This book is dedicated to the women who made me what I am today. My maternal great grand mother, my Herero and Damara grandmothers Metha Ngatjikare and Christofine Gamamus both of whom lived during the German occupation and gave birth to children whose fathers were German, and who were forced by German and South African occupation to bring up these children on their own. And despite these challenges these children made history in their own right.

Education had always been deeply prized on both my mother's and father's sides of the family. For a period when Awoowe, my paternal grandfather, lived with us back in Somalia, he would call me into his room each morning before I left for school to make sure I understood that I was a beneficiary of the attributes of Araweelo, a Somali queen who fought for the rights of women and the disenfranchised.

The person who started my nomadic life was my grandmother.

With our grandmother staying behind in Somalia, my mother had nobody with whom to share tasks and plans. She could do nothing on her own. She wasn't supposed to go out on the street without these new guardians of ours, our uncles, and neither were we. To phone them she had to scuttle down to the corner grocer, with my ten-year-old brother in tow acting as her protective male.

I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

I happened to come from grandmothers and a mother who were not apologetic about being women.

My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.

My mother raised me, and then freed me,

For seven years I remained undisturbed—no one to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy. My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible—particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes—these small things affect all your life patterns—she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood. She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: "We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close." She insisted, "Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we have? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself."

I had my daughter, Rudo, as a teenager. My mother helped me raise her. (As women) we have big hearts, we support our families and children. If my mother wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have been where I am today

Mine has been a long journey, a lifetime journey to Oslo. It was shaped by the values of my parents and by my two grandmothers – indigenous Liberians, farmers and market traders – neither of whom could read or write. They taught me that only through service is one’s life truly blessed.

The strength of my ancestors and the women who gave birth to freedom and taught us the path of dignity motivated me to start on this road to the Colombian presidency.

We couldn’t afford many things, but we had education. My father was a headmaster and later became an education officer. My mother was fantastic: she always told me, ‘Do what you want.’ She gave me total freedom, in fact both my parents did. But I really owe it to my mother. When I said I will go to Banaras (Varanasi) to study, she said, ‘You want to go to Banaras? Ok, go.’ She would say, ‘Don’t worry about money, reading is most important, read and then everything will come.’ My family was very open. Thanks to them I’m what I am today. I am the only child of my parents, so is my wife.

First, a mother who, by her example, made reading a delight and counseled me constantly to “be independent,” able to fend for myself, whatever fortune might have in store for me. Second, teachers who influenced or encouraged me in my growing-up years.