Who is this man? and why is he driving so many people to our clinic?

With the US death toll from COVID-19 passing 500,000, a new strain emerging, and vaccine hesitancy on the rise, it’s hard not to wonder whether or not we’ll ever get back to normal. We at the clinic, having tested over 10,000 people, feel it too. But a single act of kindness, in this era of nearly uninterrupted uncertainty, can be a reminder that the good in the world hasn’t disappeared.

This is one of those acts of kindness.

An elderly man, with 4 elderly Somali women in tow bubbling with conversation, visited us last month. He sat himself to the side as our interpreters and nurses tended to his cohort, and when approached to fill out patient forms to get his shot he waved his hand and simply said that he’s “just their ride.” There he patiently waited as all 4 filled out their paperwork to get their shots, and when their observation period was up, he gathered them all and left together: bubbling with conversation.

This continued every week for a month

The nurses and volunteers finally called our copywriters down, saying “you have to meet this guy,” and when we finally caught up with him, we learned that Ahmed Mohamud, at 85 years old, is anything but an ordinary man.

After coming from Somalia to the US in 1994, he began to develop a strong passion for learning languages. Today, 17 years later, he speaks the better part of nine languages including Somali, Korean, English, and German which gives him a unique perspective when thinking about his community. After receiving his first COVID-19 shot, he realized that so much of the information he had received about the vaccine wasn’t reaching his neighbors because there were stark communication and transportation barriers between them and helpful services. As more and more people that he knew said that they weren’t going to get the shot, for one reason or another, what did he do?

He started driving them.

Well first he began telling his neighbors how important the shot was, and telling them to call us to get an appointment. Then if they said there was no way they could get there, he would pull up with his car and ferry his community to their appointments. He said with a big smile that at 85, he didn’t know how much time he had left and so he wants to spend his time doing as much good as possible.

Acts like these are what will allow us to burst out of our COVID-19 bubbles. Small community led efforts are the backbone of every movement, and getting enough people vaccinated is going to take us all. So we take our hats off to Ahmed, who we still occasionally see, for doing his part to keep his neighborhood safe.