By: Adan H Iman
Friday, July 08, 2011
The reporting of the senseless slaying of Dr. Mohamoud Mohamed Yahye in Addis Ababa on the night of June 22, 2011 by armed gun men who invaded his home sent shock waves around the world: among his relatives, his acquaintances who personally knew him and among the many who read his articles, which were regularly posted at Hiiraan Online.
I first met Dr Yahye in 1981 when he was enrolled for MBA at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). After completing his MBA, he earned a PhD at the Graduate School of Education. He was also a licensed Certified Public Accountant.
After completing his studies, he returned to Somalia and later joined the staff of the Islamic Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After retiring from the Bank, he settled in Addis Ababa. He would fly often to Bossaso in order to share his wealth of knowledge with the students at the university there.
Dr. Yahye occasionally visited Los Angeles, where he owned a property and where some members of his immediate family had lived, not to mention the location of his alma mater. It was during those visits that I came to know more about him:
In addition to his exceptional academic achievement, he mastered several languages: Arabic, English, French and Italian. Imagine the effort required to obtain the degrees and certificate he earned as well as the languages he mastered: the sheer discipline, motivation, persistence and prodigious capacity to process and retain all that information. He was a voracious reader and the subjects he devoured had no bounds. In order to appreciate his versatility and wide range of his knowledge, one has to just read one of his writings and notice the sources in French, Arabic, English and Italian he would cite. He was sui generis. Indeed, I hardly saw him without a book in his briefcase.
Having become very impressed with his exceptionally superior writing skills in the English language and knowing full well that he started learning English at a later part of his life, I once asked him: “Dr.Yahye, the training for your first degree was in Arabic. You started learning English much later in your life. How come you are so good at it? I have been reading and trying to write in English since the mid 1960s and I’m not anywhere as good as you are. Tell me the secret of your success.”
He was very humble and positive man. He just reminded me to be proud of my accomplishments.
It has been sad enough to witness the loss of a whole generation who has been denied their right to get education in order to prepare them for life. It has been sad to see Mogadishu and its environment turned to war zone for two decades and industries dismantled and sold for their salvage values in neighboring countries. Now we are witnessing the senseless killing of the best of the best.
Dr. Mohamoud Mohamed Yahye was senselessly taken away first from his wife and his children who needed him around as the young children continue their long journey of schooling and, like him, master many languages and earn their PhDs ( once he told me his friends call him “lixleh” or father of six); he was taken away from his brothers, sisters and nieces and nephews and other immediate family members and extended family for his leadership; he was taken away from his students at Bossaso university who would have benefited immensely from the deep well of his education; he was taken away from all of us.
May his soul rest in peace.
Adan H Iman
E-mail: [email protected]