Coming to America

By T.J. Greaney

For one wiry, quick-to-smile Saint Louis University School of Law LL.M. student, a trip across the ocean has spanned much more than just the miles in between.

Mohammed Saleh Omer of Eritrea, a small country on Africa’s eastern horn, arrived in August eager to earn a degree that will help him practice law in his homeland.

“It’s a big opportunity for me as well as for my family,” he admits. “I hope I can serve as a role model for my younger brothers and sisters. I want to show them that if they work hard, they can have similar opportunities.”

Mohammed is the second of eleven children. For most of his life he and his family have shared dreams — and everything else — in a four-room apartment in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital city.

His home is a good place to go for plentiful smiles and enough food on the table to feed the thirteen in his immediate family, in addition to any aunts, uncles or neighbors who happen to stop by at meal time. The only item in short supply is space. Mohammed has grown up sharing everything he owns — including the bed he and an older brother have always partitioned.

As a child, Mohammed was forced to be aware of politics. Male relatives and family friends would disappear for years at a time to toil as guerrilla fighters in Eritrea’s struggle for independence. In 1993, after years of combat in the mountains and hundreds of thousands dead, Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia. Today, the country is still Africa’s youngest.

Hope was on the rise then as Mohammed and those of his generation went to school. Even after a bloody three-year resumption of war with Ethiopia shattered some dreams, things were looking up. Mohammed entered law school at Asmara University in 1999, one of the few lucky enough to bypass extended military conscription for education.

There were thirty prospective lawyers in his class and Mohammed, once again, found himself dividing things. He partitioned books because there were so few to go around, and he split time between his studies and work as a translator for his father, Saleh, who runs a business translating legal documents into English, Arabic and Eritrea’s dominant language, Tigrinya. Mohammed is fluent in all three languages.

After graduating near the top of his class, Mohammed was chosen to work as an attorney for the Office of the Legal Advisor to the Office of the President. He worked with a legal team made up of Eritrean and American attorneys whose job it was to compile information for a case to be heard at the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands. The case aimed to settle disputes over liability, war crimes and redraw the disputed border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is still ongoing.

Mohammed led trips into the field to locate and interview witnesses for his legal colleagues. He also did extensive work translating war-era documents into English, the lingua franca of the International Court.

The work was a good distraction.

Over the last five years Eritrea has regressed seriously in its avowed journey to democracy. It now ranks second to last among nations for freedom of the press, its constitution has never been implemented, dissenters are jailed without due process and elections are virtually non-existent.

Mohammed applied to the School of Law in December of 2005 after he learned that my father, Tim Greaney, is a professor here. At that time, I was working as a legal aid for the Eritrean Legal Advisor’s office.

For Mohammed, applying to law school was a long process. After overcoming some significant hurdles from Homeland Security, he arrived this August — two days after classes began.

Since coming to the United States, Mohammed has experienced some memorable “firsts,” such as his first time riding an escalator in Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. Unfortunately he rode it a bit too far, going outdoors only to return back through security just in time to catch his flight to St. Louis. Other firsts have included brownies, baseball and a 70 mph drive on a four-lane highway.

Through it all, Mohammed keeps dipping into an endless reservoir of composure. He is also starting to believe his presence is something of a good luck charm. Since he has arrived, the Cardinals won the World Series, Metro Link expanded to Clayton, where he hops on every morning for school, and an unseasonably warm start to the winter season allowed the young man from a scorched land a bit of reprieve from Jack Frost.

Surprisingly, the idea of snow wasn’t nearly as shocking to Mohammed as was the idea of interaction between professors and students at the School of Law.

“At Asmara University there is not only a line between professors and students, there is also a river and maybe some mountains,” he says.

For this reason, he was surprised to be casually invited for lunch and taken along on field trips to Illinois Amish country and Busch Stadium by professors.

He was also stunned that so much class time here is devoted to student participation. Eritrean culture generally discourages teachers from calling on students at university.

“It’s nice,” he says with a signature smile. “Here you learn a lot from each other and you learn to speak in front of others. It’s an important skill to have.”