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The grim reality of what has transpired in the land once inhabited by proud poets and poetesses, people whose culture dictated to share everything with a neighbor which is today left to people who have perfected the art of hate, handing a brother to the enemy in the name of clan hate or other maladies that has of late crammed the hearts and minds of Somalis. And so Dr. Jamaal Guudle struggles with that question, as he tends to the injured, the muted, and those affected by war and its aftermath. His daily dealings with the poor inheritors of war have made him question the reason these people have inherited such a bleak lives. Thus, as you read his words movingly written through anguish, as he cries for a people that once were, who have now ceased to exist as people, and lost the dignity and self respect they once possessed ask yourself that question, what is Soomalinimo? ____________________________ I wrote this piece a while back. I was working in the refugee camps at the time and I met this lady, with a severe thyroid problem. She was from the Somali region of Ethiopia. She told me how soldiers came to their village and killed all their livestock. How their young men were either killed or imprisoned. She was jailed for months and gang raped by Ethiopian forces. She had bayonet scars on her inner thighs to prove it. As I looked at those scars, I swelled up. A few tear drops ran down my face. I could not help but feel a little bit—a tiny little bit—of the agony this lady went through. An agony she suffered because of her identity. She walked for miles after her release from prison to Somalia before getting aid from others in similarly desperate situation. She crossed the breadth of Somalia in search of safety and finally ended up in Hagadera refugee camp where I met her that day. At the time, Garoowe was handing over some of her brothers (and their own brothers for that matter) back to Addis. Hargeysa and Djibouti were sweetly in bed with Meles and Xamar was burning. Thousands of Somalis who had not left till then were joining their brothers and sisters who have abandoned their homeland; abandoning in search of peace and security but abandoning non-the-less. How many times can a country be abandoned before it runs out of people and becomes a barren wilderness? How many times does a country bleed before its bled dry? How many times can a people belonging to one nation shout at each other before they get tired of it all? How long does it take before a community can sit under a big Qurac tree and discuss their problems and find an amicable solution? I am a Somali from North Eastern Kenya and our part of the Somali Lands has not been spared the agony. At the time I wrote this piece, the government of Kenya had decided to intervene in a clan conflict in Mandera. In addition to the stupidity, futility and the curse of brother fighting brother, the villagers from the area suffered the wrath of the brutal Kenyan forces. Many ran away to Somalia as refugees! Many women in Wargaduud and surrounding areas suffered rape and abuse. All these happened under the nose of a Somali Minister of Defence (Yussuf Haji) and a Somali Commissioner of Police (Maj Gen Hussein Ali). All this happened at a time when key members of parliament and the cabinet are Somalis. The rest of us Kenyan Somalis who didn’t belong to those clans slept and turned a blind eye. You see it wasn’t “our” clan that was being brutalised? It wasn’t “our” people that were suffering rape and physical abuse? How long does it take before we get it? How long does it take before we understand that what happens to one of us happens to all of us? How long does it take before we understand that like a herd of Zebras we might be able to differentiate each other but to the rest of the world we are all just the same? You see I truly do not understand! We might be the only true nation (not as in country or state but nation as in a people who share common customs, origins, history, and language) who feel nothing when something bad happens to another group belonging to our nation. We do our best to emphasis what divides us and not what unites us. We try as much as possible to out do each other, step on each other and look for the insincerity in us in others. Somalinimo which should be a powerful unifying force is but a mirage, left in the imaginations of a few. It is time for us to step-up and awaken our people. It is time for us to rise from our deep, deep slumber and open our eyes to the reality of this 21st century world. We do not have to belong to one country under one government to understand that we are all Somalis and our destiny is interlinked. We need to take up all Somali causes as our causes as long as it is not at the expense of another group of Somalis. I believe fundamental solutions can only be found if we thoroughly look at our past and at our traditional customary laws (xeer) that have for centuries kept conflicts from boiling over into grand genocidal, fratricidal tragedies. I will expound on that another time but today I leave you with the question, what is somalinimo? What is somaliness?
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