Somali families find themselves divided by borders and by war

[Jacaylbaro]

THE Herald, on September 5, 2006, ran an article on the Somalis in Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, with the headline “A refugee camp is their only home”. A picture showed a desperate Somali woman at a food distribution centre in the camp. That picture reminded me of when I was in that refugee camp in the late 1990s, some years before I decided to “tour” across Africa. It was a long, aimless “grand” journey characterised by demands to know my identity and my terminal destination.

 

I did not know the latter, maybe where my fare ran short! At every border post, in cities and in taxis, these questions kept coming back.

 

Still, I could interact with many people because of my multilingual advantage – I could speak three international languages fluently besides my mother tongue. That was how I survived the pain of loneliness and discrimination.

 

Then, I was barely into my 20s but three years later, when I read The Herald article, I realised I had already covered a good portion of Africa, but was still in transit.

 

But the article also reminded of one important question I had never asked myself before: had my country ever enjoyed peace and democracy? I had to research the topic, because I had never studied the history of my country in the foreign school I attended.

 

Neither was I fortunate to have narratives from my parents nor any other elders for that matter.

 

I did not realise until I read an article dated July-September, 2008, carried in the BBC‘s Focus on Africa Magazine, by Prof Abdi Said Samatar, a Somali analyst based in the US, that 47 years ago “Somalia led the continent into democratic practice” – a fruit whose sweetness never lasted. My curiosity for self-knowledge increased.

 

During the search for my history I realised that between 1961 and 1969 Somalia saw four democratic changes of government. In 1967, the opposition took power peacefully. In the 1960s, most independent African countries were mired by coups and Somalia jumped into the same boat in late 1969 when Siad Bare overthrew the civilian government – a move that changed the historical and political landscape of Somalia.

 

My father was born at ******ia (a region fighting for autonomy) in Ethiopia, but fled when the Ethiopian soldiers who wanted to attain the loyalty of the Somalis of this region killed his grandfather.

 

My mother was born in the north eastern province of Kenya – a British protectorate whose disputed possession was not solved until 1967 in a Somali-Kenya agreement in which Somalia gave up the claim. When my parents met and settled in Italian Somalia (that became the Republic of Somalia) due to displacements in their respective places of birth, I was born in a place in which they felt themselves foreigners, southern Somalia. I have relatives who live in Djibouti (what was then French Somaliland) and my brother‘s family is still in present Somaliland (a region advocating for autonomy from the rest of Somalia). And there I understood how my family was separated by five borders and the implication of the concept of borders.

 

One family with different identity cards is an indication of a society torn to the core and a cause for conflict.

 

What was the fundamental cause of the war that erupted in Somalia? The British and Italian colonialism undid the affinity of the closely-knit Somali society and through their divide-and-rule policy, according to Samatar, spawned tribalism, subsequently spurring the unending conflict.

 

After nearly two decades of war, there is a far-reaching grave consequence: a lost generation, a touchy point well noted by the conclusion of The Herald‘s article, “An entire generation (that) has little knowledge of the outside world (and its history).”

 

 

The author of this article, Osman Abdi, is a Somali national who has lived in Port Elizabeth since late 2004. He has been a student at NMMU since 2006