When Zulaikha, a light-skinned
red head, was in kindergarten, she had an epiphany. She found out that her Somali
mother was unique. At the time, Zulaikha was a student in a predominantly white
school. When the young children saw a black woman picking her up after classes and
sometimes volunteering at their school, they were perplexed.
“Zulaikha, are you adopted?” the children would ask. And when Zulaikha told them no, they would ask, “Then how come your mother is black?”
Zulaikha and her siblings, Amina
Caddey, 25, and Yusuf Mohammad, 26, are the offspring of a white father and a
Somali mother. They are also active members in the Facebook group, “Are You Half-Somali?”—a private group that is strict about who joins.
The objective of the group is
clear. “It is for mixed Somalis to exchange their views, thoughts, experiences,
and, most of all, positively the blessing of belonging to more than one
culture.” Even though the group is private, “Non-half Somalis are welcome, but
haters are not.”
The group occasionally receives
nasty messages, ostensibly from some Somalis who question its intention and its
very existence. These naysayers are mostly individuals who believe there is no
such thing as a half-Somali. “Anyone whose father is not Somali is not Somali,
these critics believe,” explains Yusuf Mohammad.
Interestingly, the majority of
the half-Somali group members have Somali mothers, says Yusuf. He is also one
of the administrators of the group, which includes half-Somalis of German, Native
American, French, Japanese, Chinese, Arab, Finnish, and Indian ancestries.
Indeed, the group is a mini-United Nations group that has one common
denominator— a Somali half.
Amina Caddey likes associating
with members of this diverse group. “I like to network with people who have a similar
background and share with them our uniqueness,” she explains.
One day, Amina went to a student
conference with her cousin, a full-blooded Somali. The cousin introduced her to
another young Somali woman who was immediately shocked by Amina’s light skin. After
a minute of staring at Amina closely, the young lady finally issued a verdict: “I can see the traces of Somaliness in you,”
she told Amina. “But you are so white.”
Amina laughed and told her that she
hears that from other Somalis all the time. Once, an elderly Somali woman asked
Amina’s cousins why they were hanging out with two white kids. When the elderly
woman was told that Amina and her sister Zulaikha, in fact, related to the
children, the Somali woman was astounded. Then, suddenly, the woman started
inquiring about the clan of their white father.
“It was a bizarre encounter,”
Amina said, smiling. “Many people simply want to put me in a box.”
Yusuf recalled attending a
weekend Islamic school. The first day, the Egyptian teacher asked students who
spoke Arabic to raise their hands. Several students did. Then the teacher
turned to Yusuf and admonished him for not raising his hand. “I do not speak
Arabic,” explains Yusuf. Baffled, the teacher became speechless. “I guess, she
automatically assumed I was an Arab,” he says.
The half-Somali group was founded
in 2008; however, it experienced an unprecedented peak in 2011 when many “halfies”—as they call themselves—joined.
The half-Somali group has
interesting tales to tell—some extremely rare, others simply outrageous.
There is one rare case of a young
lady who is half-Somali and half-Japanese. The Japanese, coming from a nation that
is homogenous like Somalia, rarely marry outside their group. However, love, as
it is popularly said, is blind. A Japanese journalist covering a story in Kenya
met a Somali woman, and the two fell in love. Today, the couple’s daughter, who
grew up in Japan, is also part of the half-Somali group.
Then there is the weird case of a
person who tried to join the group because she was half-Somali and half-Somalilander.
“It was a ludicrous attempt,” Amina Caddey notes, “to instill politics in an otherwise
cultural and multi-ethnic group.” Incidentally, the residents of Somalia and
Somaliland—a self-declared independent entity—are both ethnic Somalis.
A half-Somali group might appear
strange to many Somalis, but its members bring a greater richness of culture
and a whole new perspective to the Somali community at large. The cultural
horizons have indeed expanded worldwide. It was, after all, a child with a
strange name, a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas who became the forty-fourth
president of the United States of America. 
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