Kamil Suja, right, owner of 207 Driving School in South Portland, tells student Abdoulrazack Ibrahim, originally of Djibouti, to test the turn signals before leaving the parking lot. Suja instructs Ibrahim in the Somali language. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Abdoulrazack Ibrahim cautiously pulled out of the South Portland parking lot of 207 Driving School in the school’s dark gray Honda Accord.

Before changing lanes, he checked his mirror, signaled, then checked his mirror again as Kamil Suja, his instructor, coached him through the steps.

He accelerated with a jerk.

“Remember to check over your shoulder,” Suja said.

A truck whizzed by one lane over, and Ibrahim tightened his grip on the wheel while maintaining his speed. Seamlessly switching between Somali and English, Suja instructed him to try changing lanes again. This time, Ibrahim checked over his shoulder.

“You’ve been doing good,” Suja said in English. “Keep it up.”

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Suja opened 207 Driving School three months ago because he wanted to support the influx of immigrants and refugees to the state. A driver’s license “gives you freedom,” Suja said. “It’s something we don’t even think about. We get in and drive every day.”

When he saw Ibrahim, who grew up in Djibouti and lives a couple of houses down from him in South Portland, walking around without consistent access to transportation, he knew he had to help, he said, “not only as a company but also as a human being and neighbor.”

“It’s a hard transition,” Suja said. “It’s such a culture shock, so where do they begin?” In addition to working on Ibrahim’s driving, Suja has also helped him secure a state ID, schedule his permit test and search for a job.

Kamil Suja, right, owner of 207 Driving School in South Portland, instructs his student Abdoulrazack Ibrahim, originally of Djibouti, to look over his shoulder before changing lanes in the Somali language last month. Suja opened his driving school three months ago because he wanted to support the influx of immigrants and refugees to the state. A driver’s license “gives you freedom,” Suja said. “It’s something we don’t even think about. We get in and drive every day. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Suja said he usually charges $550 for his permit course, but only charged Ibrahim $200. Sometimes, depending on a person’s need, he will lower the hourly cost of behind-the-wheel lessons from $60 to $40.

Suja understands the difficulty of settling in a new country. He was 6 months old when the civil war broke out in Somalia and just 7 years old when his family moved to the United States, but it was still socially and culturally challenging for him.

Ibrahim, who is 30, has been in the United States for three months, and he’s working toward his American driver’s license. His permit test is scheduled for July 19, and if he passes that, he plans to take his road test in mid-August. Until then, he’s taking driving lessons with Suja.

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Ibrahim is gradually adjusting to life in America, as well as to the new rules of the road. Even though he drove for five years back home in Balbala, Djibouti, he said through Suja that the roads are different here. Most roads in Djibouti have only one lane, he said, and America has many more rules, laws and signs.

MULTILINGUAL DRIVING EDUCATION

To support new Mainers, 207 Driving School offers instruction in multiple languages. Suja is fluent in English and Somali, and his father and fellow instructor, Aweis Suja Abdulla, is fluent in English, Arabic, Somali and Maay Maay, a Somali dialect. When father and son are doing classroom instruction with people who speak different languages, they take turns instructing.

Bashir Shuriye, owner of ABC Driving School in Portland, teaches a class in June. Shuriye encourages his students to learn the English words for driving terms. He has a folder full of laminated vocabulary sheets, with side-by-side translations in various languages and English of helpful phrases like “push down the brake pedal,” “lane change,” “no turn on red” and “slow down.” Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

They’re not alone in Greater Portland in offering driving lessons to people for whom English is not the first language. ABC Driving School, formerly known as Iftin Driving School, teaches in Arabic, Bosnian, French, Lingala, Pashto, Portuguese, Somali, Swahili and Urdu.

Bashir Shuriye, ABC’s CEO, does not speak all of these languages. In fact, he encourages his students to learn the English words for driving terms. He also has a folder full of laminated vocabulary sheets, with side-by-side translations in various languages and English of helpful phrases like “push down the brake pedal,” “lane change,” “no turn on red” and “slow down.”

In his classes, he lectures in English, occasionally using magnet cars on the whiteboard to illustrate concepts. During breaks, while most of the students answer questions in their workbooks, he sits down with students who speak other languages to answer any questions they may have.

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“I push them to learn in English,” he said. “They have to learn the basic words in English first in order to communicate while driving before hitting the road.” The road test will be in English, after all, so knowing some of the English words is key.

According to the Maine Office of the Secretary of State, which oversees the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a prospective driver may request on the learner’s permit application that an interpreter be present during the written exam. At the road test, an interpreter can explain instructions before the exam but is not allowed inside the vehicle. The BMV also has trained branch representatives to use Pocketalk translation devices or translation apps as needed.

Shuriye, who has 30 years of teaching experience and 10 years behind the wheel as a taxi driver, opened his business in 2017. He said that starting his own driving school made sense: He wanted to help people who are new to the country. Now, the school has three instructors and two cars.

Bashir Shuriye, owner of ABC Driving School in Portland, teaches a group of young students, who didn’t want to be photographed, in the Arabic language. Shuriye, who is originally from Somalia, can instruct students in Somali, Arabic and English. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Faisal Khan, executive director of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center, said that a lot of newly arrived immigrants face transportation barriers. Many lack access to consistent public transportation, don’t have the resources to buy their own vehicles or use rideshares frequently. They don’t know how to go about getting a driver’s license. Housing is more affordable in rural areas in Maine, Khan said, but it’s hard to get around rural parts of the state without access to a car.

Khan worked with one man who lived in Westbrook and set out on his bike each day at 2 a.m., even in the winter, to make it to Scarborough in time for work.

“Something needs to change,” Khan said.

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Some organizations are working to bridge transportation gaps. The Maine Association for New Americans, for instance, provides rides to newly arrived immigrants and low-income residents within a one-hour radius of Portland. Many of the association’s clients request rides to medical or social service appointments. Some need to get to the grocery store. Abdoul Karim Rwasamirera, the association’s transportation coordinator, said that sometimes he puts car seats in the association’s 12-person passenger van and drives new mothers and their babies to follow-up doctor’s appointments.

The service helps, but it’s not the same as having a license and access to a car, Rwasamirera said. People have to book rides two business days in advance, and they may have to wait an hour or two  for the van to arrive even when they’ve booked ahead.

The association often provides rides to the BMV so people can apply for their driver’s licenses, Rwasamirera said, but once clients get their licenses, “we never see them again. They’ll send us a nice note thanking us for helping them out,” he said.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said she knows the importance of having a driver’s license in a rural state like Maine to “go to work or school and to recreation activities.” She said that her office is taking steps to make the process of earning a driver’s license more accessible to immigrants and refugees.

“We think it’s really important,” she said, “that we help facilitate that process to everyone.”

Right now, the written test is available in French and Spanish in Maine, and Bellows said her office is evaluating whether it can translate it into other languages, including Lingala, Chinese, Russian, Dari and Pashto. The Maine Driver’s License Manual has been available in Arabic, French, Portuguese, Somali and Spanish since March. Bellows said they chose those languages based on refugee and immigrant communities across the state.

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Shuriye, who is Somalian, said these translated resources aren’t always so helpful to drivers who speak languages other than English. He read the manual in Somali, he said, and had a hard time understanding it. Regional dialects can be very different, and some words do not translate perfectly. In Somali, for example, there is no word for yield.

Suja and Shuriye say a majority of their students are teenagers. Some who are older have, like Ibrahim, driven in their home countries and are still getting used to American rules of the road. There’s a learning curve, said Suja.

“Back home in my country, in Somalia, we don’t have stop signs or traffic lights,” Suja said. “It’s just a free-for-all. You just go when you can.”

Many of Shuriye’s adult students are driving for the first time, he said, and they often have a tougher time learning than the teenagers.

Fatima Mursal, originally from Somalia, is one of Shuriye’s students. She moved to the United States in November 2022, and she’s trying to get her driver’s license now so that it will “be easier to go to work and to go outside without asking anyone to drive me around,” she said through her son Qasim, who dropped her off at her lesson and translated.

“She’s learning quickly,” Shuriye said on the road as his left hand guided Mursal’s henna-covered hands on the wheel, making sure the car stayed in its lane.

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