet manage. Every day, he gets a little closer.
Source: Star Tribune
Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046
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