Samatar spent his early years in a nomadic environment, where he writes that "seasons of plenty" with "fragrant flowers blooming all over the fallowed fields, abundant milk and meat" alternated with the "perennial threat of starvation during droughts, marauding gangs of enemy clans bent on murder and mayhem, stripping you of your livestock, the ever-present danger of ravenous predators.
During 1963, a Somali revolt against the Ethiopia Empire broke out and Qalaafo was bombarded during a reprisal carried out by the Ethiopian Imperial Army, resulting in the destruction of much of the property own by Samatar's family.
He attended early morning and night classes, while working during the day as a welder to support his wife, who at the time was pregnant with their two children.
Samatar was a member of the executive committee of the Somali Studies International Association since 1979, and served as a managing editor of the Horn of Africa journal.
In 1992, as part of the Social Science Research Council team's reassessment of the "Teaching and Study of the Humanities in Africa," he went to Somalia as a consultant and interpreter for the ABC news program Nightline with the American journalist Ted Koppel.
Beginning in 1983, Samatar appeared on BBC shows for interviews regarding Northeast Africa, and discussed Somalia on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN International, as well as PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television news programs.