After weeks of traveling and having his bag stolen from right under him as he slept, Hussein decided to stop for a few days in a border town where Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya meet. The town was bustling with commerce and trade between the neighboring nations, and he was able to find work with a local export company. The pay was not significant enough for him to consider settling, and so in a few months he was on a bus heading down to Nairobi.
As Hussein recounted his story to me, I noticed a sudden change in his tone and emotion when he described the arrival in Kenya- as if this was the part of the story he was waiting to get to. As if the earlier parts of his story were long, painful and tedious, and he'd rather not dwell on it.
With newfound excitement, he described his arrival in Eastleigh, the Somali district in Nairobi, as a joyous sort of homecoming. Many of his friends and family had settled there, and so after months of lonely and unpredictable travel, he suddenly had the warmth and hospitality of those he knew and loved. Just moments after getting off the bus in Eastleigh, he ran into two friends from his childhood in Somalia. They immediately offered to host him until he located relatives and other friends. Suddenly, for the first time in months, he had a warm bed to sleep on and did not have to worry about whether he could afford to stay another night. Shortly after arriving in Eastleigh, Hussein was offered a job at a friends store. Hussein created a life for himself in Eastleigh, eventually finding a better job as an english teacher in a secondary school; a job that gave him room and board.
Two years later, on what was seemingly a typical day, a friend of Hussein's told him he heard that someone he might know what in town. "Who?" Hussein asked, not expecting what he was about to hear. The friend told him Hawa, Husseins old high school sweetheart from his hometown in somalia, was in Nairobi. Hawa and Hussein were once in love and speaking of marriage and a family when the civil war suddenly erupted, pushing them to different corners of the globe. That afternoon Hussein discovered that Hawa had gone to the United States and began working as a nurse. Hussein was proud of her for escaping the difficulties back home, but he also felt saddened to think that surely, after so long, she is already married. Even he had been briefly married until the suddent and tragic death of his young wife.
The friend offered to call Hawa and set up a chance for the two to meet. To Husseins surprise, she agreed and the two planned to meet downtown to "catch up" on life. As Hussein describes it, it wasnt long into their conversation when they both mentioned they were single, and something clearly clicked for the two. They had a mutual feeling that this was meant to be, and that the unlikely chance of finding each other, during her brief visit to Nairobi, actually occurred.
The rest, as they say, is history. They had a huge wedding celebration in Nairobi, moved to the U.S., and the two recently had their first child, a baby girl.
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