When I get older, I will be stronger

I learned to fire guns at the age of nine or so, but luckily was not out killing people. We zigzagged the streets to escape those trying to kill us. I guess it would have been a matter of time till I turned around with a gun myself, to go after those coming for us. But I was fortunate. The grenade incident was about an explosion which destroyed a section of my school, from a grenade that me and my cousin detonated by accident. We both lived to tell about it.

The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.

To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.

You have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.

In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras. I got to fully experience and appreciate both the tragedy of Somalia and the beauty of it.