He is, and I've been keeping him company because I'm a better friend than you all

Alpha Blondy;959528 wrote: don't mess with Al. :mad: I enjoy it too much dee :mad:

Just messing with you.

Alpha Blondy;959504 wrote: my little niece and nephew are FINALLY here. they are in berbera at the moment. i'm so excited to see them, walahi. my niece is 4 years old and i haven't seen her for 1 yr and 4 months. my little nephew was born may 29th 2013 and i have NEVER seen him. he apparently looks like me. 'they' say he has my personality, too.... . i wonder if their mother will allow me to see them. i'm very shy and she's not exactly the greatest 'dumaashi", ma garateen? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL I better not hear about you conveniently visiting Addis next week, it's already too close for comfort

Night SP

Indeed, but we both seem to be travelers so I'm sure our travels will overlap somewhere someday I don't think I'll ever go to Vancouver as a tourist, if I end up visiting sometime it will probably be on business... Montreal is amazing, and in under two hours I can fly to NYC or Chicago from TO, so I'd just rather do that. If I'm going to spend 5+ hours on a plane, it's going to have to be international. Although I kinda want to go to Coachella next year lol.

Enjoy TO, too bad I'm leaving this week I'm definitely excited, it'll be an interesting two months for sure. I've never been to Van but I've heard great things... personally I can't fly that long to another Canadian city, I just can't lol. Montreal and Quebec City are enough for me when I want to keep it Canadian

Ah well that's two of us then You still in DC? I miss that place!

So why are you up mister?

Can't sleep

Ahh those were the days, when I was the "new girl on the block" and you gentlemen fought for my affections, now you all take me for granted I also don't think I've been the same since oba's passing, and my other SOL suitors just don't compare. I'm good, just another busy day of running errands before I leave this weekend. Went out with the girls too

So what's up SP? I see you've revived the malayaacni thread yet again.

SomaliPhilosopher;959442 wrote: Unfortunately I have yet to watch or read roots... Perhaps I should. You know Saffy, there are a few things that make me sad in this world. one of them is the last episode of Fresh Prince of Bel AIr Definitely watch it! And yeah, that was a sad episode but the saddest to me is the episode when Will's dad came to visit and abandoned him again

We will never forget :mad:

^^ true dat.

If there is no video, why did Rob Ford tell his aides the address where it could be found, leading his chief of staff to go to police? On what planet is Rob Ford "no better or no worse" than any other mayor? You are delusional.

I find his entire trip and the reception hilarious. Xaaji, empty your inbox, I can't reply to your PM.

Blackflash;959081 wrote: Scapegoating the Somali community for their incompetence. Stay classy Gawker. I'm not sure how you interpreted that from the update because that's not what I read at all.

Sigh. Gawker just posted an update, Toronto Star f*cked everything up: The Rob Ford Crack Video Might Be "Gone" JOHN COOK 36 minutes ago Before the Rob Ford Crackstarter—our crowdfunding effort to purchase and publish a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine—reached its $200,000 goal last month, we let everyone know that we had lost contact with the people who have custody of the video. At the end of last week, after a long silence, the video's owner reached out to the intermediary we have been dealing with. He told him the video is "gone." What does that mean? We don't really know. A few days after we posted our story about having viewed the video in a car in a parking lot in Toronto, the owner went silent. Two Toronto Star reporters had quickly followed our report, claiming to have seen the same video. Both Gawker and the Star reporters were introduced to the owner of the video by the same intermediary. The attention surrounding the breaking of the story had two important consequences: First, the owner of the video became angry at us, and at the intermediary. The owner was trying to sell the video, but he apparently didn't want or anticipate the media circus that erupted after the story broke. We decided to break it, with the consent of the intermediary, after a CNN reporter called one of Ford's ex-staffers about the video and word started to get out. The CNN reporter had learned about the video after we confidentially reached out to the network in an effort to partner in purchasing it. Our decision to publish was informed by 1) a desire to get ahead of any rival stories that the gossip mill might generate and 2) a fear that, once Ford was privately alerted to the existence of the video, he would start trying to track it down. That decision lit a match on this story that made it much more difficult—and maybe impossible—to get a deal done and bring the video to the light of day. Complicating matters was the fact that the Star's coverage contained several details—including the rough location where its reporters viewed the video, the rough location where it was purportedly recorded, a description of the intermediary's line of work, the ethnicity of the intermediary and the owner, and physical details about the video owner's appearance—that may have been helpful in identifying and locating the owner. Indeed, according to the Star and other outlets, Ford himself told his staff that the video could be found at a Toronto address—320 Dixon Rd.—near the location where the Star reporters wrote that they viewed it. (Whether he deduced that location—which may or may not be where the video was actually stored—from the Star's coverage or would have known anyway, we can't say.) The second consequence was that Toronto's tight-knit Somali ethnic community became angry. The Canadian media seized on the Star's repeated description of the owners as "Somali men involved in the drug trade." The story quickly became about Rob Ford and his "Somali crack dealers," and the Star's public editor subsequently criticized the paper for "going overboard" on the references to the Somali community. We don't know for certain the citizenship or immigration status of the video's owner, but shortly after the story broke, the intermediary told me: "We're all Canadians." According to the intermediary, these two factors—a fear of being identified, and a strong desire from the Somali community to make the whole thing go away—led the owner of the video to go to ground and soured the owner's relationship with the intermediary. I frankly find it difficult to believe that a crack dealer would be more responsive to the desires of his ethnic community than to a $200,000 bounty. But I have heard independently from others familiar with the goings-on in Toronto that leaders in its Somali community have determined who the owner is and brought intense pressure to bear on him and his family. Toronto's "Little Mogadishu" neighborhood is located in the ward Rob Ford represented when he was a city councillor; though he is a conservative and a racist buffoon, I am told he has long-standing connections to Somali power brokers there. Which brings us to this past Friday, when the intermediary called to tell me that he had finally heard from the owner. And his message was: "It's gone. Leave me alone." It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation. "It's gone" could mean many things. It might mean that the video has been destroyed. It might mean that it has been handed over to Ford or his allies. It might mean that he intends to sell or give it to a Canadian media outlet. It might mean that the Toronto Police Department has seized it and plans to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation. It might mean that it has been transferred to the custody of Somali community leaders for safekeeping. It might be a lie. The intermediary doesn't know. Neither do I. I do know that Gawker is currently sitting on $184,689.81 collected via our Rob Ford Crackstarter. (That's $201,254 raised in total, less $8,365.23 in fees extracted by PayPal, $8,043.96 taken by Indiegogo, and $155 in contributions raised that we have yet to receive.) It is obviously our hope that someone steps up to claim this money and provides us the video. The intermediary has claimed that a copy of the video was made and taken outside Toronto for safekeeping. We don't know if that's true, or if it is, whether that copy is also "gone." We can still imagine any number of scenarios in which this video comes to light. If you are reading this, and you have access to the video, and you like money, please email me at john@gawker.com. If this doesn't happen soon, we will—as we initially promised when we launched the campaign—select a Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues to receive the money. Don't do crack.

Haha I will definitely be careful and keep you guys posted when I have internet, and anyone who sends me their mailing address will get a postcard

I've been thinking about this story since I heard about it this morning, but I was waiting hear if it was confirmed that they were Somali immigrants. They identified the boy as Mustafa Ismail this afternoon, and they've only been in the US for a month. AUN, my heart breaks for this family Most sources are reporting the 7 year old as his sister, others as his cousin. ‘He’s a hero’: Teen drowns in Niagara after pulling sister, 7, from surging river Canadian Press | 13/06/04 | Last Updated: 13/06/04 5:41 PM ET BUFFALO, N.Y. — Authorities say a teenager has drowned in the Niagara River in Buffalo while trying to save his 7-year-old sister after she slipped into the water. Local media outlets report that the 17-year-old boy jumped into the river Monday afternoon as his younger sister was being carried away by the swift current off an island in the river. According to reports, the 17-year-old was able to hand off the 7-year-old to another sister, 13, before then being swept away in the current. The 13-year-old, fearing for her brother, jumped in after him. At that point an unrelated man, Leonard W. Stevens, jumped into the water after the teens and saved the 13-year-old, but was unable to recover the 17-year-old from the murky water. “I consider Stevens and the brother both heroes for their actions,” Commissioner Daniel Derenda told the Buffalo News. “It’s unfortunate the brother lost his life, but he saved his sister.” Stevens directed all praise to the 17-year-old. “He’s a hero in my book.” Police divers found the body of the teenager about 45 minutes later. Police haven’t released his name, but WKBW reports that the 17-year-old was Mustafa Ismail from Buffalo.

D.O.C;959053 wrote: Saffz...are you going berbera walal?......Damn that is not fair, I have got some pictures of our camels back home, however I am not too sure their sumad, I will post it when I find the memory card. My camels graze next to this guy's camels ...check the video but different sumad Thanks for the link, D.O.C. I probably won't be in Somaliland this trip, just Ethiopia for research (ayeyo is leaving Hargeisa for the UK for a few weeks while I'm nearby, and I don't see the point in going if she's not there )

Fangirls too :mad:

Chimera;959043 wrote: BTW, I remember reading something vaguely familiar in a old 70s government book about branding camels, and similar signs being found on wells and walls. It was called "Somalia Today: general information". I wasn't allowed to take it with me from the British Library and had to read it there. I had another look at their catalogue, and its no longer there. Looks like Indiana has it, but unfortunately it's not digitized. I'll check it out when I get around to making the journey to Bloomington for their archives in the near future

D.O.C, the Q looking sign (not a letter, it's a circle with two lines) is from a Kenyan ethnic group, and as I mentioned in my post, I haven't been able to find images of Somali geel with sumad but the closest thing I have is that photo I took near Berbera. I will have to keep an eye out when I'm back in the region next week. Chimera;959026 wrote: Safferz, you should take a close look at that ancient writing system spotted by 20th century explorers, 70s archaeologists, and Sada Mire in recent times. I'm thinking of doing a 1 year coastal and marine archaeology course, and just scuba-dive around Somalia's waters, because I'm 100% sure many ruins lie currently submerged in the Somali peninsula, even ones dating from as recent as the 15th century, let alone Periplus of the E. Sea times. Thanks Chimera, I have some familiarity with the archaeological findings but because my historical interests tend to relate to living history and the immediate past (20th century), I haven't done any serious reading on it. We do need more Somali archaeologists, who knows what remains to be excavated from beneath the sands of the region where humanity originated. I've always suspected Somalia may have remains older than Dinknesh (Lucy) as well