Till this day, sometimes me and my friends at uni,
we have these moments where we're like, wait, we're Cambridge students.
Yeah. I never thought I was gonna get in, ever.
I felt elated to get into Cambridge but I also felt a huge pressure.
I'm currently applying to Cambridge, which is the most stressful application of
my whole life.
I knew it was going to be academically challenging,
but I couldn't prepare for and I hadn't prepared for all the other challenging
aspects of it.
A culture shock for me was food.
In London, you will always find a place that's halal.
You don't even have to think about it.
And so I started eating all these vegetables.
I never ate this healthy in my life.
I was having aubergine and ... it was a very hard time.
We used to have just halal Wednesdays.
People would talk to me, I'm like, 'is it Wednesday?'
You're walking down the street and you'll give another black person like that
nod and smile.
And it's just like, where else would you do that, but Cambridge?
There's something about the physical space of Cambridge.
Every aspect, you know, the people you interact with,
all those spaces challenge you.
I remember like my first formal hall.
It was matriculation dinner, and we had our gowns on.
And I thought the gown was weird itself.
I thought I was in a Harry Potter movie ... I was like, 'my Ravenclaw is showing'.
Formal halls in Cambridge can be a place of incredible empowerment.
At the same time, also isolation.
There's been moments where I felt like I am the only person who's different.
I'm the only one who stands out.
There was pictures of just like white men, like everywhere, eating dinner in front of you.
And it's almost telling you, you do not belong.
Then you're looking around you.
And it's just mostly white people, you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to be
I felt that to prove myself as a woman.
I felt I had to prove myself as a black woman.
I felt that I had to prove myself as a Muslim black woman.
You know, feeling so out of place, that gets to you after a while, and it builds up.
We didn't see anyone else around us feeling like that,
but it was just also a feeling like that.
So we knew it was definitely a shared experience we were having.
Growing up, I never felt like being Somali was ever shown to be a good thing.
Whether that was, you know, Islamophobia, al-Shabaab terrorising East Africa,
Somali pirates.
It always felt like it was just a weird ethnicity to be.
But I think that clashing with the stories that your parents tell you
of how beautiful home was to them.
It almost felt like I had a piece of home in those stories.
Even though I was born and raised in Europe, it almost felt like I was there.
Wow, that looks...oh my god, that looks so good.
Who's bringing the *shaah*?
Ah look at the curtains!
This looks like a Somali household ... It really does. It smells so good.
Can you smell the *oonsi*?
It smells like home. — It smells like home literally.
I'm strangling myself with the *baati*.
I went to my aunt's house for the first time in like two years,
and the first thing she says to me is, what universities are you applying for?
Obviously I didn't tell any of my family that I'm applying to Cambridge and then,
do you know what said to me?
She's like, why are you moving out?
Is it because you want to run away from your family?
And in my head, yeah right, I was like, yes, yes, yes.
I grew up with my mum just telling me all these proverbs in everyday situations.
And one of my favourite ones was *Somali proverb*:
It means 'clothes that aren't yours can't shelter you from the cold'.
But just the idea of, like, trying to fit into
something that's not you,
is not going to feel right or do you any service.
Yeah, that was of my favourite.
Do you apply that to your Cambridge experience?
Well, I mean, I think now, the more time I've spent in Cambridge, the more time I've had
to settle down
and just actually think about 'who am I?'.
Because I think I just got lost in 'The Sauce' when I first came. It was all this newfound freedom.
I'm by myself. I can do what I want.
And so, like, I think identity for a bit wasn't like a thing
I was thinking about.
It was more like, 'I'm Hafsa and I'm discovering myself'.
But now I think I'm taking a lot more into consideration,
like do your parents the justice that they deserve
and be who you're supposed to be.
My parents, they didn't really realise how big Cambridge was initially.
When I did get in, even till this day, like my mum would call me every single day
just to ...
'Have you prayed? Hafsa, please don't forget'.
They didn't want me to be different from who they know me to be, if that makes sense.
They didn't want me to be influenced.
It's easy for you to ignore their struggles and just say 'Me, me, me, me, me.'
I want to do this and I should be able to do that.
But the more I've grown up, the more I've started to just realise how much they've had
to sacrifice.
A civil war broke out in 1991 in Somalia.
A lot of the Somali diaspora haven't gone over that trauma.
That trauma still carries with them till this day.
I don't think me studying at Cambridge could ever count for, or sort of be compared
to my parents' struggle.
I don't think it's you know, 'I fled from war, but my daughter goes to Cambridge.
It was worth it.'.
I don't think it will ever just
be comparable.
At the time, I used to think it was just them telling me stories
about home to make me more aware of my Somali culture.
Thinking back now, actually, I think it was really therapeutic thing for them.
In many ways, I was really envious of my mum's and my dad's life in Somalia
because I realised that I would never have a sense of home like that.
Like you, you're pointing to a country. And that's all you know, you know?
The people are all you know and ...
I'm so sorry, guys. Like, I don't know why I'm getting emotional.
That's really weird. I just need a second.
The Somalia they speak of and the Somali you know,
it's not the same.
So you're just like, 'I don't know what you're talking about'.
It's like a romanticised version.
Yeah, very romanticised.
I think the nostalgia was also the dream, so they came here, they're like,
we're going to live here temporarily and then go back home
and then build up the Somalia they knew.
And then they never let go of that dream.
Even till this day, my parents are like, 'after all you guys finish your ...
When your youngest sister goes to university, I'm going back home'.
So that's the mentality you grew up with.
And you always hear home, is there.
But to you it's like ... I don't know what that is.
Whenever they spoke about home, going back home or family,
it was always linked to Somalia and that sort of created this barrier
between the children and the parents.
The home that they're speaking of is not my home,
because I haven't been there.
I wasn't born there, I wasn't raised there.
Somali culture in the West or in the UK is different from Somali culture in Somalia.
You aren't necessarily going to fit in when you go back home.
Oh, God. OK. I didn't like it. I didn't like it
because it was completely
the opposite of everything I knew.
I couldn't grasp the complete culture switch.
It's hot, there's *kaneeco*, there's like mosquitoes ...
It's just. Oh, my God.
And then they asked me to herd sheep.
I remember looking at it.
And I was just like, how the hell am I going to do this?
But I felt like a proper Somali at that moment.
I was like, 'I'm herding sheep.'
I had built up this image in my head of what Somalia was.
And I thought, I would go back and I would instantly feel at home.
But I didn't. And I went there and I ... I was complaining a lot.
And I think a lot of people instantly saw me as a foreigner.
I did feel out of place. I was being called 'Fish and Chips'.
I will say this, yeah, that you're not British enough
when you're in London
and you're not Somali enough when you're in Somalia.
And that is the most difficult thing that I battle my identity is that,
where do I fit in?
I identify most with being Somali because naturally being Somali encompasses
being black and encompasses being Muslim.
I think that without Islam, a lot of the time my experiences with things would be quite
difficult.
The hijab, the hijab is me and I am the hijab, we are one.
That is so cringe.
I definitely do see the differences of how I'm treated when I'm wearing the headscarf
and when I'm not, I tend to feel like there's a lot more weight on my shoulders
if I'm wearing the headscarf because I know I should behave a certain way.
The non-Muslims might look at you and think, why are you going clubbing you're a Muslim girl?
For example.
But for me, it's, I wanna go and I'm still Muslim so ...
My mum told me my full name when I was around like nine when I was in Somalia.
I know mine is Samiya Abdullahi Mohammed Dubed Shire Carale Yusuf Ali ...
Do you know yours? Hafsa Saeed ...
Growing up in London, it's this real nice contrast of feeling invisible,
but yet feeling like you, you belong with a community.
I just took that for granted.
Walking down the street and seeing people like myself, and just blending in.
But when I got to Cambridge, it's this real contrast of just feeling highly visible.
A lot of people don't understand that for you to navigate England, you kind of have
to lose your Somali bit.
You don't have to lose it completely,
but you kind of have to carry it as like, a chip on your shoulder, like,
you use it when you need to.
When people question your identity constantly, you end up questioning yourself.
Who am I representing? Somali people?
Am I representing Muslim people? Am I representing black people?
When I came to Cambridge and I realised there are some people
who have never met this black and Muslim combination,
I felt that maybe there is a need to educate people
and sort of show people that Somali women exist
and we are determined to make change in a positive and progressive way.
Everyone's afraid of being the odd one out,
then how are we going to build these spaces of solidarity
within these white or elitist institutions?
There's so many women of colour and we all are worthy.
Although we all feel, you know, we suffer from imposter syndrome,
spaces like that made me realise, this is something that a lot of people are feeling.
Surprisingly, being at Cambridge has made me more Somali.
Having to like sort of, talk to other people about Somalia and our culture ...
And that in itself has made me very proud and appreciate who I am.
A lot of the times it's like, 'Yes, I am a Somali woman, proud of that.'
And that was very different from when I was growing up.
I feel very proud of being British, and I feel really, really proud of being Somali.
They are both like an intrinsic part of me and an intrinsic part of my identity.
And I wouldn't want to separate the two.
What would it actually mean to be accepted into Cambridge?
It would mean a lot.
I can show that the next generation, like my cousins that, for them to aspire high
isn't a joke
because our parents didn't do it, or our older cousins or relatives that we don't know.
Then they know that there's an actual physical embodiment
of someone that had a dream,
chased it, and actually achieved it.
And a legacy. I would leave a legacy behind.