you will get biased responses from that era depending on who you speak to, but my mother tells me it was nice and she lived most of childhood in SL (not the capital hargeisa). she says school was free but even then women didn’t want to go, so her classes were mainly with men. there were like 3 women in her class and the rest men. she used to wake up early (5am) to start cooking the laxoox for the family, get her little siblings ready for school, then come back dhuhr time to sleep and then go back to school at asr.
my father on the other hand went to a really good school although he told me travelling was long because he had to climb up mountains... he studied for a bit then my awoowo got a good job in saudi and took all his children there where they grew up.