my name is Kadar Sayidnour and i am a senior in highschool. i like to write about stories that ive been through and i like to write about my adventures in africa and whatnot. what motivated me to write this piece was because i had to write it for a grade.
ETHIOPIA
I was at the market with my dad and I saw a really nice bike I like. I talked to my dad and I told him that I really liked that bike and I wanted it. My dad told me no and that I was too young to have the bike but that when I get older he’d eventually get it for me. A month or 2 after that conversation my dad bought me the bike for a surprise. I was sleeping and my little brother came to me and said wake up wake up dad bought you the bike. I got up and went out to the patio and saw one of my neighbors named Silva riding the bike. I'm usually angry when I wake up so I ran over and yelled for him to get off the bike and we fought around and I eventually got him off the bike. I was very happy that my dad bought me the bike and I rode it around the patio and I was the happiest I had ever been. A couple days later me and my brother took the bike out for a ride as the bike had a little backseat that a second person could sit on. There were these sandy hills right by my house and me and my brother liked to go there. We were going up and down the hills and having fun when all of a sudden a huge camel came out of nowhere. I was extremely scared as the camel was ginormous and I had never seen a camel just roaming out in the middle of the road. The camel started to run towards me and my brother and I started pedaling away as fast as I could. I was going as fast as i can but the camel was catching up to us so i had to make the sad decision of having to tell my little brother to get off and i told him he best start running and i pedaled as fast as i could and the camel chased us all the way to our house but we got to our house and locked the gate. A few months later It was a nice sunny day and me and my siblings left the house to go to the market quickly. There was a man who was feared in our area as people believed he was creepy/ weird. That day that me and my siblings left the house was the first day I ran into the man. Upon seeing him me and my siblings all ran and were scared so we went back home and told my parents what had happened. Our parents told us the man's name was xamari(hamari) and that he was mentally unwell and that he had even tried to kidnap kids before along with this other lady everyone feared. We understood why people felt the way they did about him and we also felt bad for him. About 3 months later , my whole family and I took a bus from Jijiga to the capital of Ethiopia, Addis ababa. We were staying at a hotel until we found out whether we were going to America or not. The hotel we stayed at was a decent hotel and it had 2 sections: a mens section and a woman's section. Since I was very young I stayed at the women's section with my mom and younger siblings. My older brothers stayed at the male section and they would come and tell us to be careful about going to the male section as there were some weird guys there. We listened and my and my siblings all feared going to the male sections. One day I was just very bored as there was nothing to do at the hotel and I really missed life back in jigjiga so I just decided to go and see the male section and see what was happening there. Upon entering the male section I realized why my brothers had warned us about going over to the males section. It was extremely loud and it was full of men yelling and just smoking cigars all over the place. Among the crowd was a face that I remember, it was xamari. That was the second time I had seen him and when I saw him I became uneasy and quickly went back to the women's section. A few days after that i was with this girl who was a lot older than i was, i think her name was farxiya(farhiya) and she was older than me so she had a phone and i really didn't have much to do at the hotel so i saw her using her phone by the window watchin youtube so i sat right by her and we started watching youtube together. We were watching youtube for I would say a good 20-30 mins and just having a good time and all of a sudden i look up and i see something weird. Xamari was approaching us fully naked coming from the men's section. Upon seeing xamari panicked . I told the girl and we both got up and started running down the stairs. Mind you, Xamari was a giant. He was at least 300 pounds and 6’5 so when he saw us running down the stairs he chased after me and the girl. Down the stairs was a patio and that's where all the adult males stayed and played games. Me and the girl yelled and asked for help and said he was chasing us so all the grown men came at xamari and they apprehended him and stopped him from doing anything. I was very thankful for those men that day and I was very shocked and couldn't believe what had just happened. The next day I peeked through the window and I saw xamari in cuffs being taken away in a pick up truck by police and I felt so thankful and at ease.