Somalia is a country that doesn’t often get good press. Most headlines about it seem to focus on things like pirates, violence, and political unrest. With media organizations largely ignoring the happier aspects of the country, one woman is taking it upon herself to do so, becoming something of an Instagram celebrity along the way.
NPR shares that 27-year-old Ugaaso Abukar Boocow was moved to Canada when she was a toddler to escape Somalia’s civil war, but moved back herself to the capital city of Mogadishu one year ago to rejoin her mother.
Boocow then began using Instagram to capture positive pictures of everyday life as experienced by the city’s inhabitants. Those photos (and videos) have resonated with people. In a short period of time, Boocow has amassed over 60,000 Instagram followers.
“I did not know that there were so many other people who were hungry for those positive pictures, those beautiful pictures, those random sometimes irrelevant pictures of everyday life in Somalia,” Boocow tells NPR. “So now it’s become a responsibility to continue showing the world the beauty Somalia is.”
Here’s a segment about Boocow’s life and work that just aired on NPR’s Morning Edition show:
Here are some of the posts found on Boocow’s Instagram feed:
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Oct 28, 2014 at 6:55pm PDT
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Oct 28, 2014 at 10:29am PDT
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Oct 26, 2014 at 9:02pm PDT
A video posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Nov 1, 2014 at 8:50pm PDT
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Nov 21, 2014 at 9:05am PST
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Dec 26, 2014 at 3:15am PST
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Feb 18, 2015 at 8:31am PST
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Sep 7, 2014 at 10:36am PDT
A photo posted by Ugaaso A. Boocow (@ugaasadda) on Aug 25, 2014 at 7:14am PDT
You can find boocow on Instagram as @ugaasadda.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.