A 13-year-old boy in Somalia taught himself to build motorized toy cars from batteries and plastic scraps — and earned himself a free education in the process.
Guled Adan Abdi has rarely attended school on a regular basis. He goes to class in the city of Buuhoodle when he can, but has only made it to his third year of primary school, a grade in which students are typically 8 years old. Buuhoodle is a regional capital with a population of around 40,000 people.
His mother is a single parent who tries to provide for her family by selling pancakes, but when money is too tight, Abdi, his mother and two siblings move into the home of relatives who live far from school.
— Abdulhakim Roble (@AbdulkimRoble) January 13, 2016
Abdi has been interested in building things since we was even younger, though. He told the BBC he used to build toy cars and planes from plastic scraps and push them around — until he decided to see how real cars worked. He then replicated the process with his miniatures.
Abdi has gone to school in Buuhoodle until noon each day for most of the last year and has come home to work on his motorized toys for hours. He has slowly built a name for himself around town; folks drop by just to watch him tinker.
His teacher, Asha Ahmed Omar, bought Abdi his first batteries and talked him up to officials in the area. That helped Abdi get a meeting with Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, the president of Puntland, an autonomous region in northern Somalia.
There, Ali promised his government would pay for Abdi's education to see what the boy might become.