Friday, October 07, 2016
Photo | Abdiaziz at work on his sewing machine
(ERGO) - Abdiaziz Haryan Mohamed is known by family, teachers and customers as a hardworking and reliable boy. At 13, he is funding his own and his two brothers’ schooling by making clothes on the family sewing machine.
Abdiaziz is the only tailor in Dayah neighborhood in Dhusamareb.
He squeezes in two hours of tailoring before setting off to school in the morning. In the afternoon, after Koranic classes and private tuition in mathematics and English, he returns to the sewing machine between five and nine pm.
“If I don’t work, my brothers and I will not be able to continue our education,” Abdiaziz. His mother has a small shop but does not make enough to support the nine-member family and pay the children’s school fees.
With the daily average he earns of 120,000 Somali shillings ($5), he pays his own school fees of $12 a month and his younger brothers’ totaling $18.
Abdiaziz was taught by his older brothers how to tailor women’s clothes, bedsheets, vests, shirts and trousers.
“Customers often say to me, you are very young, are you the one handling our clothes?” Abdiaziz said. “But when they find out how good my work is, they keep coming back again and again because I win their confidence.”
Mohamed Mohamud Kulane, the principal of Galgadud high school, told Radio Ergo that Abdiaziz’s hard work is paying off in his exam grades.
“He is different from other students in many ways. He uses the money he makes from his work to support himself and his family, and at the same time he doesn’t forget his education. He never misses classes and that is the reason why I say he is better than many students,” he said.
For the time being Abdiaziz committed to his tailoring but in future he would like to go to university and train as an engineer.