All in the mix

Fardowsa Mohamed grew up believing academic achievement was the only way to succeed in her family’s new country. Until Mixit, a creative project for young people from refugee backgrounds, opened her up to new possibilities. She’s now an award-winning poet, junior doctor and youth mentor who practises Kung Fu.

‘How can you be born in a country, be raised in it and still feel like you’re alienated or not a part of it?’ This, says Fardowsa Mohamed, is one of the central themes she writes about. It’s also why she started writing, aged around 11. 

As a New Zealand-born child of Somali refugees, she lived with the sense of never quite belonging ‘here’ or ‘there’. She felt at the fringes of New Zealand society. There was ‘a lot of invisibility’ around refugee people and their communities. ‘Looking at our media, African people and even immigrant people [generally] aren’t really represented in that space.’

As well as writing, being open played a big part in dealing with this. 

The family of eight – including three girls, three boys – moved around a fair bit, meaning there was ‘naturally, a sense of adaptability’. 

Fardowsa’s parents fled Somali’s civil war in 1991. They and their three young children spent four years shuttling between neighbouring countries until New Zealand granted them refugee status in 1995. After so many years of upheaval and uncertainty, they had developed a ‘sense of going with the flow in life; not being so attached to a plan’.

For Fardowsa, 24, staying open has helped her in situations where, as a Muslim woman with East African heritage, she can be ‘a tiny minority’. This includes in medicine, and, in particular, in surgery, the field she wants to specialise in. It can be easy to simply shut off when you feel excluded, but a sense of purpose has always helped, she says. ‘You have to push through that feeling of exclusion because you know it’s really important for you to be there.’

Growing up, she thought that academic accomplishment equated to success in her family’s new home: ‘a way out, a blessing’. It also meant that teenage Fardowsa was solely focused on her school work. She wanted to connect with others, but didn’t know how.

Joining Mixit – a community development project which uses creativity to empower young people from refugee backgrounds – at 15 changed this. 

‘It challenged the idea in me, that, actually, you don’t just have to be this one thing. It expanded my idea of myself at a really critical age. It pushed me to be a more open person.’

Taking part in a Mixit performance helped Fardowsa embrace her creativity and achieve more balance in her life, generally. She took up football, and now practises Kung Fu (she’s a red belt, which is senior, and just two away from black belt). 

‘In Mixit you’re forced to be open, basically. You can go in and have these pre-conceived notions of yourself: “I’m not a performer, I’m not a creative person, I’m not artistic in any way so this is not for me”’. 

But you can’t hold back. ‘Otherwise you’ll let down the group. You’re pushed a little bit outside of your comfort zone but in a really safe way, because everyone else is doing it, too.’

Mixit also gave her the chance to meet a diverse range of people – from different backgrounds and upbringings, and who speak a variety of languages. This strengthened her social skills. ‘The chance to connect with people who I may not have otherwise was hugely beneficial. Being open is an essential part of Mixit for sure.’

Fardowsa became a Mixit youth leader, helping to run the workshops and support the younger students. She’s still involved as an Alumni, promoting Mixit and mentoring its youth leaders. 

Fardowsa studied medicine at the University of Otago and currently works as a house officer at Middlemore Hospital. Last year she was named the University’s top surgery medical graduate, and served as president of the Dunedin Society of Aspiring Surgeons. 

And on top of that she’s published her poetry in Landfall and Poetry New Zealand as well as The Spinoff website. In 2018 she won first prize for her poem Us in the Poetry New Zealand competition. 

It took years for Fardowsa to call herself a writer or poet. But she realised she had to be open to being rejected. ‘You have to be a grown up and be a little bit brave and kind of just do it.’ She also had to stop worrying about offending people. ‘You need that sense of openness that you’re not holding yourself back to write anything good, or to write anything honest.’

Family is a big theme in her work, and she likes the mental challenge of writing in another person’s perspective. Her favourite poetry ‘says the things we can’t say’. 

As an adult, Fardowsa is less attached to the idea of having to belong. ‘I’m more comfortable just being myself and allowing the complexities of my identity to just co-exist.’ Being a New Zealander is central to that identity, while her culture and ancestry as a Somali woman is the essence of who she is; it is her heart.

In the past few years, Aotearoa has matured and changed, too. ‘There’s a little bit more visibility. I still don’t think we’re there as a country, but there are more conversations about multiculturalism and what New Zealand really looks like.’

But the phrase ‘this is not us’, used at the time of the March 15 terror atrocities in Christchurch, does not quite ring true. ‘It made me ask the question, “who is us, who is them, who gets to define us, when did we have a conversation on who ‘us’ is?”

‘It had a political purpose at the time, it was something that had to be said but moving forward we need to be more critical about [the fact that] in New Zealand there is a privileged race and then there’s everyone else.

‘It’s not even an accusation, it’s just a reality that we don’t have the language to talk about it.’

But she’s hopeful the dialogue will continue. ‘We need to have more conversations, we need to be honest in this country about who we let be “us”, who we define as New Zealanders and just be open about it.’

– Words by Rachel Helyer Donaldson. Images by Will Bailey.