Edna Adan Ismail

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This is the BBC.

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Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

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For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

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My castaway this week is the midwife and campaigner Edna Adan Ismail. As a child growing up in what was then British Somaliland in the 1940s, her dream was to build her own hospital. By the mid-50s, she'd won a scholarship to study in Britain, but life, as it has a habit of doing, got in the way. It took 50 years and all her savings to finally realize her dream. In 2002, the Edna Adan Maternity and Teaching Hospital emerged from the rubble of a bloody civil war, testament to my castaway's personal mantra. If I don't do it, then who will? It's a dictum she's lived her entire life by. Married at one time to the Prime Minister of Somalia, she juggled the high-profile role of First Lady with nursing shifts, and later, as her country's first ever female foreign minister, broke deep-rooted taboos by publicly condemning the widespread practice of female genital mutilation.

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A public health scandal, yes, but a highly personal struggle, too. Aged just eight, she herself was violently disfigured by FGM. It was her grandmother who had arranged the procedure. She says, Don't say you have nothing. You have a brain, and that is everything. You should give up saying I cannot do and say I will try to do. And so welcome, Etna. In the fifteen years then since your hospital opened, twenty thousand babies have been delivered, is that right? I think we're we're close to twenty-two thousand now. What can you remember? Can you remember the very first birth that your hospital was? Yes, absolutely. The very first one was born about eight hours after we opened, after the big ceremony of

Edna Adan Ismail2:23

Yeah.

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Yeah.

Edna Adan Ismail2:23

It's not so

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The Vice President of the country was there and a lot of dignitaries.

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and a whole lot of women singing and dancing and joyful event.

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and a few hours later a woman was brought in labor.

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That little boy is now fifteen, sixteen years old.

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And hopefully he will become a doctor one day, because that's what he wants to become. And were you present at the delivery? But of course. Why would somebody else have all the joy of delivering my baby and my hospital, the hospital that took my whole life to build? You were once described in print, I saw, as as tough as General Petraeus, as compassionate as the Pope, as tireless as Michael Phelps, as beautiful as Tina Turner, and with a work ethic to rival Bill Gates.

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And with

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Oh my goodness.

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Oh my goodness.

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I hope it describes a woman who has to put in a whole lot of hours. And in 1991, when we emerged from a civil war where everything was lost, 95% of the city was flattened, no hospitals, no schools, no homes, one doesn't have time to think twice about what needs to be done. You'd originally opened this, I mean it is a bright shining beacon. To see photographs of it, it looks extraordinary. It looks relatively state-of-the-art, relatively high-tech hospital. Well, I'm going to give a gift. It has to be a good gift.

Edna Adan Ismail3:37

Relatively high.

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But it was supposed to be just a maternity hospital, and very quickly that was not the way it worked out. What happened? An eight-year-old man was knocked down by a donkey cart just outside of the hospital, and he was brought in.

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We need to suture him, we need to stop that bleeding, we need to take care of him and worry about whether he's pregnant or not another time. We have to stop the bleeding.

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Why not?

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It's my decision. It's my hospital. Is it true you live on site? You live in the hospital? I cannot afford to live anywhere else. I lived on the site for eight months before the hospital was opened. But I had no windows. I had no electricity. I uh my water was brought in by a bucket.

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And the construction crew would come in in the morning at six o'clock and continue the construction. At night, I was the only ghost floating around there. And how do you switch off? When do you switch off then? Do you ever? I'm a midwife. I was trained to wake up in the middle of the night. So staying up for me is not an ordeal. It's something I've done all my life. Let's take a look then at your music, at your desert island discs. Tell me the first one we're going to hear and tell me why you've chosen it. Happy is a very happy song. And on a particular occasion I was traveling, I was in transit in Dubai airport, angry with the airlines for having misplaced my luggage and the connection to Somaliland was delayed. And I just heard this music. It made my burden so much lighter, my knees less aching.

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Whenever I feel a little bit depressed I listen to it.

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Might seem crazy what I'm bout to say

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I'm sure she's here.

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Take a break.

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Hotel

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Uh

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Go straight

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With the air, like I don't care, baby by the way.

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BAY

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Cause I'm the happy purple moon

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That was Pharrell Williams and Happy. Edna, I should remind listeners then that Somaliland declared independence in 1991. It sits just in the Horn of Africa, a population of around about four million. It's bordered by Somalia, with Djibouti to the northwest and Ethiopia is to the south and west. And it is, as you have said, an area that has been riven over decades by civil war, by brutality.

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Somaliland itself remains internationally unrecognised.

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I would like you if you could just to give us a snapshot, given everything that's happened, of how stable a place it is to live currently.

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It's stable. It has a government, elected presidents. We have a constitution. We have a law. We have the courts. We have the police force. We have demobilized the militia of Somaliland in nineteen ninety five, ninety six.

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And you were, of course, the pioneer, the woman who was at the very beginning of these changes in Somaliland. In 1961,

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You returned to your country as the first ever qualified nurse and midwife and proud of it. Yes, what was it in Britain? And what were the challenges you met when you went back? Well, the challenges I met with before I came to England because at that time the nursing profession was seen as something that was below the dignity of the daughter of a doctor. People would go to my mother and say, Oh, we heard the bad news. You poor thing. Your daughter has chosen to become a nurse. What will become of her? Who will ever want to marry her? And I love nursing. I was passionate about it. I love midwifery. So when I went home in 1961,

Edna Adan Ismail6:41

What was it?

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I had to introduce nursing and midwifery to my country and start training midwives. Today families come to me and say, We want our daughters to become like you. And how is your hospital funded? I mean day to day. Everything is not free, of course. I have salaries to pay, I have food to provide, medicines and equipment. But then my hospital was built for that poor woman who has nothing, who's bleeding, who's dying, and who has nowhere else to go. These women I treat for free.

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But other patients who will have somebody says I want my h my wife to have a private room I say good good you can pay twenty-five dollars a day and it is a nomadic culture how far have people sometimes traveled to the doors of your hospital? People come to me from wherever they wish to come from. They come from neighboring Somalia, they come from Ethiopia, they come from Djibouti, they come from all corners of Somaliland.

Edna Adan Ismail7:52

Deal.

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For instance, children with hydrocephaly. We're the only hospital in the Horn of Africa that inserts shunts into the heads of little children. So this is a complex brain condition. Yeah, you know, the water in the brain. We've operated on four or five hundred children. If they were to go elsewhere and go abroad, it would have cost them $15,000. We treat them for free. That's a lot of credit in the bank upstairs.

Edna Adan Ismail8:09

And so this is a clamp.

Edna Adan Ismail8:10

Yeah.

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Tell me about your second piece of music then, Edna, and um what are we gonna hear? You'll be hearing Mahe Dantu I She Willo. We used to sing it when we had the Communist occupation, and it was a song of resistance.

Edna Adan Ismail8:55

Mahatura Gela Baro.

Edna Adan Ismail8:59

You can move the way to the hotel.

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That was Abdi Noor Allale and Edna Adan. I'm going to ask you to say the title of the song, because if I say it, I'm going to absolutely mangle it. How do you say that? Mahay Dantu ishaywil. And it's a song that gives you hope. And even though you've had drought and dryness, God will send the rains and you will swim in pools of rain water. When you are in the dark, the moon will come out just before you step on a snake on the road. So don't give up hope. And speaking of water, you yourself certainly look as if you've been drinking at the fountain of youth, because in my notes here it says you were born in 1937, which I find impossible to believe looking into your face. It was into. Well, congratulations for that. It was a relatively privileged environment you were born into. Just tell me a bit about your family circumstances. Well, my father was a doctor. My father was somebody who was known as the father of healthcare. I was privileged to go to school, went to school in Djibouti because there were no schools for girls in my country, British Somaliland Protectorate. And you say your father was this very prominent physician. Did you spend any time with him at his work? I used to hang around the hospital and give him a hand and he would say, Could you go and wash those forceps for me?

Edna Adan Ismail9:41

Yeah.

Edna Adan Ismail9:45

But it w it

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If he had to travel overnight in two or three days, he'd leave me a little list and say, While I'm away, make sure they do this, release the scaffolder, make sure they remove the sutures to morrow. So as the boss's daughter, I would make sure that the instructions were followed and he was my hero, still is.

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I will never be as compassionate as he was. I was never I will never be as as kind and generous with his time, with his emotions, with his affection.

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A good man. What did he teach you about how patients should be treated? With respect.

Edna Adan Ismail10:40

Yeah.

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And there was a particular incident. He was opening, launching an abscess, and of course a dirty, elderly, unclean person, and I was holding a bowl under the jaw so that, you know, whatever was coming out should go there.

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and it must have shown on my face.

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and when the patient was cleaned and was out of the room, he closed the room.

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And he said, Don't you ever dare show such an ugly face to my patients

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That old man was even more precious than his first born, me, the person whom he referred to as the apple of his eye.

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But the patient came first. You have said that the idea of building your own hospital began to germinate when you watched your father going about uh his work as a doctor. So so when c can you place that on? I was about I think I was about twelve or eleven.

Edna Adan Ismail11:29

But

Edna Adan Ismail11:30

There's a doctor.

Edna Adan Ismail11:32

I'm

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And I would often hear my father voicing a wish and say, Oh, I wish I had a better forceps than this I wish I had a pair of scissors that would cut I wish I had a better hospital.

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And I just made a mental note that one day I would build the kind of hospital my father would have liked to work in. How I would do it, I didn't know. What I would use to make it happen, I didn't know. But I carried it in my mind and in my heart. And when I retired at the age 60, that's when I had the time and I had the opportunity and I had the means and the resources in which to do it. I asked you about your family there and you've spoken clearly. I mean, so full of love about your father. I haven't mentioned your mother. Tell me about your mom. Well, my mother was a great woman, a woman.

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Who had wished I had been a normal girl, who didn't go out to work, who didn't ride bicycles, who didn't

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wrestle with boys, who didn't climb trees, someone who would just sit at home and learn to cook and prepare herself to become a good wife. She never gave up on me until she died. Uh she was sh sho a few days short of ninety two.

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But she still wished I had been a normal girl.

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Tell me about yourself.

Edna Adan Ismail12:41

Sorry.

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It didn't work out. It didn't work out. Tell me about your third piece of music then, Eda. What are we going to hear now?

Edna Adan Ismail12:43

It did work out.

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Au non général graturien by Edith Piaff.

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And uh I have absolutely no regrets. No regrets being a nurse, no regrets being a midwife, no regrets climbing trees, no regrets.

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No.

Edna Adan Ismail13:04

Yeah.

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No from our greater

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Nila bea confer.

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Me and my

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Simon Yeni

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Oriaga

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No join ourselves.

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No je ne regret mien. That was Ida's Piaf. So, Edna, and female genital mutilation, FGM. It is a very difficult and distressing subject for people to approach, and it is one.

Edna Adan Ismail13:43

Subject.

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FGM continues to be deeply culturally ingrained in your homeland. Why is that? Well, it's it's ingrained in about sixteen countries, my country among them. But then as a midwife, I went home to my country, some other land, in nineteen sixty, sixty one, and for the first time in my life, I was delivering women

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whose baby had to be born through a passage that had been so damaged and so changed, which was not the case when I was delivering babies in England.

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And it brought back the pain and and and the revolt I felt against this practice, which has no place in Islam. It's totally against the teachings of Islam. So I started talking about it. But then very few people would listen to us. They would think it was um rude and uh impolite and shameful to be talking about reproductive parts of the woman's body.

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But then there comes a time in life when you have to call a spade a spade.

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And um I picked up the microphone and spoke against it in public.

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Everybody was angry that I, as the daughter of Doctor So and So and the former wife of the first President of Somaliland after independence, could pick up a microphone and speak about it.

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But somebody had to. What do you remember about the day that it happened to you?

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Uh pain.

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Pain that I have never known.

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The same since my mother's friends, my grandmother was there. There was a big fat sheep there waiting to be slaughtered because they were going to have a feast because the doctor's daughter had been purified. And they just grab you.

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tie you down, grab your legs, and an old woman

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reaches between your legs, and with a knife cuts away

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No anesthesia.

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You bleed, you scream, you faint, and the wound is sutured together, not with needle and thread, but with acacia thorns.

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and tied together. So when my father came home at night and found that this had been done to me, this was the first time I saw tears in his eyes. And seeing the anger of my father, and how he he was angry at his own mother, and at my mother, his wife,

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that gave me the message that what had been done to me was wrong.

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Apart from the appalling physical injury that it must surely have taken.

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Well, years to recover from. How did it affect you? One never recovers from this. Right. The wounds heal. But your rebellion against it, the emotional.

Edna Adan Ismail16:05

Yeah.

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Pain never goes.

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And it just makes you want to do something about it, and I hope that by bringing it out to the world

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that there is a voice now and and the world is listening to it and realizing that it should not be done to women.

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Let's have your next piece of music, Edna Adan. What are we gonna do?

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By Robert Frost. And why have you chosen this poem?

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I'm a midwife.

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I have miles to go before I sleep, because there are things that need to be done.

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Stopping by woods on a snowy evening.

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Whose woods these are I think I know.

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His house is in the village, though He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow

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My little hoss must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake.

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The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep.

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And miles to go before I sleep

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And miles to go before I sleep.

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That was Robert Frost reading his own poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. So, Edna Adan, when you came to Britain in the mid fifties to take up that nursing scholarship, it was.

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I mean, it was hardly a place where women were treated equally to men, but I'm guessing it must have felt much freer than your life had been as a young female in Somaliland. What sort of things did you do here that you couldn't have done at home?

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I went to the Borough Polytechnic, by the way, now the University of the South Bank, but a college where boys and girls studied together. We played sports together, we were in the same courses together, we rode the same buses, so I was just a person like every other student. And did you learn to drive here as well? I learned to drive, yes, and I loved driving. And were you allowed to drive when you went back to Somalia? Oh, no, oh no, that was a big. It took them six months to accept me to drive. And then they would go to my father and say, Doctor Rather, we saw your daughter driving your car again. Don't let her. And why not? But she's a girl. And he was like, well, do you think I do not know that my daughter is a girl? And it took them six months. And I refused to give up and continued and eventually became the first female to get a driving license. And I continue ever since. And by the way, I took part in a rally once when it was required that it would be a driver and a female companion. So my brother's wife became my companion, both wearing trousers and caps. How did you get on?

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I was the fifth car, and I should have been given a reward or a trophy.

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But because I was impersonating a man

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I was fined and uh well I was not impersonating anybody. A driver is a driver.

Edna Adan Ismail18:54

That'll teach you if you

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Of those of the seven years it was seven years you were in the UK. Now, this was a time of explicit, casual, ingrained racism in the UK. Did you meet any of that?

Edna Adan Ismail19:01

I was seven years ago.

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Very often I would be the only black face in the class, but um

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I made friends with everybody. I loved what I was doing. I was a very passionate student. And in fact, I had a lot of Scottish friends and I used to be called Edna Mac Ishmael. And when I had Irish friends, I would be Edna O. Ismail.

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And you actually worked as a midwife in the middle. I worked as a midwife. I was trained at the Hammersmith Hospital and Lewisham Hospital. I rode my bicycle. I delivered women in their homes. You rode your bicycle, Allah, called the midwife, did you? Yes, of course. Of course. We had a you know, a black raincoat and our caps and a black bag and then we would go to address so and so.

Edna Adan Ismail19:40

Of course.

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and deliver a woman and love it. Time for more music, Edna Adan. Tell me what we're going to hear now. We're on your fifth. My fifth is Frank Sinatra, my another favorite singer that I have, and his song is My Way, and it describes so much my life also.

Edna Adan Ismail20:04

And now the end is near.

Edna Adan Ismail20:10

And so I faith

Edna Adan Ismail20:13

The final curtain.

Edna Adan Ismail20:17

My friend, I'll say it clear, I'll state my case.

Edna Adan Ismail20:26

Of which I'm certain.

Edna Adan Ismail20:30

I believe

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That was Frank Sinatra and my way. So, Edna Adan, your first husband, Mohamed Egle, was a Somali politician, but you'd actually met him in London when you were students, and back then you dated briefly, but It was a good number of years later that you it was sort of out the blue you received this proposal. What what actually happened?

Edna Adan Ismail20:47

This proposed

Edna Adan Ismail20:48

What actually happened?

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I first met him when I first came to the UK in nineteen fifty four. He was one of the many Somali young men who were studying here.

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Mohammed Brahim was born to one of the richest men in my country.

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So for him, you know, sending beautiful flowers and picking me up in his

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How glamorous. Yes. Curtains would be, you know, flickering to look at this little Somali girl and this Somali man in this convertible red M G. And then he disappeared. We haven't heard from him for a long time. Didn't know what happened to him. But it seems that his father had a stroke, so he had to rush back.

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I forgot to write, and until one day he asked for my hand. And I was so angry, I thought, Well, my goodness An educated man, he should get to know me first, and he should ask me whether I want to marry him or not. Being a rich man doesn't buy my emotions. So he asked your father. He asked your father, which was the right thing in the culture to do.

Edna Adan Ismail21:40

He asked my father, which was a r

Presenter21:44

But I rebelled against him. I said, You should have asked me first. Anyway, when we married, he was the leader of the opposition. Right. So he did be he became Prime Minister in nineteen sixty seven? He was elected.

Edna Adan Ismail21:51

He became

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Prime Minister of the United Somalia then, Somaliland and Somalia United. I've seen uh many, uh all of them very glamorous photographs of you meeting presidents and dignitaries in lots of very fabulous frocks and jewellery. I mean you met people like Charles de Gaulle and President Lyndon Johnson and Johnson. Prime Minister Harold Wilson. I enjoyed it, I loved it. When did you fit in the nursing shifts as well? Because that's what I've read, that you. Well, I was a nurse before I was married, so my husband had to understand that.

Edna Adan Ismail22:05

It's raising lots of very fabulous frogs.

Edna Adan Ismail22:11

How did it be your primary

Edna Adan Ismail22:19

You will I

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And the arrangement was that two days a week I would still continue to go and teach my students and uh deliver babies in the maternity ward and wear a uniform. So even though I'm the wife of the Prime Minister,

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When I go home

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or before I came to work this morning. But when I am with a patient I treat her with respect, with kindness, with affection. And how were you treated by the people working around you at that point? They were shocked. They thought, well, this this is not good for the Prime Minister and how could the Prime Minister allow his wife to go to work?

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But after a while people became to accept that and accepted it and they saw the work that I was doing.

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In 1969 there was a military coup and the President, not the Prime Minister, but the President was assassinated.

Edna Adan Ismail23:05

Michael.

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You were put under house arrest for a number of months. How did you escape house arrest?

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A hotel caught fire, and there were announcements on the radio that all health anybody trained in health care was required to come to the hospital to take care of the wounded.

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So I walked out of the house. The guards had not been given the instructions to shoot me, and they didn't know what to do.

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And I said, Look, I'm going to the hospital. There are wounded. I will help there and I will come back. You come with me and come back with me if you wish. Or wait for me here because I will come back.

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And I walked to the hospital, worked all night,

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and the next morning walked back home.

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And there were no gods.

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And uh they never come back again.

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Tell me about your sixth choice of the morning, Edna Atta. My sixth choice, of course, is Ella Fitzgerald, my favourite singer. I love Ella Fitzgerald. She's seen me through so many things. But on this particular occasion I choose it because when my husband was in jail with all his Cabinet and all the Members of Parliament,

Presenter24:08

and we were not allowed to communicate with them or visit them. And when I came out of my house arrest six months later, I would take my car, and this is one of our favorite songs, and would play it full volume.

Presenter24:25

take out the button that controls the volume of the car. And you were sitting outside the prison doing that? Yeah, just just outside the prison and uh arrange to have a a punctured tire or just release the the air out of my tire so I cannot move.

Edna Adan Ismail24:29

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:37

And the police, traffic police would come and say, well, turn this noise down. I say, I cannot, it has no button. They say, well, move, I cannot, I have a punctured tire. So they would try and help me change my tire. But in the meantime, my song would be heard. And twice I did that. And my husband confirmed to me that he did hear it on both occasions.

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I see

Speaker 224:58

Uh Thus The red

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That

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Bears a lipstick straight

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Trace. An airline ticket to Roma.

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A deplacement.

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And still my heart has weak.

Edna Adan Ismail25:18

Come on.

Speaker 225:22

These foolish things

Presenter25:31

These Foolish Things sung there by Ella Fitzgerald. So, Edna Adan, by the late seventies you were living in Oman. I loved my time in Oman. We s we l spent six years. The only problem was that I couldn't work.

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As the wife of the ambassador, I was not allowed to do paid or unpaid work. And this was your second husband? It was my third husband. It was your third, I'm sorry. I missed one out. I don't know how I managed that. That's okay.

Edna Adan Ismail25:51

Sorry, I missed one out. I don't know how

Presenter25:53

That's okay, so it's my third and last husband.

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And so I I just continued to do um consultancies for the UN because I need to work.

Presenter26:03

I started training nurses and midwives in Djibouti when I was the wife of the Ambassador in Omen. And you say this was your third and last marriage. What sort of wife have you made over the years? I was not the ideal Somali wife.

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I think. I work. I voice my opinion. I have a brain. I try to use it. I'm a hopeless cook.

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I did not bear children.

Edna Adan Ismail26:30

Uh

Speaker 226:30

Holy f

Presenter26:30

all the time. I think every hormone ever invented was tried on me, every obstetrician. But it just didn't happen.

Edna Adan Ismail26:34

Yeah.

Presenter26:37

And maybe it was a good thing that they did not, because

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At the end of the day, if I had children, I would not have spent so much time and resources and energy on my hospital to day.

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And when I was praying for just one or two children,

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I think God had four million and more for me.

Presenter26:54

And uh today every every child is my child. You know, I devote whatever time and energy I have on my patients. And you say you think now around about twenty two thousand babies have been born in your hospital.

Edna Adan Ismail27:07

Lord.

Presenter27:09

I had read, I don't know if it's true, that at the point where you were trying to fund the hospital and get its building off the ground.

Presenter27:16

You sold not just your fine jewelry and not just your beloved Mercedes, but you also even sold your dishwasher. Is that true? Well, of course, a dishwasher and uh microwave and washing machine and electric cooker. What are these gonna do for me in Somaliland where I had no electricity, where I have no running water?

Presenter27:34

I had gifts of of jewelry. I never wore them. They were always in a safety box. They were always a burden. They had to be I had to insure them, I had to lock them up. Today I'm free. I'm liberated. And I use my jewelry every day because I I spent that money to put in the toilets and the washtaps and the wash basins. So I use my jewelry several times a day, and so do several hundred people in the hospital. And do you use your World Health Organization pension? My pension. Yeah, when I'm alive, my pension comes. But the day I will die.

Edna Adan Ismail27:59

My perspective, yeah.

Presenter28:04

The hospital has to learn to fend for itself because although we do have the cost sharing, we still have a lot of expenses that we I subsidize and cover. It had been your dream from the age of twelve years old, and when you were selling your various possessions to try to fund it in the beginning, was there ever a moment when you thought

Edna Adan Ismail28:18

Try to fund it.

Presenter28:22

I don't think this is going to happen. I don't think it's going to become a reality. Oh, no, no, I never had any doubts. I knew how to make it work. Whether my resources would ever be sufficient to build the kind of hospital I wanted, that's where the doubt came. Now tell me, what do you think your father would have made of this hospital?

Presenter28:39

I think he probably would have approved of it. He would have liked me to have uh had people to help me.

Presenter28:47

Ah, because he would be wiser than I am.

Presenter28:50

I don't know how much longer I'll be able to to run the place, and I still don't have somebody who is crazy enough to take over from me. He probably would have told me.

Presenter28:59

Delegate.

Presenter29:00

which I'm trying to do now.

Presenter29:02

Tell me, Edna, about your next piece of music then. What are we going to hear now? My next piece of music is by Whitney Houston. I will always love you. And I will always love my profession. And I will always love my people. And I will always love some other land.

Speaker 229:17

And uh

Speaker 229:23

We're along the way.

Speaker 229:26

Love you.

Speaker 229:31

We'll always

Presenter29:32

Yeah.

Speaker 229:34

Love you.

Speaker 229:44

My darling, you.

Speaker 329:46

Uh

Presenter29:48

That was Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You. And you said during that to me, Edna Adan, that you said, My life has been filled with love. I've had so much love. You were talking about encountering little kids in the streets in Somalia. In the streets, in villages I've never visited and then sometimes they see me on T V or they they know of me and they Edna, Edna, Adna, and wave to me and

Edna Adan Ismail29:55

Much love you.

Edna Adan Ismail29:57

In the streets in Somali then.

Presenter30:07

Were you born in a hospital? and some of them say, Yes, yes, we were and then somebody else says, No, no, he was not he was not I was, but he was not. I love it. I've had a wonderful life. And it it has been, of course, as as we have learned today, it's been a life pretty much devoted to helping others.

Edna Adan Ismail30:17

Yeah.

Presenter30:22

And you do play it down, because you seem to be somebody brimful of hope, but full of appalling and demanding circumstances often, surely. Have there ever been times

Presenter30:31

when you have felt personally overwhelmed? Uh well there have there have been occasions when I have been uh scared and worried and

Presenter30:40

Am I doing the right thing? Did I take on more than I could chew?

Presenter30:44

And then the next emergency happens and we save a life and I say, Yes, now I know why I did it What scares you?

Presenter30:53

If back reading casualties from a hospital during the war,

Presenter30:56

And uh

Presenter30:58

The car breaks down in the night.

Presenter31:00

and hyenas smelled the infected wounds.

Presenter31:03

uh try to attack us. And that was very scary and I think, Oh my God, what am I doing? You know, I only took them from one hospital to take them only to be eaten up by hyenas.

Presenter31:13

That was a very scary moment.

Edna Adan Ismail31:18

You spent your thirty eighth birthday in jail.

Presenter31:28

What did they tell you you were in jail for? We were supposedly plotting to escape from the country.

Presenter31:35

But I spent nine days of my life in jail for that.

Presenter31:38

Let's talk for a moment about being you know you're here to be cast away to this island. That's what's going to happen. You have clearly proved that you can live pretty much without creature comforts.

Edna Adan Ismail31:42

Yes, yes, we have to.

Presenter31:48

When you are cast away on this island, when there is no to-do list, when people are not knocking at the tiny door of your room and saying, Emma, come and help us with this, that, and the next thing, when you are all alone without your beloved hospital and all your colleagues, how will it suit you? That will kill me.

Edna Adan Ismail32:02

Yeah.

Presenter32:05

You know, I love being needed. I love to be able to help. I love to have something to wake up for in the morning, something to do. I've got to have a challenge. You know, I'm I always say that I I was always born with this sort of desire to fix it. And if I have nothing to fix, then I I wouldn't know how to deal with my life.

Presenter32:23

You've recently celebrated your eightieth birthday. What are your plans for the future? I continue to work for as long as I can, for as long as it's safe for me to work, for my patients. And I hope to die with my proverbial boots on.

Presenter32:38

And if I can contribute to women's education, to fighting harmful practices, don't think of yourself as I'm just a girl, what can I do?

Presenter32:47

I was a girl once, and look what I've done. Get up and go and do it.

Presenter32:52

Tell me about your final piece of music then. What are we gonna hear about it?

Edna Adan Ismail32:54

At least

Presenter32:56

This is My Island in the Sun by Harry Pellofonte. I love Harry Pellafonte.

Edna Adan Ismail33:01

Oh Island

Presenter33:03

Yeah.

Edna Adan Ismail33:04

In the sun.

Edna Adan Ismail33:07

Will to me by my father's hand All my days I will sing in praise Of your forest waters, your shining sand

Edna Adan Ismail33:25

Uh

Edna Adan Ismail33:27

Yeah.

Presenter33:27

That was Harry Belafonte and Island in the Sun, and you mentioned during that, Edna, that you queued up outside the Hammersmith Palace. You think it was nineteen fifty seven or fifty eight? Yeah, fifty seven, fifty eight. To get tickets to see him. To get a ticket to see him. Oh my goodness, what a great singer. It's time now for me to give you the books.

Edna Adan Ismail33:37

58

Edna Adan Ismail33:38

To get tickets to see him.

Presenter33:46

You get the Bible, or would you prefer the Quran? I prefer the Koran. So the Koran and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take one other book along with you. What will your book be? Oh, that book would have to be a

Edna Adan Ismail33:49

So the

Edna Adan Ismail33:53

Oh, that

Presenter33:56

Half the Sky by Nicholas Christophe.

Presenter34:00

It has a chapter about my hospital as well.

Presenter34:02

And um I haven't had time to read all the other chapters.

Presenter34:06

We shall give you that book then that you asked for. You're allowed to have a luxury. What's your luxury going to be?

Presenter34:12

Well, I would have loved to have had a pet, but you won't allow me that. No, we won't. Ah, so give me some seeds, vegetables, and beans, and tomatoes, and peppers, to grow.

Edna Adan Ismail34:16

The

Speaker 234:16

We

Edna Adan Ismail34:16

Uh

Presenter34:23

Something living to take care of. I can certainly do that.

Presenter34:27

You're allowed one track to save. If the waves were to threaten to wash away these disks, which one would you save?

Presenter34:34

Oh, I will always love you. It's yours. I will always love my country.

Edna Adan Ismail34:37

I would

Presenter34:39

Edna Adan Ismail, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, it's been such a pleasure.

Presenter35:07

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews with comedians, artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars and more at bbc.co.uk slash desertisland discs.

Presenter36:02

This is the BBC.