{"id":3470,"date":"2021-08-16T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T20:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/?p=3470"},"modified":"2025-05-09T20:03:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T20:03:58","slug":"responding-to-opioid-addiction-in-somali-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/2021\/08\/16\/responding-to-opioid-addiction-in-somali-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Responding to opioid addiction in Somali community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYou cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world.  In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light.\u201d<\/em>  Seth Adam Smith, Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdirahman Mukhtar escaped from the capitol city of Mogadishu, Somalia when civil war broke out in early January1991 and landed in a refugee camp in Kenya where he stayed 7 years.  He moved to the U.S. in August of 1998 and attended and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis.  It was difficult because his family back home expected him to help support them though he was only a teen.  He went on to earn a kinesiology degree from the University of Minnesota. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For over 8 years, Mukhtar worked with youth first with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Department and then with the Confederation of Somali Communities in Minnesota, as a youth diversion coordinator and as the youth program manager at the Brian Coyle Center of Pillsbury United Communities, a hub for Somali immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Confederation collaborates with partners and sponsors to help connect individuals with wrap around resources and assistance in housing, jobs and training, health services, legal advice, domestic services, and immigration assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It assists community members navigate issues such as race and religious discrimination, identity crises, barriers to economic and family stability, obstacles in school success, mental and physical health needs, and social isolation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Somali youth have become more susceptible to gang affiliation and violence given the fact they are promoted by hip-hop culture and the infiltration and deadly impact of hard-core drugs such as fentanyl, synthetic marijuana, knat and K-9, stimulant drugs that come from East Africa and Southern Arabia.  With an epidemic of drug overdoses filling the ERs Mukhtar, decided he could no longer sit and watch the demise of his community.  He had to do something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On any given Friday night, even in Minnesota\u2019s cold winters, Mukhtar will be found on an outdoor plaza offering young passersby free pizza and hot Somali tea thick with spices.  His shirt reads: \u2018No judgment.  Just help.\u2019  He strives to make a human connection with youth who are homeless, often alienated from their own community. Some are addicted to drugs or hanging with a dangerous crowd.  A festering rivalry between St. Paul and Minneapolis East African gangs with threatening exchanges over social media outlets has created escalating conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mukhtar grew up in the neighborhood and knows almost all the names of the youth crying for help.  He\u2019s seen the best and the worst; some victims of gang violence; and others stranded out in the cold with no one coming to their rescue. His non-profit street outreach program, Daryeel (meaning \u2018care\u2019 in Somali) Youth is tailored towards enriching the lives of Somali youth by utilizing the positive elements of education mentoring, employment, and the arts.  They talk about the good ole days, the memories, and how they miss their family friends.  Art is used to counteract negative perceptions of young people and in attempts to bring the community members together offering free hugs and shared resources.  Often a 911 call must be made in order to save a life with Narcan, an opioid reversal agent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you\u2019re a mother and you come upon this scene in your own home?  You walk into your teen\u2019s bedroom or the bathroom and find your beautiful child slumped over on the toilet or lifeless in their bed. You have no clue what has happened.  There had been a knock at the back door earlier, but you were unaware of the nature of the delivery having taken place.  You probably wouldn\u2019t know what to do or where to turn if you became aware the package transaction came with a death sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A disconnect of a generation possibly due to a language barrier or the beginnings of the loss of a culture and a religion blocked a reality that would soon rock your world to its very core of your being with excruciating pain and disbelief. The mother has no knowledge what addiction is or how this monster called opiates has now cast a dark shadow over their family and has added to the death toll caused by overdoses. When young people overdose or die, they are often cloaked as a heart attack victim or having unexplainable passing.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girls run away unable to deal with the trauma they have brought with them to their new life, such as the threat of female genital mutilation. They drink alcohol to cope with many of these symptoms.  The men have experienced grief\/loss from the civil war and some of them have witnessed rebels and soldiers doing significant harm to their female relatives.  Mental illness grows more intense due to drug usage but still some choose to stay on the street using what little money they have to buy drugs often not in a safe environment or homeless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a people lose their culture, these are the results.  For the Somali youth, they are told they are not Somali enough because they speak English; or not American enough because they speak their native language. Youth want more athletics, mentorship, after school tutorial support, and youth programming. \u201cI am one of the few people that can help bridge the cultural and generational gap, especially for newly arrived Africans struggling to fit into the fabric of American culture and learning about African American family and community.  At the same time, I can still communicate with young people and offer tough love,\u201d Mukhtar says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Moms are at the heart of a campaign called Hooya, meaning \u2018mom\u2019 in Somali.  Their aim is to curb violence in the Twin Cities and to help lessen the panic when they hear the sound of an ambulance.  \u201cOne thing many Somali Americans have in common if they share nothing else, is a love for their mothers,\u201d said the veteran youth worker. Daryeel Youth is leading the campaign giving mothers a voice and making them be the face of doing something about gun violence in the Somali communities.  Hooya participants hold community meetings, continue a poster initiative along with social media messages and a video series with mothers and youths affected by gun violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For one mother, it makes sense that women should be the ones leading the way.  \u201cWe are the ones who are getting hurt.  When they go to jail or something happens to them, we are the ones who will cry.  We are the ones who are helping them when they become sick.  We are the ones who are there.  We are asking them to stop this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world.  In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light.\u201d  Seth Adam Smith, Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern Abdirahman Mukhtar escaped from the capitol city of Mogadishu, Somalia when civil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1905,2365,306],"class_list":["post-3470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","tag-drug-abuse","tag-drug-addiction","tag-somali","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3471,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470\/revisions\/3471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}