Our Somali Community

Deka Ali lives in the northwestern town of East Grand Forks Minnesota.   As a Somali immigrant, interpreter and community organizer, she has gained the respect of her rural community for bringing people together.  In 2025 Deka is working with In Progress to identify and guide families through an intergenerational storytelling project focused on sharing stories of immigration, cultural identity and place. Her daughter Sana Nür and son Sajid Nür collected her story and shares it here as part of the Waterers Oral Histories Program.

Mohamed Yusaf engaged youth of his community in a light-hearted, fast-moving conversation among Somali and Arabic-speaking community members who weave together jokes, memories, and references to daily life, migration, and cultural identity. Through playful banter Mohamed reflect the energy, humor, and resilience of Somali diaspora life. The exchange highlights how shared language, storytelling, and cultural pride help them stay connected across places and generations.

Rashida's Story represents a short interview between two generations of Somali women as they reflect on their experiences as immigrants balancing faith, community life, and the challenges of building a future in America. They speak about the pressures they face and the importance of staying connected to Somali culture, community centers, and religious practices. Despite hardships, they express determination, resilience, and a desire to find belonging while supporting their families.

Anav Ahmed is mother, health worker and Somali immigrant who migrated from the country of Kenya to East Grand Forks Minnesota in 2008.  She shared some of her story with her daughter Najma Ahmed as part of the Waterers Oral Histories Program.

One story that happened to me when I was sixteen years old. We were a group of young kids fooling around. We all do that. We get in trouble. Actually, we went to the Perkins and I did tell this story to my kids because one of them was older than us. She was seventeen and she got the food stamp and she thought the food stamp was the credit card. So she was like, she invited us to the Perkins. And she was like, let's go eat. And we went there. We ordered food, whatever they want. And then the pay time came and she handed the food stamp and the guy was like, you can't buy food with this food. And basically everyone mother came and she paid for it. And no one paid for it for me because I didn't have a mother. I ended up washing the dishes for a whole week. I remember saying that I wish the grave have a phone that I could call my mom. So I ended up washing the dishes. And then they started blaming on me, even though I wasn't me, the one who came up with the first card. It was so weird. So basically when when we get trouble, people pick on me all the time because I was an easy target, where the other kids have their mothers backing up and say, hey, don't talk to my child like that. So, like I said, you will never know when that time comes. So be kind to your parents. Be kind to your parents, especially to your mother, because your mother is your wall. She will take the bullet for you. And and I can say that because I've been through it.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks Minnesota

So we fled to Kenya, which is a neighbor to Somalia. So we went there. You have to go through in a lot of process in order to get to the United States. So it's not like that. Oh, I'm just going to get a ticket. I have a passport. No. So you have to go through a lot of process, which is the refugee camp. It's the part of the process. So when we fled in Somalia, I was only nine months. So we stayed from nine months to six years old to refugee camp. So it took us six years to get here in the United States. So basically I grew up in my childhood, before I get to United States in a refugee camp, there was no water, no food. There's not that much shelter. There's no housing. So people literally live in the tents. So in the morning when you wake up, you have to go in a line and get water and get food and then come back. So that was kind of in my childhood. That was not fun. So when we get here in Minnesota, it was me and my siblings.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks Minnesota

Basically. I grew up by myself. I have to figure out everything by myself. You can imagine being a fourteen year old because my oldest son and I, we only thirteen years apart, and a parent to myself, I didn't have anyone to give me advice. I didn't have anyone. I can go back to it when I'm going through so much. I didn't have anyone that I can cry to it and go back to it, and I didn't have anybody ever hold me and told me I love you besides my kids. So basically, it's just like this world against the fourteen year old and no one to hold you, no one to support you, no one to guide you no one to give you advice. And that's why in my job I take very seriously. I love the kids I work with. I care about them. Sometimes I push them, I yell at them but the reason I'm doing that because no one did that for me. Like if I was in trouble, I didn't have anyone to call to. Well, some kids have their parents. They can just give them a call and say, come save me. So basically, I feel like I'm going to give a credit myself because I feel like I did a phenomenal job in myself.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks Minnesota

My sister was amazing. She was really amazing woman. She had so much responsibility on herself because she was the oldest out of the eight children, and all of them were younger than her. And you can understand as her being seventeen, having her three children, because when my parents passed away, my sister was only seventeen. And rest of us. We become her responsibility and understand that coming to the United States, lack of education, lack of the language, being responsible of eight children without a parent. I feel like my sister tried her best. There is always challenging misunderstanding all that. Sometimes as me being a teenager, like you're not my parents, you're my sister. You can't be boss on me all that. Basically, I grew up by myself. I have to figure out everything by myself.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks Minnesota

My mom was a really well-educated woman, and she was an educational system like me. She used to provide families who were in need with clothing, books and donate all that stuff. So when the civil war happened in Somalia, what happened was a tribe against the tribe. And my mom came from really high, well educated tribe because the president of Somalia at that time related to the my mom and everybody was targeting them. So actually my mom was targeted and get killed by one of the other tribes because she belonged to that tribe. And then my dad was military, too. He was a commander in the military. And so my dad passed away after he heard that my mom died. He basically had a heart attack because of the sadness of my mom passing away. Your parent is the wall. They're your wall? They won't criticize you no matter what. They will be patient with you all the time, no matter what. How much hard time you give them, They will love you no matter what. And that person wouldn't understand until they lose their parent. Especially your mother.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota

I like it here in East Grand Forks because it's very small town and there's not a lot of cars. There's not a lot of hustle here. That's why I like here. I remember one of my sister friend were here a little bit, two years earlier. So that makes things easier for my family. Like where? The grocery. Where's the doctors? How to ride the bus? How to order taxi. So that was really helpful. So she taught my family a lot, and especially my sister. When I was in high school my senior year, I decided to become a midwife. And then in order to become a midwife, you have to go through nursing school. And so I decided to do nursing. I took a lot of classes for nursing, which is the requirement classes for nursing. When I was in college. I want to be a midwife first before I become the human services degree and all that. And then one day the father of my children got sick. He was hospitalized. And then he was about to have a surgery. And then as we walk in, we call an interpreter and then a lady who was interpreting for him misinterpreted everything. As I was doing my anatomy physiology, practicing, testing for that, we were studying the body and then I was just doing my own thing, like let her do her job. And as a doctor started talking to her between her and the patient. And then, she totally misinterpreted everything. And I was like, whoa. And then. And that's the time I took the initiative. I need to learn Somali so I can serve my community better. So I did a lot of practice and YouTube. I watch a lot of Somalis movies, a lot Somali shows. And then I went back to Somalia, lived there like a year so I can learn the language and that's the opportunity when the parents to offer their kids to take back home. It's really good to have a two language. Let's see you become a doctor. Okay. Example. And then you know two languages. So how many communities can you serve? Two languages. A lot of communities, right? Two communities. So, when the doctors go get a job, if they interview bilingual person or person who speaks one language, they will hire the person who speaks two languages. And the reason being is that that person can bring more customers and more clients for them, and they can communicate with patients when they walk in right away. So that's why it's good to know to your mother is really important, because there's a term in English saying that you're not who you are unless you know your language, because your language is what makes you who you are as a person. People will criticize you if you don't know the language, people will make fun of you. People will assume things and it was really challenging for me first because I couldn't communicate. There's a time I went to a place that I want to buy a clothes, and I couldn't communicate the person. And it was really hard. And he get so frustrated and he gets so mad at me. And then he charged me extra because he knows that I'm not familiar with the price. So let's see if the dress was twenty dollars. He will ask me fifty dollars. And then that was really so. People can take advantage of you when you don't understand the language and the culture.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota

When I had my first child. I was only thirteen years old at that time, and I want to be a really good role model for him. I want to be a really good example for him, and I want my kids to look, you know, because you have to model it in order. Like it's the same thing saying that I'm going to do this smoking, but I will not allow my kids to smoke. That is kind of a hypocrite, right? So I want to model for them. So my motivation came from my kids. High school was fun for me. And the reason high school was fun because I was a leader of the cultural educator part of it, and I was a part of the Islamic Association student, which is I was the leader for that program. I really I did not enjoy middle school, to be honest with you, which is middle school. It's a middle school everybody knows. But I enjoyed it in high school because I took a lot of leadership roles. I was a cultural navigator. I was a coordinator for the culture. My job was to navigate between all the cultures and different languages, and we come together, and we educate each other between the cultures. And so every other month, we will celebrate one culture, like Latino culture, like Japanese culture or Vietnamese culture or any other culture. Every other month we'll come up with an idea and they will dress up and they will bring that things that are important for their culture. Like in our Somali culture, food is important. You guys know that. So like we will present with that Somali traditional clothes. We will dress up and we'll do Somali traditional dance. And I think we did that here in East Grand Forks. So basically every other month we'll celebrate a different cultures, which is kind of empower and brings people together and understand each other.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota

And I went to her being a mother and graduating college, and never being a criminal, never did a drugs myself. So basically, I am amazing mother to my kids. And they are amazing kids. But I pushed them because I want to give them the things that I didn't have as a child, that opportunity, I didn't get it. I want to give it to them. But like I said, people take granted in their parents and I feel sad when the kids have both parents and they have opportunity and they have a parent that love them and they don't take advantage of it and the advantage they have in America because they have a free busing, they have a free education, they have a free meal, they can become whoever they want in life, and they're not taking advantage of it. And my job in my role. What I do is come from my heart. I love those kids so much and I care about them. And when I see them failing, I love to push them. I love them to take the advantage of it in life. So your parent is your wall. Your parent will protect you.  --Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota

American culture is a really, challenging and you know, that, as being a child in America and you want to keep your original culture because that's the expectation for your parents. So you have to do something called balancing. The expectation for our parents, they want to keep our original culture. They want to live the way they live. They want to act the way they act, which is as American child, it's hard, because you're not in that environment because the environment change people. So, you want to blend in where you're at and the country you're in, and you need to understand the since you speak the language, then you will pick up the culture. So what I do is something called balancing. So I do both cultures right now.  --Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota

I came from a very small town in Kenya. Mainly it was the refugee camp. So there are so many different because there's there's no light, there's not a lot of cars. And when we, get here, United States, it was the summer. So there was it seems really beautiful. So I didn't speak English at all, and my family did not either. So and then we didn't have a lot of opportunity that a lot of people have it right now because a lot of Somali community grew. And then there's a lot of interpreters available right now. But when we get here in the United States, that time there was not a lot of community that will support you with the language and lead you on and make you very easy for you to assimilate in a community. So that was really hard and challenging. Food was hard in American culture because as Somalis, we eat three times a day and we're America. Everybody snacks all the time. which is in our culture, we eat breakfast, no snack, and then we eat lunch. no snack. And then we eat dinner, no snack. And it was kind of confusing people eating food all the time. And that was their part of their culture. But to me it was like, why would they keep eating? You know why? And and I always had that question. But I think one of my teacher answered me, and that was their part of their culture. And my first world was not really appropriate world because I thought that was how to say good morning, which was kind of insulting because you know, how kids are when you ask them, how do you say good morning? They will teach you really bad words and any language you learn. You start with the bad language. I don't know why, but it's any language. So a kid, who was a friend of mine, actually, she's from Ethiopia too, but she was there a little bit before me, and she was comfortable with the language. So I will ask her if I get confused with or if I want to say something. So mainly she became my voice in the classroom.--Deka Ali / mother & cultural navigator from East Grand Forks, Minnesota