Who Cares About Somalia?

So I had my interview and I managed to get an amazing internship! I will be working with the Africa and Middle East Refugee Agency (AMERA) in Cairo as a research assistant in their finance department and as an English tutor to mostly Sudanese, Somali, and Congolese refugees living in Cairo.

The refugee situation in Cairo is extremely difficult as many surrounding nations send refugees to Egypt and the government denies these refugees the right to work in the formal sector and prevents them general access to Egyptian schooling. They live in difficult neighborhoods and face a lot of racism in Egypt. They are forced to find poor paying jobs in the informal sector and attend refugee schools. The issue with refugee schools is while they can get an education, diplomas from refugee schools are basically worthless. These refugees go to school simply to learn and pass their time knowing that once they complete their studies their options are limited.

Despite all the difficulties in working with refugees in Cairo, my boss is like the most amazing person ever. I expected him to be this savvy Egyptian intellectual, but he is actually this adorable Jewish guy from Pennsylvania. He lived in the West Bank for six months working as a hardcore activist for Palestinian rights and then came to Egypt where he has been working on helping African refugees for the last two years. Despite everything he is committed to making life better for these refugees in any way that he can and he could shake even the most apathetic human being to the core with utter compassion for humanity.

He gave me a lot of interesting insight in to the work I want to get in to in the future and lobbied hard for more involvement in the area of Sub-Saharan conflicts and refugees. He can’t seem to figure out why no one cares about the conflict in Somalia or the Congo, while the world seems to be consumed in other conflicts with far less loss of human rights and death. I guess I didn’t know how to answer except to echo his question, why doesn’t anyone care about Somalia?