Finding her own way

Nayrus Ibrahim is the first woman in her family to move out of the house without getting married. Her sisters dropped out of high school to wed. Her first memories are of the civil war in Somalia. “I didnt know another world existed beyond where I lived,” she said. “People were getting killed — that didn’t bother me. The gun (shots) everyday non-stop — that didn’t bother me, because that’s like everyday life. You would see people wounded and being dragged across the street to get them help. That was the kind of life.” Ibrahim was born in Kenya, moved to Somalia and then back to Kenya at the age 6 before immigrating to Eden Prairie, Minnesota, when she was 11. When she began school, she couldn’t speak English and was at a preschool level. Despite this, Ibrahim graduated high school with the rest of her class at age 18. Now she is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, studying marketing communications.