Parallel Story #9

Ifrah Ahmed & Mary Harney

Somalia & Ireland

This parallel story was put forward by Herstory and AkiDwA for Movement

Ifrah Ahmed came to Ireland from Somalia in 2006 as a teenager. From personal experience, she leant her voice to the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) campaign in Ireland and Europe and later founded the Ifrah Foundation. She is one of the world's top international FGM/C eradication advocates and activists and recently, a film about her life was released called The Girl from Mogadishu. Mary Harney was born in a Mother and Baby Home and later incarcerated in an industrial school where she suffered almost daily beatings. She emigrated to London to try to find her mother, and later to America for further education where she became an activist. She is currently taking part in the Collaborative Forum for transitional justice for mothers and children that were institutionalized in Irelands’ notorious mother and baby units.

Ifrah’s story is first. To skip to Mary’s story click here.

Ifrah’s Story

Ifrah is an Irish/Somali activist, campaigner and CSO director working for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Having arrived in Ireland in 2006, aged 17, she set up her first organisation, United Youth of Ireland in 2008, in response to youth immigrant integration issues in her country of adoption. From personal experience, she leant her voice to the FGM campaign in Ireland and further afield in Europe and turned her focus to the specific gender issue of FGM by founding the Civil Society Organisation that carries her name, Ifrah Foundation in 2012. Now a charitable foundation registered in Ireland and Somalia, Ifrah Foundation has partnered on a wide variety of projects delivering impactful results with international NGOs as varied as Amnesty International, UNICEF and UNFPA in East Africa and has formed strategic partnerships with governmental agencies on policy and legislation, working at ministerial level as well as with religious leaders, international media experts, particularly the Global Media Campaign founded by The Guardian and community empowerment and education programs at grass roots level.

Her focus over the past five years has been to deliver programs in Somalia intended to provide the evidence based results that inform Ifrah Foundation’s scoping of its proposed national action plan for the abandonment of FGM in Somalia in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of FGM eradication by 2030.

In 2020, a movie - A Girl From Mogadishu - based on the testimony of Ifrah, and directed by Mary McGuckian, was released in theatres across Ireland. A Girl from Mogadishu celebrates the power of testimony, ‘for when women find the courage to stand-up, speak out, and tell their truth, the impact can be so inspiring and empowering that act as a meaningful catalyst for change.’

The GPO in Dublin illuminates in honour of Ifrah for the 2020 International Herstory Light Festival

Mary’s Story

TW; violence

I was born in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork. Born out of wedlock, I was considered an ‘illegitimate’ child by the State. I was removed from my mother when I was two and was illegally ‘fostered.’ At age five, I was taken under Ward of Court and incarcerated in the Good Shepherd Industrial School. Like many children at this institution, I suffered beatings and forced daily labour. Education consisted of religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. One day, a teacher, Miss O’Donnell – ‘Miss’— noticed bruises on my arms and advised me to use stories and my imagination to lessen the feelings of pain during the beatings. Miss also told me to keep reading as you can teach yourself anything if you can read.

At 16 ½, I was released from my Court sentence and could leave the Good Shepherds. I discovered libraries and delved into History, Literature, and Geography. At 17, I went to London to look for my mother. I wandered for a period, homeless. I eventually traced my mother, and we were reunited in Cardiff, where I also discovered that I had two sisters. Craving adventure, I signed-up to be a soldier, and without formal education, passed the entrance exam. When I finished my Army service, I joined the London Fire Brigade as an emergency dispatcher for twenty years.
In my 40s, I applied to third-level education only to find I was not eligible so I decided to travel. On my travels in America, I came upon College of the Atlantic in Maine. I applied to study there and despite my lack of formal education, I was accepted. I was an activist at college. I helped form peer education groups that went into high schools and taught HIV/AIDS prevention through the medium of art and theatre. The team was also part of the first state-wide ‘Growing up Gay’ conference in Maine. In 1996, I graduated with a BA in Human Ecology. The proudest moment was seeing my mother at my graduation, cheering for me.

Mary as ‘Sister Mary Vergin’ on the Ridiculouse’

After I attended the Ryan Commission’s Investigation into Child Abuse, Redress Board in the mid-noughties to give evidence of my time in the Industrial School, I suffered severely with PTSD and depression. During that time, I devised a method of therapy that helped me deal with my trauma. I created a stand-up comedy persona called Sister Mary Vergin’ on the Ridiculouse. I performed in theaters, and small clubs and gatherings in the town I lived in and surrounding towns in Maine. This comedy act was used to raise funds to combat HIV/AIDS in our community. The first show Sister Mary appeared at was called Harney’s Blarney’s and we raised $3,000 the first night. I credit Sister Mary with aiding my recovery from trauma and for bringing much needed humor and laughter to people.

My experience of being an immigrant in the UK was one of racist name calling; because of my Irish accent I was called “thick Mick” and “Stupid Paddy” and told to go back where I came from. It wasn’t until I joined the British Army that I was accepted. The obstacles I came up against arose mostly because of my lack of education, for example when I tried to get into college, the education I had received in the Industrial school was considered to be below the standard required for University. In America however, I was immediately welcomed, people seemed to fall in love with my Irish accent and almost everyone I met insisted they had an Irish heritage. The UK offered me opportunities to travel and earn a good living with salaries that allowed me to buy my first house. The UK is also the place where I became aware of the power of activism to confront social injustices. The college I attended in the USA provided me with my first opportunity to believe in myself and my capabilities to attend college and to succeed. Here my advocacy skills were improved and my activism on behalf of disenfranchised people took off.

In 2012, I returned to Ireland - the place that had denied me both my mother and a formal education - to pursue a Masters Degree in Irish Studies. I graduated in 2013 from NUIG with first class honours. In 2014, the College of the Atlantic unanimously voted for me to be guest speaker at Commencement. At this ceremony, I was surprised with an honourary Masters of Philosophy. Since then, I have lectured college undergraduates, and been a key activist in Ireland, a part of survivors’ groups seeking meaningful human rights-centered redress. I was part of an advocacy group that successfully lobbied Irish legislators to halt legislation that would have seen a 75-year seal of survivors’ documents. And I ain’t done yet — at age 72, I recently graduated with another first-class honours degree, an LLM in International Human Rights. I am currently tutoring Human Rights Masters level students in a pilot scheme to enable them to teach the history of the Mother and Baby Institutions to high school students.

I believe that my experience of being institutionalized for the early part of my life has contributed to my never feeling anywhere is “home.” I have permanent ‘wanderlust’ - I can pack up and go at the drop of a hat. My heart however is with my partner in the USA and the support I receive to follow my dreams, I have, over the years created a network of supportive friends as far and wide as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, throughout the USA and the UK. Maybe it is not so strange to say that I have had a harder time in adjusting to Ireland as one of my ‘homes.’ Galway is my heart city and the support network of friends I have built up here is incredibly strong and supportive of me.

Mary Harney illuminates Sean Ross Abbey, former Mother & Baby Home for the 2021 Herstory Light Show

On Brigid’s Day 2021, Herstory journeyed into the heart of Ireland to help heal the heartbreak of the Mother And Baby Homes scandal. Iconic buildings illuminated to witness & honour all who suffered. Filmmaker Peter Martin captures this pilgrimage of light in Solas, a hauntingly beautiful film.

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