TERESA KRUG: It’s July, 2012, and the time has finally come for the London Olympics. The Somali community in the U.K. is throwing a party to welcome their athletes. Everyone who’s anyone in Somali sports is there, Olympic officials and, of course, the legend Abdi Bile.

 

ABDI BILE: So supposed to be a happy night, a lot of celebration, speeches, fun, eating, dancing, whatever, you know?

 

TERESA KRUG: Abdi is looking around the room. He’s already met two new promising Somali runners who are there to race in the track and field events. But he’s searching for a familiar face from the last Summer Olympics in Beijing. He asks one of the officials on the Somali Olympic Committee about Samia.

 

ABDI BILE: I just ask, “Hey, guys– how did Samia do this year?” They just say, “Oh. Oh, Samia just passed away.” I was like, “What? What did you say?” “Oh, she just passed away.” “When? How? What happened?”

 

TERESA KRUG: The officials tell Abdi that Samia died a few months ago.

 

ABDI BILE: I say, “So how come nobody knows? How come you haven’t say a word about her death?”

 

TERESA KRUG: Abdi can’t understand. Why is this news coming to him in such a flippant way?

 

ABDI BILE: N– no sympathy. No feeling. No care. No nothing. It’s just, “Oh well, she passed away. She passed away.”

 

TERESA KRUG: As Abdi tries to process this, the party continues on around him. He doesn’t know what to do, but he knows he has to do something. So he stands up and goes to the podium to speak.

 

ABDI BILE: And when I get to the speech, I mention what happen. And got very emotional. Basically, was– just telling the whole world and everyone who was there what happen to this little girl. And just saying, “Today we are here to celebrate these two athletes who representing for their country and their flag. But it looks like we didn’t give a shit about the ones who represented the Olympics before this one. If you don’t care about the ones who represent in 2008, why do we care? Why do we here? What are we celebrating for? Basically, everything we’re doing here is bullshit.”

 

TERESA KRUG: The Associated Press picked that speech up, and the news of Samia’s death went global, appearing in media outlets like the BBC and L.A. Times. And that’s how I found out that Samia had died, when Abdi Bile told the world. I sat watching this speech in shock.

 

TERESA KRUG: I could see the tears streaming down Abdi’s face. Samia was barely in her twenties. The last time that I had heard from her, she was on her journey to try and get to these very Olympics, chasing her dream. She had seemed so confident, so laser-focused on making this happen.

 

ABDI BILE: It just doesn’t make sense. Just doesn’t add up.

 

TERESA KRUG: After Abdi’s speech, the calls and emails started flooding in. They were coming to me because, if you Googled Samia, the first thing to come up was an article I published about her and her dream of trying to get to London.

 

ABDI BILE: Any media who calls me, I just say, “Talk to Teresa. Talk to her sister in Finland.”

 

TERESA KRUG: I was suddenly faced with rapid-fire media requests from journalists around the world. But the thing is, I also didn’t understand what had happened. How did Samia die? And who was responsible for her death? I would spend the next 14 years trying to figure it out.

 

TERESA KRUG: I’m Teresa Krug, and from 30 for 30 Podcasts this is The Fastest Girl in Somalia, episode three, The Sahara. To understand what happened to Samia, I had to go back to my notes from 2010, when I flew her up to Somaliland to record interviews with me. From the moment I met Samia, she was obsessed with getting to London.

 

TERESA KRUG: It seemed that she would do almost anything to get there. She told me that when she finished last in the 2008 Olympics, the only thing she thought about was that she needed to train harder to win. It was during these interviews when Samia told me that the 1,500-meter was her favorite race, the one she wanted to run.

 

TERESA KRUG: At the Beijing Olympics, Samia was only 17, the youngest on the track. The average age for Olympic track and field athletes is just under 27 years old. So Samia, at least theoretically, still had another decade to improve. And based on interviews I did with the Somali Olympic Committee at that time, she could still qualify to represent Somali.

 

TERESA KRUG: To me, choosing Samia seemed like a no-brainer. Maybe she wouldn’t break any world records, but for someone running in secret, in a place without any proper training facilities, she was fast and doing everything in her power to get faster. After her last place finish in Beijing, she could have the ultimate comeback story if she had the chance.

 

TERESA KRUG: And so, she told me she wanted to go to Ethiopia, where she could run in public, free from the threat of insurgent groups and where, if she got lucky, she could train with some of the top athletes in the world. But this would be tricky. Samia’s Somali passport was no longer valid, and it was impossible to get a new one where we were in Somaliland.

 

TERESA KRUG: And even if she did get a new passport, it was unlikely she’d be granted a visa to go to Ethiopia. So she could either head back to Mogadishu, where violence against athletes was still rampant, or find an alternative way across the border, an illegal one.

 

TERESA KRUG: In the end, I introduced her to two Ethiopian friends who were traveling home soon. Her story moved them, and so they agreed to let her join them. I wasn’t there to see Samia off the day she left, but here’s what I know happened next. In October, 2010, Samia climbed into a small car with my friends.

 

TERESA KRUG: We’ll call them Yohanes (PH) and Kalub (PH). I’ve changed their names to protect their privacy. For almost two hours, their driver sped across paved road and sand, heading for Wajaale. It’s the major border down between Somaliland and Ethiopia.

 

TERESA KRUG: Yohanes and Kalub made this journey multiple times a year, but never as accomplices to something illegal. They were academics, not smugglers. They didn’t know what would happen at the border. Here’s Yohanes. I’ve masked his voice too.

 

YOHANES: Reaching the border was a big scary because now we have to face the border guard and the guy who’s trying to ask us for documents.

 

TERESA KRUG: Yohanes said that the security at this border was always high, and that the authorities tended to be wary of Somalis passing through. The Somali insurgent group Al Shabaab was at the height of its power, meaning anyone with a Somali accent was treated suspiciously.

 

YOHANES: If they see you are going with a Somali, they might think you are a terrorist or are trying to help a terrorist. So it’s not easy for Somalis to travel.

 

TERESA KRUG: Trying to stay calm, they rolled up to the Somaliland border checkpoint. The plan came to them as they got closer. They would pretend that Samia was married to one of them.

 

YOHANES: The thing that came in my mind is to tell the guards that I’m married to her, but she is my wife, and Mecka (PH) is my friend, and that I’m going to take her to my hometown and go with her and stop. This is how we talked to the guards.

 

TERESA KRUG: The police at the border didn’t really buy this story. So to quiet them, Yohanes slipped them around 500 birr, about $40. The group was free to continue on. At the border, they switched into a big truck and paid extra cash so they could all sit in the front cab.

 

TERESA KRUG: If you had enough money, which Yohanes and Kalub did, you could get through all the checkpoints and on your way to the capital, Addis Ababa, within a day. In the truck, Samia sat in between them. At first, she quietly listened to the two of them chat. Eventually, she loosened up, joining in their conversation, a mixture of Somali and English. And even through the stress of border patrol, they had some nice moments together.

 

YOHANES: Oh my God. She was lovely. Anyway, the whole way was fun. We had fun talking and stuff like that.

 

TERESA KRUG: Throughout the journey, Samia talked about how she planned to find a coach in Ethiopia and improve her times. The facilities there were professional. The coaches, legendary. And the other athletes would push her to her limits, make her faster.

 

YOHANES: She’s planning to do the training, but in National Stadium. That’s what she was telling me. She said that, “So that I can train with those top athletes in Ethiopia.”

 

TERESA KRUG: They occasionally got stopped at more checkpoints. The story remained the same. Samia was somebody’s wife. Sometimes she was married to Kalub. Other times, she was married to Yohanes. Each time, they slipped money to the police to move the process along. Samia would stay quiet while they worked it out.

 

YOHANES: We managed it perfectly. We did the talking. We paid the money.

 

TERESA KRUG: They arrived in my friend’s hometown of Dire Dawa that evening. After saying goodbye, Samia boarded a mini bus and headed to her new home in Addis, hopeful. In the months that followed, I stayed in touch with Samia. She had a Facebook account now, so it was easier to keep in touch even if there were still language barriers.

 

TERESA KRUG: Now, she was initiating conversations, making small talk, and also sharing more about her new life in Addis. It seemed like she was doing better. She was living with extended family, and still talked about running. I was now living in Qatar, working as a TV producer for a major news outlet.

 

TERESA KRUG: I was still interested in Samia’s story and wanted to connect with her more, but it was hard to do that from afar. So in April, 2011, I visited her in person. We reconnected in a small restaurant, where she approached me like an old friend.

 

TERESA KRUG: She laughed easily and asked lots of questions. She brought along a friend to translate. Samia seemed lighter, way more relaxed than when I last saw her in Somaliland. But I started to gather that things were far from perfect. She still needed new shoes, a coach, a team to train with, bus fare, access to a gym, or at least some weights.

 

TERESA KRUG: A half year into living in Ethiopia, she was still lacking these things. The London Olympics were now just 15 months away. Samia was safer, but she wasn’t getting any faster. She was still dreaming about connecting with the Ethiopian National Team.

 

TERESA KRUG: I had no idea what the chances were, but I suggested that we go together. I could be a buddy to help ease her nerves. Maybe they’d say yes. One morning, I met Samia at the Addis Ababa Stadium, where the internationally renowned Ethiopian Men’s and Women’s Club Teams practiced.

 

TERESA KRUG: Samia was familiar with the stadium. She’d competed in the African Championships there in 2008, before the Olympics. She and I sat in the stands and watched the runners practice. There were dozens of athletes stretching on the track, or cooling off in the stands.

 

TERESA KRUG: Many of them were wearing the official green and yellow jacket. Since I had arrived in Addis, Samia had played the confident role of the tour guide, showing me around town, teaching me the bus system. Now, looking out at the other runners laughing and lounging, Samia withdrew into herself.

 

TERESA KRUG: She admitted that she was nervous. I remember that she was clutching her shirt, as if to comfort herself. The athletes saw us watching them and came over to us. They brought Samia into the conversation. It turns out that some of them were also Olympians, so they swapped stories and asked Samia lots of questions.

 

TERESA KRUG: Samia’s English was not perfect, but it was good enough for her to communicate in a moment like this. As I watched them talk, I realized I’d never seen her with fellow athletes talking shop. It was really nice to see her in her element. This was a group of athletes with support, training facilities, an obvious path to the Olympics, a group of runners who could push Samia to improve.

 

TERESA KRUG: But she’d have to convince the head coach of the team that she could even keep up. That was really why we were here. Before we left the stadium, we stopped by the office of the head coach for the Ethiopian Athletics Federation. Samia, still very nervous, stood behind me, popping her gum.

 

TERESA KRUG: She was totally frozen. And I felt like I had nothing to lose. So I went ahead with the talking. I asked whether it would be possible for Samia to join the team’s practices. The room was quiet, as he considered us both. He asked Samia for her PR, personal record, in the 1,500-meter, the race she hoped to run in the London Olympics.

 

TERESA KRUG: It was five minutes and 37 seconds, a good time for a varsity teenager, but not fast enough to be competitive at the Olympic level. The head coach looked at Samia with kindness, but he was realistic. He told her she’d need to shave 40 seconds off her time if she wanted to be competitive.

 

TERESA KRUG: Forty seconds. For a middle distance runner, this is a long time. He still floated the possibility of Samia’s joining the team’s practices outside Addis, up in the mountains, but she’d have to get herself there. As we left the stadium that day, Samia and I spoke about the feasibility of this, of taking early morning buses over many hours to join one of the world’s elite teams.

 

TERESA KRUG: Logistically, it sounded daunting. After that conversation with the head coach, I started thinking differently about Samia’s athletic future. Being a successful athlete seemed like such an uphill battle. I began bringing up other options with her, English and computer classes, looking into a high school certificate.

 

TERESA KRUG: Samia seemed open to these things. So when I left Ethiopia a few days later, I felt at least a little hopeful. I said goodbye and got on a plane back to Qatar. It would be the last time that I saw Samia. In July, 2011, two months after my visit with Samia, I received a series of troubling messages from her.

 

TERESA KRUG: The London Olympics were one year away, but Samia was beginning to hear rumors that the Somali Olympic Committee was already deciding who would go to London, one girl and one boy. And that the committee might select a different girl to run in 2012.

 

TERESA KRUG: The usual friendly tone of our Facebook messages suddenly changed. Now, she sounded panicked. She asked whether I’d spoken with Duran Farah, one of the leaders of the Somali Olympic Committee. He had been the vice president of the committee during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Did you talk to Duran?

 

TERESA KRUG: Yes. He said they’re looking at lots of people. How is running, English classes?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Good. I also hate.

 

TERESA KRUG: You hate?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Yes, Teresa. I’m afraid not to go to London Olympic.

 

TERESA KRUG: I know you’re afraid. But you’re working hard. Don’t give up.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Was dream to win London Olympic.

 

TERESA KRUG: I know. You’re running. You’re learning English. They have to take you.

 

TERESA KRUG: I tried to tell her not to give up. But as we kept messaging, it became clear that Samia was forming a new plan. If the Somali Olympic Committee wasn’t going to choose her, she was going to do this alone. She started to say things that terrified me.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Now I wanna go to Libya.

 

TERESA KRUG: You wanna go to Libya? Why? There’s a war there.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: I know. I’m going there.

 

TERESA KRUG: When? Why? Do you have a coach there? Is there an event there?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: I wanna get there.

 

TERESA KRUG: Do you wanna move there?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: No. I want Italia or Malta.

 

TERESA KRUG: Italy or Malta. I read her words over and over till they started to click. When I lived in Somaliland, people would share stories of their daughters, brothers, other family members running away to Europe, stories where people would get lost, become imprisoned or worse. Samia was talking about taking that same journey. First getting herself to Libya, which borders the Mediterranean Sea, and from there getting on a boat and attempting to cross into Europe. I did everything I could to talk her out of it.

 

TERESA KRUG: Stay in Ethiopia please. You have the best chance of running there.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: No.

 

TERESA KRUG: Are you going to run in Malta or Italy? Are there training camps there?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: I believe to get there.

 

TERESA KRUG: Okay.

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: I want to leave after this week.

 

TERESA KRUG: Samia, I give up. Have you thought this through? Who will you live with? How will you get money? Do you know anyone there? How will you find a coach? How will you get a visa? Does anyone speak Somali?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. I will live (UNINTEL PHRASE).

 

TERESA KRUG: What? How will you get there?

 

SAMIA YUSUF OMAR: I don’t know, (FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

 

TERESA KRUG: I was confused about this change of heart. Getting to Europe would get her physically closer to the London Olympics. But practically speaking, I could see that she didn’t have a plan. Was this risk really worth it? I kept asking her questions, but she stopped responding. Samia was on a new path now, but she was hardly alone in trying to get to Europe. Every year, hundreds of Somalis, mostly young people, go on these migration routes.

 

AHMED OMAR: There are people who label themselves as people who are looking for Tahriib (PH)– who are in the business of Tahriib. Mostly, it means, you know, this journey and this lifestyle of people leaving their places.

 

TERESA KRUG: This is Ahmed Omar (PH). He’s an international development worker and researcher based in Hargeisa, Somaliland. One of his big areas of focus is migration, why people choose to leave, and the challenges they face along the way. “Tahriib,” he told me, is a word that Somalis use to describe the kind of journey Samia was about to take.

 

AHMED OMAR: It has that promise that people will reach better lives– improvements in their life. But that’s not really guaranteed. It has a connection with– with danger as well.

 

TERESA KRUG: People take some version of this journey for many reasons. They could be trying to escape a dangerous situation, like violence or poverty at home. But Ahmed says that a lot of young people are simply chasing the promise of a better life elsewhere.

 

AHMED OMAR: When you ask them, they will not give you a lot of details. They will say, “What is here?” So that’s the common phrase. “(FOREIGN LANGUAGE).” So, “What do we have here?” And I think it sort of challenges even the old people when they want to tell young people to stay here. They don’t really have good answers to them.

 

TERESA KRUG: There are lots of paths that people take on these migration journeys. The most common is the one that Samia was telling me about.

 

AHMED OMAR: From Ethiopia, you go to Sudan, and then from Sudan you take through the desert. And then you go through Libya. And I’m talkin’ about the routes usually the Somalis take.

 

TERESA KRUG: From Libya, people attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea with the hope of reaching Italy. All of this happens across a huge network of smugglers.

 

AHMED OMAR: The big guys are the smugglers. They show you the route. They give you sort of information. And then you pay them. They just– facilitate the whole thing. I would say it’s– it’s a cartel I think ’cause those guys are connected.

 

TERESA KRUG: The system has evolved since the early 2010s, but the broad strokes remain the same. To keep moving through Sudan and Libya, you have to pay. And once you’re on the journey, you basically have no choice but to keep paying if you wanna survive. Ahmed told me about some of the horrific punishments that people face if they can’t get together enough cash.

 

AHMED OMAR: Now, it’s more extreme, but I think the– the situation was always– abuse. Sexual abuse for a woman, and for men, they– they’re usually beaten. So they will take recordings– or pictures of the person being beaten, or the situation– and then they will send you t– to their families. So– anything that they can do to make sure that their family pays. And sometimes it’s not guaranteed that they will stop the beating.

 

TERESA KRUG: It’s a strange situation where all of this is happening in the shadows. But also, it’s common knowledge. Among Somalis, everyone knows someone who has taken this journey. Typically, people will connect with a single smuggler at the start. And that enters them into this network of smugglers and traffickers who funnel them along this path, through Sudan, and into Libya.

 

TERESA KRUG: And this is exactly how Samia began her trip, with a large sum of money paid to a smuggler who promised to get her to Europe, likely leaving out a lot of detail about how. I only know this because I was able to talk to one relative who was with Samia at the very beginning of this journey. Fatima (PH), whose name as also been changed, was already planning to take this migration route to Europe. But she knew it would be dangerous.

 

FATIMA: I was actually trying to convince Samia not to come with me. I said, “If you’re not going to listen to me, I’m going to hide from you and just leave.”

 

TERESA KRUG: Fatima told me in an interview in 2015 that at first, she tired talking Samia out of joining her. I’ve asked an actor to relay the notes I took from this interview.

 

FATIMA: So actually, even her mother called Samia crying just to convince her for the last time that she has no reason to leave. But Samia wasn’t listening still. She was makin’ her own plans. She said, “If I’m going to die, I am going to die. If I’m going to live, I’m going to live.”

 

TERESA KRUG: Fatima eventually relented and agreed to let Samia join her. It was scarier for her to think about Samia taking this trip alone. Fatima said that finding a smuggler to get them out of Ethiopia was fairly easy. The harder part was raising the money to fund the trip. The estimate for each person for the whole trip was $4,000. Yeah. $500 was needed as the down payment.

 

FATIMA: And what he says is, “If you don’t get over the border, your money will be returned to you.”

 

TERESA KRUG: This was always certainly a lie. But if Samia and Fatima wanted to go on this journey, they’d have to take the risk. Samia borrowed the majority of the down payment from Fatima, who had sold some jewelry to get enough cash for the trip. This was only the beginning of the financial burden that Samia’s family would have to carry. The smugglers told Samia and Fatima that it could take two months to get through Sudan and Libya, meaning that if they left soon, Samia could be in Europe as early as that fall, fall 2011.

 

FATIMA: Samia used to talk about how easy the journey was going to be for us. She said, “We have reached Ethiopia now. Next is going to be Sudan. And after that, Italy. And then Europe. And then we are going to be fine.” The only thing she had in her mind was to be in the Olympics and be a star. She was really happy and excited and everything.

 

TERESA KRUG: But Samia’s mother and siblings discouraged her from taking the trip, begging her not to go. So Samia left without telling them. It would be weeks before they heard from her again. Samia and Fatima started the long journey out of the country. Fatima walked me through all the steps, each holding one suitcase. They met the smugglers at an apartment on the outskirts of Addis.

 

FATIMA: There’s actually a secret place where the smugglers and travelers meet each other. The smugglers have everything under control.

 

TERESA KRUG: Then they were instructed to enter a van and driven to another location, where they waited and waited until finally they boarded a semi-truck, otherwise known as a lorry. Inside the lorry, it was hot. It was covered in a black sheet with only a few holes for air to pass through. For almost 24 hours, they traveled like this to the Sudanese border. No food, very crowded. At one point during my interview with her, Fatima was overcome with a memory.

 

FATIMA: The lorry was really crowded with people. And people were sitting, like, (SIGH) like this, arms pulled up against our chest. Samia said, “Come and sit on my lap so that we can get some space.” But I was really overweight, and she was really thin, so she couldn’t carry me.

 

TERESA KRUG: Near the Sudanese border, the lorry stopped. Fatima described it as a really empty place, like a nothing place. No houses, just bushes and grass. Here, the smugglers demanded that the passengers get out. From there, they were on their own to somehow walk across the border without being caught.

 

TERESA KRUG: If they were successful, another group of smugglers would be on the other side of the border, ready to get them through Sudan. Fatima and Samia were told the checkpoint was very close, but they walked for hours. All the passengers, maybe 40 people, stayed together so no one was left behind.

 

TERESA KRUG: They could get caught at any moment. Exhausted from traveling all night, people began abandoning their bags, too tired to carry them forward. It was so hot that Fatima said it felt like her nails were being pulled off, and her heavy boots, too small for her feet, were giving her blisters. Fatima started slowing down.

 

FATIMA: Samia said, “I can’t leave you behind. We have to go together.” I tried to walk, but I couldn’t walk anymore. So I said, “You should go.”

 

TERESA KRUG: She encouraged Samia to go ahead. Then, as Fatima watched Samia’s figure get smaller up ahead, an awful thing happened.

 

FATIMA: I was sitting under a tree, restin’, when I heard gunshots fired. I was worried because I thought Samia had gotten hurt. And then everything was quiet.

 

TERESA KRUG: Fatima stayed in hiding at a smuggler’s house, panicking, worried that Samia had gotten hurt, or detained, or worse. Eventually, she got word that Samia had made it across the border into Sudan. Samia was alive, but that’s all Fatima knew. Once she was able to walk again, Fatima tried to make it across the border too, but she got caught and was thrown in jail.

 

TERESA KRUG: For weeks, as Samia traveled through Northwest Sudan, I heard nothing from her. This was really concerning, given how chatty she normally was. Here and there, I’d get an unconfirmed rumor, including that Samia had been thrown in prison. I reached out to Samia’s mother, who also didn’t know much.

 

TERESA KRUG: And I got in touch with NGOs and human rights groups that assisted migrants. They told me it was very difficult to connect with anyone while they were traveling through Sudan. In reality, Sudan can take weeks or even months to get through.

 

TERESA KRUG: You’re zig-zagging through the country, peeling through the barren desert on crowded trucks that pick up passengers along the way, away from the main roads. In interviews over the years, migrants who’ve traveled through Sudan have told me about some of the terrors.

 

TERESA KRUG: Suffering through the heat during the day, and the cold during the night. People told me they’d dig holes in the sand up to their chins, then climb in and cover themselves up just to stay warm. There’s dehydration and starvation. You could be attacked by bandits or be raped, or left behind in the desert to die.

 

TERESA KRUG: For Samia, the urgency to get to Libya, to get to Europe, to get to the Olympics meant she needed to get through Sudan as fast as possible, which meant borrowing money, a lot of money. I know this because while in Sudan Samia would occasionally call her older sister, Hodan (PH). Hodan had taken the same migration journey a few years before Samia. Made it to Europe. I spoke with her in 2013 and 2015 at her home in Helsinki, Finland.

 

TERESA KRUG: And then you went back to Malta, then back to Sweden?

 

HODAN YUSUF OMAR: No. I’m not back. I’m running to Finland.

 

TERESA KRUG: You’re running to Finland?

 

HODAN YUSUF OMAR: (LAUGH) Yeah. I think (UNINTEL PHRASE)–

 

TERESA KRUG: Talking with Hodan confirmed all the things I already knew about Samia. That she was confident and independent, and that other people leaned on her.

 

HODAN YUSUF OMAR: She talk something bad, and Samia not person to talk problem. She always– she no–

 

TERESA KRUG: Samia never talked about problems?

 

HODAN YUSUF OMAR: Yeah. Yeah. She don’t want to– to talk, talk, talk. Then–

 

TERESA KRUG: But now, Samia was needing to lean on others. She had no choice but to ask for help. Throughout the week she was in Sudan, Samia would call Hodan, always from a different number, and randomly. Meaning Hodan was always on call, always on edge. Each time, the phone conversations were brief, just long enough for Samia to say she needed more money.

 

TERESA KRUG: Not enough time to make small talk or give meaningful updates. So it was difficult even for Hodan to track Samia’s movements in real-time, what town, or even what region. Hodan’s advice was always the same. “Whatever you do, always tell them you have the money.”

 

TERESA KRUG: Meanwhile, Hodan would have to urgently call around to family members, fundraising hundreds of dollars in just a few short hours. Hodan knew that if Samia couldn’t pay, her baby sister could be beaten, assaulted, or left behind to die, keeping the whole family in a constant state of stress and building a mountain of debt that would be nearly impossible to repay.

 

TERESA KRUG: As I look back, I would say that Samia’s real race started here, not on a track, but on a perilous migration route. It was a race against time. The London Olympics were quickly approaching, and there were so many obstacles in her way. So Samia kept moving forward through Northwest Sudan, all the way to the border with Libya, a place going through a war of its own, and a place where Samia, on top of everything else, would have a new target on her back.

 

FEMALE VOICE: Me and Samia and the other girls, we’re all together. And then we all have been taken to a prison.

 

TERESA KRUG: That’s next time on The Fastest Girl in Somalia.