Brainerd Dispatch
Friday December 8, 2017
By Zach Kayser
Hudda Ibrahim, a professor at St. Cloud Technical and Community College, speaks on the experience of Somali immigrants during a Cultural Thursday talk at Central Lakes College. Zach Kayser / Brainerd Dispatch
Somalis in Minnesota often find themselves misunderstood, but one young refugee hopes to help change that.
Hudda Ibrahim, a professor of diversity and social justice at St. Cloud Technical and Community College, presented to a sizable crowd on her background as a Somali refugee and the plight of Somali refugees generally during a Cultural Thursday talk at Central Lakes College.
Ibrahim left Somalia as a young girl with her family in 1991, after the onset of civil war. They fled to Ethiopia, abandoning everything they owned, and later moved to America. An uncle and brother died, she said.
"It wasn't easy for my family," she said.
Every Somali family that comes to America has a story similar to the Ibrahims, she said.
When Ibrahim finally got to America in 2006 at the age of 19, she didn't speak one word of English. She shared a room with her sister, so Ibrahim would study English in the closet until 3 a.m. to keep from waking her up, she said.
In college at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, Ibrahim was the only Somali woman, she said. She kept silent in class because she was afraid what people would think of her accent.
"I did my assignment, I knew what I was talking about, but I didn't have the confidence to speak up," she said.
But she realized if she didn't make an effort to break out of her shell, college would be hard on her, so she did all she could to join clubs and make friends, she said.
She went on to get a master's degree from Notre Dame, and work for a nonprofit in Washington D.C. Rather than stay in Washington, Ibrahim chose to move back to Minnesota in 2015.
"I really wanted to get back to my community, my hometown, my city of St. Cloud ... to build bridges," she said.
Ibrahim founded Filson Consulting, which lends its services to businesses trying to bridge the culture gap, including translation and mediation. She also wrote a book, "From Somalia to Snow," on the Somali experience in central Minnesota. The research for the book formed the basis of the second part of her talk Thursday—on Somalis in Minnesota as a whole.