Waris Dirie is Somalia’s desert nomad girl who became a supermodel, UN ambassador, author and human rights activist. To say that her story is brave and inspiring is to put it lightly.
Waris means desert flower and how apt the name is because she grew up in a desert and made beauty out of her life. This is a story not just about the harshness and rigour of living in Somalia but also of her rise to becoming world-famous. She narrates her journey in her best selling memoir, Desert Flower.
Life in Somalia
Waris Dirie was born in 1965, a time when it was hard to live in Somalia, especially as a woman. She was only five years old when she had the inhuman female genital mutilation act done on her. It was a cultural practice carried out on girls in Somalia. She lived with her parents who had twelve children. Life in Somalia was hard for the family. Mornings as a nomad were spent tending to animals and looking for food and water. The harsh dry climate of Somalia made everything difficult to find, even water.
At 13, Waris fled her home to avoid being married to an older man. A man her father had bequeathed her to in exchange for five camels. She ran through the desert for days and arrived at the capital city, Mogadishu. In this place, she spent time being a maid to different relatives. It was here that she met an uncle who was leaving for London for a four-year government role and needed a maid. She travelled to London and her story only begins here.
A maid in London
Living in London was harder than anything she had imagined. The loneliness of it, the endless working hours, the challenge of communicating in English. All these were only a part of the struggles she dealt with. Waris enrolled in school to learn English but this was disapproved by her uncle so she stopped.
After the four-year term her uncle was to serve ended, the time came to return to Somalia. Waris dreaded this and refused to return. In a bid to enforce this, she hid her passport and pretended to lose it, because without her passport she couldn’t travel back. After much hesitation, her uncle gave in and the family returned to Somalia without her.
Life got hard and Waris Dirie got harder with it.
Alone in London, Waris got a job as a cleaner in McDonalds. It was during this job she was discovered by Mike Goss, a fashion photographer who persuaded her to model for him. He later put her portfolio together and looked for agencies she could work with. Being a black model was difficult then as there were ‘no calls for a black model’. However, she landed her first modelling job with Terence Donovan where she worked briefly with the famous Naomi Campbell.
A Nomad in New York
As Waris’s career grew, so did the challenges. Waris was propelled to move to New York, the height of fashion photography at the time, to stand a better chance at her job. Her career bloomed here. She played minor roles in films and worked with top magazines such as Glamour, Elle, and Vogue. She also appeared on the runways of fashion shows in London, Paris, Milan and New York.
Waris carried her nomadic identity through most of her young adult life. She travelled light around various cities, moved on when jobs ended, and lived with different friends. The BBC found her life intriguing and decided to make a documentary about her modelling career. The filming was done for three months and she requested to visit her childhood home, Somalia, as part of it. Her first visit since she had left home 15 years before. The visit was heart-wrenching as it was heartwarming.
Somalia was war-torn and people had fled their homes. This made it difficult for Waris to locate her family. When she eventually did, she spent some time with her mother and siblings. The documentary was tagged A Nomad in New York.
As UN ambassador
It was only as an adult that Waris spoke openly about the infibulation done to her. At the peak of her career and in an interview with Marie Claire, Waris discussed the unimaginable discomfort, pain and medical complications that came with sewn up genitals. She said, “I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born. Then man robbed me, took away my power, and left me a cripple. My womanhood was stolen”.
She spoke against this barbaric cultural act and received a lot of criticism, especially from the people of Somalia. However, this opened her path to the United Nations as she was called to become an ambassador and join their fight against female circumcision.
In 2002, Waris later founded her own organization called, the Desert Flower Foundation. She continues to do many humanitarian works around the world and has received different awards for this.
This is the brief remarkable story of a young woman who transformed her life. Her story is one that reinforces that life is what you make of it. Through courage, resilience, and hard work she paved a new path for herself.
Quotes to Remember
“We knew our lives were dependent on the forces of nature, and God controlled those forces, not us.”
“From the beginning, I had the instinct for survival; I learned joy and pain at the same time. I learned that happiness is not what you have, because I never had anything, and I was so happy.”
“It is when you don’t have something that you appreciate it, and since we had nothing, we appreciated everything.”
“Women’s loyalty has to be earned with trust and affection, rather than barbaric rituals. The time has come to leave the old ways of suffering behind”
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Until next time,
Clare