I was young, but I remember my mother, Dawn Goff, spending her days off work selling tickets for a Sony DVD player.
“I fundraised at malls, I even went out to Quispamsis and Rothesay and I fundraised at the Sobeys there,” my mom told me.
She did it all because she wanted to bring a man’s family to Canada.
Around 2005, she met Mohamed Madowe at a pizza place in Fredericton. That was where my mom learned all about his past and came up with a plan to help with his future.
Madowe had moved to Fredericton to study sociology at St. Thomas University. But he’d also come to Canada in order to escape a war in Somalia. Unfortunately, he’d been forced to leave his wife, Asha, and two twin daughters, Segal and Astal, waiting for his return. Like so many Somalis, they’d fled to Kenya during civil wars.
“[Hearing] Mohamed’s story pulled at my heartstrings,” she said.
I don’t think Madowe expected a woman he barely knew to help a random student bring his entire family to Canada. But my mom was different, she always wants to help people. It’s what makes her happy.
Not only did she fundraise for Madowe’s family, but she contributed to the cause herself. She even went so far as to buy him a laptop for school.
Eventually, Madowe’s family arrived in Canada. They were reunited and continued to live their lives in Canada.
But it’s been ten years since all this and our families have lost touch. So I started making cold calls all last December to find Madowe and his family. My mom told me he had moved to Edmonton, I wanted to find him but it was difficult.
Every number I called was disconnected. I heard he was associated with some Somali youth help groups there, but those numbers were disconnected too. It felt like I had just missed him somehow.
Facebook didn’t work either, I couldn’t figure out why. Usually everyone is on Facebook, right? But then I found him under an alias, I had finally found Mohamed Madowe.
“Glad to hear from you buddy. Miss you guys. Your family has been part of my life,” Madowe told me over Facebook.
I finally found out the reason we haven’t heard from him for so long. He’d moved back to Somalia. He told me about his busy life, about how he’d gone back to help his people and left his family safe in Canada.
“This is my initiative to help refugees & internally displaced people around the world,” Madowe wrote.
While he didn’t have much else to say, it did give us some closure after waiting so long to hear from him.
“I knew Mohamed was going to do great things,” my mom told me after our conversation with Madowe.
I asked my mom if she ever thought what might have happened if she hadn’t fundraised to bring Madowe’s family to Canada. She said she’d “never really thought of it that way.”
It’s not just my mom’s selfless work to help save a family that makes me proud of her. She unknowingly helped someone who would go on to help others. Someone who created an organization to help refugees.
He wanted to go home to help his people. I’m sure many other refugees will understand that feeling. Refugees that will be coming to Canada this year.
After a while, these refugees will integrate into society and we will forget about them. But we shouldn’t forget, because the people we help could turn out like Madowe.
When I asked my my mom if Madowe’s family was the last one she would help, whether she would ever retire from it all she told me “no, never.”
