The Birth of Ismile Inspires

My name is Ismail Burhan, I am a motivational speaker and a content creator and I am going to tell you the story of my journey. I took the most important decision of my life 2 years ago in 2019. I decided to leave my life in my hometown Bosaso. My heart was longing for something else. I needed more satisfaction in my life. I moved to this place, Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. My biggest goal then was to start masters and be done in the next two years, go back to Somalia and work for my dream organization, the UN and be the difference I always wanted to be. Today marks exactly 2 years and this is how my life has unfolded in that period. The only dream that I ever had, the only goal that I ever envisioned was to become the best construction manager and work with UN, travel to many places and own lots of real estate’s everywhere.

 What a typical dream for every little child growing in his hometown who have not seen the real life outside its comfort zones. Moving to Nairobi with shoulders held high, with only one visible goal, everything seemed easy. With my love for my community, I settled in Eastleigh easily and I was happy being surrounded by a community just like the one I grew up with. We only had one difference thou, the youth here knew their purpose, their goals and the reason they woke up every day. I was amazed with that at first, I wanted to be closer to them and know what ticked them. Due to this, I gave most of my time making friends and networking. 

What helped me most here was Awjama Cultural Centre, a community center in the heart of Eastleigh that was run by Somalis for Somalis. It was a library in a cultural Centre and it attracted every book lover and community enthusiast, all the networks I ever needed to have. I volunteered at this Centre and it gave me everything I needed, rich networks, leadership role and a platform to better myself and above all, an opportunity to discover my love and passion for community work. At Awjama, I learnt many skills including leadership and storytelling and the power the community has on its youth to becoming the change our country is waiting for. It taught me to change a community, you have to change yourself first and I turned to be more of a community leader than a construction manager.

 My love and dedication for my master’s degree slowly started to decrease whereas my love for community work has increased in big numbers. With this mentality, I almost came close to dropping out of university many times and every instinct told me to do so. I felt lost and completely had zero motivation to attend classes anymore. Fortunately, for me thou, after finishing my first semesters, the Covid broke out and that gave me a break I yearned for in a long time. Our city went into lockdown and I got the rest I longed for.

 I got a long period of completely no work whatsoever. My school was closed; the center I volunteered was locked too. I had to figure out new things I would do to overcome the long boredom hours locked inside my apartment. Ramadan in 2020 came and we did our worship indoors too. This Ramadan was figuring out what I wanted with my life and learning a lot online mainly Instagram lives. I came out of the Ramadan with more focus into community and doing something for them. I started running which was a passion for me; I always knew I would rather ran kilometers than swim in a small poll hence started running early morning. This new experience attracted my friends first, we had a busy morning routine that was composed of running, and nature walks. It gave birth to forming a team who ran with us in the morning. 

This branched out to forming a football team from this squad with both male and female teams and we gave our energy into running and playing football together. We had a lot of time where we met and had fun, drank shaax together and many times played Ludo in each of our houses. The love and teamwork between the team gave me a new responsibility, taking care of them and giving them more of the wisdom I believed I possessed. I started adding an input to our morning runs, at the start it was a speech every day after the run and then book readings every morning. To stay motivated, we had weekend trips outside the city and our team grew and loved each other more.

 The greatest accomplishment we had from this love and togetherness was starting a morning charity program where we fed the street children every morning from July 31st 2020 to April 2021 and great thanks to Ikram, Zakaria, Qaran, Laarsin and the rest for their dedication and work ethic on this. In this period, I also became a coach and a speaker and shared the knowledge I believe I got from the books I read to my community. My main way of passing this was through the platform I had at Awjama, my social media pages and YouTube and I later started a tiktok channel and a podcast in Somali.

 My speaking career was a dream I have never seen before I came here and it turned out to be something I always missed in my life. This has been what my heart has been longing for although I got it so late but it is something am grateful for. It taught me beyond what I expected and it opened doors engineering would have never knocked at. 

To the many people in my family who disagree with the way I do it, my main hope is you will be proud of me one day Insha Allah. Looking back at it now, I first spoke on Nov 13th 2019 to university students in Multimedia University many thanks to Imtiaz who gave me the opportunity and I last spoke last Sunday 1st August 2021 in Korogocho to empower young boys on becoming their better selves many thanks to Hamza Hassan who gave me the opportunity. During this period, I spoke In Nairobi, Nakuru, Garissa, Bosaso, Carmo and Garowe and lots of Thanks to Awjama Center for the many opportunities and all my friends who set up these platforms and entrusted me with something I was not perfect at. 

My only input is to share what I know in how I know best and to always be a student taking every lesson and giving it back to my community. In this period, I spoke at schools, universities, libraries and restaurant halls for 30 times to over 1150 audiences ranging from young primary school students to adults doing businesses. My stand out moment was on 3rd December 2020 speaking in my hometown Bosaso in front of my mother and family members and the only thing I am waiting to accomplish now is to speak at an event where my Dad is present too.

 I have also collected over 24,000 views on YouTube and roughly another 30,000 views on tiktok and Instagram. These numbers only give me more hope and motivation to double my efforts into my new passion, which is in the areas of personal development. I have not monetized or started earning any income from my social influence yet but that will be one of the big priorities in the coming months Insha’Allah. 

I have not started any of this to gain any income, my sole and main purpose was to build my community but at the same time an empty stomach cannot do anything big and that brings the idea of monetization and income generation from my newly found passion. I failed in my biggest goal coming here, which was to earn my master’s degree, but I succeeded in my other goals, which were perfecting my English language skills and developing a continuous habit of reading books. Today, I read an average of 100 pages daily and I speak English fluently. The fact that I have not graduated university yet gives me the idea of going back to Somalia and starting a hustle but again finding a new passion that might be a side hustle gives me the hope of staying here and proving doubters wrong.

 The biggest obstacle in everyone’s life is himself or herself and I should fight harder to silence my inner critics and keep working harder to achieve all my dreams very soon. The only question that I ask any reader reading this is; did I ever have any influence on you? Have I been there for you or has any of my messages changed your perspective on anything? I love to believe I did so and I am grateful to the One Above for giving me the opportunity to have an influence on others. I am grateful to everyone who gave me an opportunity to speak anywhere, to everyone who trusted me with their story, to everyone who asked for advice, to everyone who believes in me, to everyone who made me their mentor and to everyone reading this. Thank you and kind regards.