In July 1974, at an estimated cost of £10 million, a huge taskforce of some 30,000 secondary school students and teachers was dispatched into the interior in triumphant truckloads. In parties of eight, with a teacher as leader and with the participation of veterinary and medical personnel, these young pioneers of the new Somalia set forth to teach the nomads to write their own language, hygiene, modern animal husbandry methods, basic civics and the aims of Scientific Socialism.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 527