“I come from a society where women are almost nothing, not taken seriously, just waved away,” said 44-year-old Fadumo Dayib. “Certain men actually feel scared enough to make these threats because they recognise that I have the capability to instigate change.”
She added: “In terms of the threats that I’ve been getting, I see that actually as a positive sign that I am doing the right thing. As a result of what I am doing, Somali women will no longer be relegated to the back rooms and told to stay there. They’ll come out and they’ll never go back. I’m not surprised; in fact, I’m actually flattered that these cowards would be quaking or quivering in their sandals or whatever they wear just because I happened to step forward.”
THE first of her mother’s 11 children to survive until adulthood, Dayib was given the nickname Deeqo, which means sufficient.
“My mother thought that if the child stays alive, then she’s sufficient, she’s enough and I don’t need other children,” Dayib explained.
However at first it looked as if the sickly baby would struggle to live – even though her mother had left Somalia for Kenya in order to seek better medical treatment after all her babies died of treatable conditions like respiratory infections and diarrhoea.
Dayib proved to be tougher than she looked and grew up with a thirst for knowledge only partly sated by a rudimentary education which was all the family could afford.