Keeping Hope Alive

The Book of the Week is “Keeping Hope Alive” by Dr. Hawa Abdi, with Sarah J. Robbins, published in 2013.  This ebook is the personal account of a driven, fiercely independent Somalian doctor.

Around 1970, Abdi did seven years of medical training in the former Soviet Union. She then returned to her homeland of Somalia to practice obstetrics and gynecology. Through the years, she married, had two daughters and a son, and in August 1983, built a clinic.

By mid-1992, Abdi had made available a farm and campus on which poor people and war refugees could reside, and receive medical treatment. In addition, she was a law school graduate. She also took in her sister’s large family when they were destitute. She risked her life many times during hostilities between and among Ethiopians and Somalian clans ruled by warlords and sheikhs.

Abdi gathered quite a following because she was so generous to her community. Her dream was that the Somalian people would unite as one country, instead of killing each other in tribal infighting. “People who are fighting will never be able to build.” By the early 2000’s, “… after fifteen years of civil war, the women and youth ran everything, while most of the grown men had either been killed or were away– out fighting or somewhere abroad, trying to make business deals.”

Read the book to learn the details of: Abdi’s trials and tribulations in protecting her property and family, how she was betrayed by her husband; how in some ways, she refused to comply with Somalian/Islamic culture; the cities to which she evacuated her children, and of her interactions with relief organizations, soldiers and journalists.