Book launch: Weerane –The Mourning Tree: the autobiography of Mohamed Barud Ali

[Jacaylbaro]

Book launch: Weerane –The Mourning Tree: the autobiography of Mohamed Barud Ali

 

The former president of Somalia: “Hargeysa is gone, Burao is gone and the national army is gone”.

 

 

When: Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 3pm

 

Where: Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH

 

 

 

Kayd Somali Arts and Culture in collaboration with redsea-online. com is proudly inviting you to the presentation of new book: 'Weerane: autobiography by Mohamed Barud Ali’. Join us to discuss this new autobiography with the author and also mark and commemorate with us, the student protest, 20 Feb 1981, erupted 28 years ago in Hargeysa demanding justice and the release of UFFA members. We expect you on Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 3pm at Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH .

 

Weer is a Somali word for a piece of cloth wrapped around one’s head to show that a grievance was been committed. At the same time, it is a sign of courage that you are willing to take revenge for the injustice and the pain inflicted on you. It is the name of the tree that Mahamed Barud Ali was born under into a pastoral nomadic Somali community in Somaliland . In this nomadic society, dignity is the single most important state of being. Weerane is a record of an injustice being done to a whole community and is being told in a dignified manner by Mahamed Barud Ali.

 

This prison memoir will not only give first-hand information of the experience of the brutalities of Siyad Barre’s Somalia but also of the life of a nomad child who is brought to the city to live with his aunt because there was no work for him due to the fact that his father did not own any camels to be looked after. In the city while growing up, hunger was never far away. That motivated Mahamed to perform well at school which gave him the opportunity to go to the United Kingdom.

 

After he earned his university degree, he went back to his home town Hargeysa where he met young professionals’ like him. They decided to volunteer for their community, what became to be known by the international community as Hargeysa Self-help group and locally as UFFO. For their noble acts, Mahamed and his colleagues were imprisoned and what followed were eight long lonely years, where the studying of insects was the main entertainment of the day. The reasons why they were freed, while at the same time the rest of their community had been destroyed, were as strange and surprising as the reasons why they were jailed in the first place were bizarre. There was no time in Mohamed’s life to get depressed or discouraged when he and his group were freed as the reconstruction of the country had to start immediately.

 

Mahamed Barud Ali is civil right and humanity activist, Hero to some, the prisoner of conscience under the brutal regime of Somalia ; he lives in Hargeysa, with his wife and children and works on issues relating to human rights and civil liberties.

[Jacaylbaro]

When: Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 3pm

 

Where: Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH