‘The Last Nomad’: Somali refugee, soccer mom, and everything in between

The Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ famously wrote that “in Africa, when an old man dies, a library burns down.” Shugri Said Salh found herself haunted by those words. She had grown up in a nomadic community in Somalia, but she was raising her three children in California on an all-American diet of soccer practices, piano lessons, and playdates. She loved the life she had given them, but she also didn’t want them to lose track of where they had come from. 

“Somalia is a nation of poets, and of people with deep resilience,” she says. Her grandmother, her ayeeyo, had raised her on fireside stories, and she wanted to be part of that tradition too. 

The result is a memoir called “The Last to her life as a refugee in Kenya and finally her resettlement in Canada. But though Ms. Salh came to North America fleeing violence, she says she resisted writing a book that centered around running away.