Friday July 10, 2020
Hodan Nalayeh and Windsor writer Fartumo Kusow would talk frequently about the podcast
Fartumo Kusow completed the podcast she started with Hodan Nalayeh. (Amy Dodge/CBC)
When Somali-Canadian journalist Hodan Nalayeh died in a July 2019 bomb attack in Somalia, recordings for a project she was working on with a friend back home in Canada were left behind.
Nalayeh and Fartumo Kusow, a writer from Windsor, Ont., were in the early days of producing a series about being single mothers, and the challenges it poses within the Somali-Canadian community.
The two friends would talk often on the phone, which Nalayeh would sometimes record, laying the groundwork for the podcast they wanted to create together. Their plan was to get together in a studio at some point, and record the final version of their series.
When Nalayeh was killed, the podcast was incomplete. But now, with the help of CBC Windsor journalist Amy Dodge, Kusow has completed her friend's final work.
Using a combination of recordings made by Nalayeh herself in the months before her death, and new recordings done by Kusow in a Windsor studio, the podcast was created.
Hodan Nalayeh, a prominent Somali-Canadian journalist, posing on a hill overlooking the city of Garoe, Somalia in a handout photo published to social media. Nalayeh was born in Somalia in 1976, but spent most of her life in Canada before returning to Africa in 2018, first to Kenya and then to Somalia. (Hodan Nalayeh/Facebook via Canadian Press)
Episodes of Picking up the Pieces are also posted here: