Osman rose from orphaned poverty to become the most literate Somali in the colony

Evidence

Deprivation and destitution was a relatively common fate for a significant proportion of the Somali population during Osman’s youth. He was a very poor orphan, losing his mother in his first year, and then his father was mutilated by a lion. He inherited no family assets and survived those tender years thanks to the generosity of a pastoral family who employed his father as stockkeeper. Through the kindness of others and his strong drive to make something of himself, Osman beat the odds by his late teen years. Although he had but three years of formal education, he rose to become one of the most literate Somalis by the early 1940s. His fluency in Italian was unsurpassed by many in the colony, and his wide reading in world affairs helped him become the most politically aware Somali in the territory. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 184