The 5th Hargeisa International Book Fair 2012

[Wiil Cusub]

Tallaabo;850878 wrote:

Maashaa Allah. This festival is shaping up to become a genuine international event like the Cannes Film Festival.

Yes its true

this is The Guardian

 

Somaliland's Hargeisa book festival celebrates fifth year

 

 

Horn of Africa's answer to Hay-on-Wye fills cultural void for young in country where 70% of population are under 30

Share 78

 

 

Email

Mark Tran in Hargeisa

guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 July 2012 18.23 BST

Jump to comments (…)

 

Refugees in Hargeisa in 2009. Jama Musse Jama hopes the book festival will inspire local young people to get involved in cultural activities. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Guardian

It is an unlikely spot for a literary festival, a town of half a million people with no theatre and no cinema. But Hargeisa is carving out a reputation as the Horn of Africa's answer to Hay-on-Wye by attracting readers and writers from around the world to its book fair.

 

Ensuring that Somaliland's oral tradition endures is one of the motivating factors behind the Hargeisa book fair, the brainchild of Jama Musse Jama, a senior analyst with a computer science company who lives in Pisa, Italy.

 

The event – now in its fifth year – celebrates not just literature but theatre, film and music, as well as showing off Somaliland's local products from fruit to its version of Coca-Cola.

 

Held in the working men's club in central Hargeisa, the presentations are given in a packed hall, with red, green and white streamers – the colours of the national flag – on the ceiling where the white paint is visibly peeling.

 

A makeshift tent outside houses volunteers, including young women wearing hijabs and backwards baseball caps, selling old paperbacks and newer ones published by the organisers.

 

At nearby stalls in the dusty yard, women sell large watermelons, lemons and soft drinks under bright red parasols to ward off the sun. Unlike Hay-on-Wye, armed soldiers in fatigues are in evidence. Although this is one of the safest cities in the Horn of Africa – metaphorically, it's a million miles from Mogadishu – the authorities are taking no risks.

 

Jama left Somaliland in 1986 for Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and did not return until 1991, when Somaliland declared itself an independent republic. During its breakaway Hargeisa was so heavily bombed that it became known as the Dresden of Africa. Since then – in stark contrast to Somalia – Somaliland has been a haven of relative calm and stability, aided by millions of dollars in remittances from the Somali diaspora, many living in the US and the UK. It is now courting foreign investors, although the lack of international recognition can be a hurdle.

 

Jama started the book fair not only to ensure the survival of Somaliland's rich oral tradition, but to fill what he saw as a cultural void. "It is unacceptable that in this city there is no national theatre and no cinema. There is nothing for young people to do," he said.

 

Somaliland has about 3 million inhabitants with up to 70% aged under 30. Jama wants the arts to provide a healthy alternative for the young to chewing khat – the ubiquitous drug in the region – or worse, following the siren call of al-Shabaab, the Islamist militants in Somalia.

 

Ayan Mahamoud, who co-manages the book fair and organises its sister festival in London every October, also trumpets the importance of the arts and culture in building national identity.

 

"You can't become a nation by just building an army and a police, you need the arts … through books you change people's minds," she said. "You need a culture of peace and tolerance. The book fair provides a space for our youth to engage and discuss with each other."

 

Among those at this year's event is Georgi Kapchits, a Russian who during the cold war worked for Moscow Radio, the Soviet Union's version of the BBC World Service. Having graduated in African studies at Moscow University, he found himself broadcasting to Somalis on Somali folklore. Decades later, Kapchits, 72, is promoting his new book, Somalis Do Not Lie in Proverbs. Many of the proverbs featured were sent in by his listeners over the years.

 

"I wanted to collect these proverbs to make sure the oral tradition does not die out," he said, as he walked along Hargeisa's unpaved roads, strewn with discarded plastic bags used for khat.

 

The fair's organisers also want it to be a showcase for Somali literature, to bring it to the wider world and to bring international literature through translations to Somalis. Recently Jama's publishing house has published translations of works by George Orwell and Anton Chekhov, and provided an English translation of essays by Muuse Ismaaciil Galaal, a leading Somali literary figure.

 

Beyond the fair, its organisers have been promoting readers' clubs in Somaliland's six regions as a way of pressurising regional leaders to build libraries. "We've had pledges of land and now two regions have pledged buildings for libraries," said Mahamoud.

 

Rahma Hassan Tubez, 20, a medical student and readers' club member, is at the fair to see Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame "Hadraawi", considered Somalia's greatest living poet. Tubez said Hadraawi had complimented her on her Arab poetry and had urged her to write in Somali.

 

"When I was young my dream was to become a doctor, now whenever I have free time I write poetry," said Tubez, who cites Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People as her favourite book. "This year I started writing Somali poetry because Hadraawi had encouraged me."

 

Somali proverbs

 

To know something for sure, one would even part with a she-camel

 

You will be drowned by two things: plenty of water and plenty of enemies

 

Frequent guests and much begging are disliked equally

 

Men like tea; women like conversation

 

A sheep is slaughtered on the deck on which she herself is standing [everybody gets their just deserts]

[5]

Hahah Tallaabo iyo Wiil Cusub wexee isku camiraayaanlee

[Raamsade]

Book Fair in a city where the vast majority of its residents can't read or write? Only Somalis can come up with crap like this. Reminds of a time when a dude claimed Mogadishu Seaport was "world class" despite the port lacking sufficient storage space, no container cargo handling capacity including complete absense of a single crane to unload container ships, a standard fair in most haf-decent ports.

[Che -Guevara]

Nigga stop spoiling the few feel good moments

[Wiil Cusub]

Raamsade;851505 wrote:

Book Fair in a city where the vast majority of its residents can't read or write? Only Somalis can come up with crap like this. Reminds of a time when a dude claimed Mogadishu Seaport was "world class" despite the port lacking sufficient storage space, no container cargo handling capacity including complete absense of a single crane to unload container ships, a standard fair in most haf-decent ports.

*** said majority of H-town residents are illiterate, when Hargeisa alone has more student and pupils than whole Puntland or any other Somali region.

[Wiil Cusub]

Mary Harper Sees a Country in Microcosm At the Hargeisa International Book Fair

 

 

Shortly after I posted a blog about a book fair in Somaliland, I received a comment from a contributor to a highly respected international magazine. He asked whether it was a joke. As if I was making the whole thing up.

 

The Hargeisa International Book Fair is most certainly not a joke. It is now in its fifth year running and, as its name suggests, is truly international.

 

It is international in the sense that Somali authors, poets, artists, musicians and intellectuals from all over the world were invited to the event, reflecting the truly globalised nature of the Somali people. They have always been outward looking due to their geographical location and long seaboard, but the past two-and-a-half decades of conflict have forcibly displaced about a third of the Somali population, scattering them far and wide across the globe.

 

The international Somalis invited to the book fair included the young British-Somali author of the prize-winning novel, Black Mamba Boy, Nadifa Mohamed, the US-based Somali poet, Said Salah, and the respected Somali journalist and thinker, Mahamoud Sheikh Dalmar, who returned to Somaliland from Britain for the first time in thirty-six years.

 

The book fair was also international in the sense that a truly global mix of non-Somalis was invited to take part. The Brazilian-Korean film-maker, Iara Lee, screened her film Cultures of Resistance, complete with Somali subtitles. The New Orleans jazz clarinettist Evan Christopher made his first trip to Africa to work musical magic with the King of the Somali lute, Hudaydi, who flew in from London.

 

The Russian academic, George Kapchits, who speaks fluent Somali, launched his new book 'Somalis do not Lie in Proverbs'. A representative from Penguin Books, Helen Conford, came to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time to talk about international publishing. And I was invited to do the first launch on Somali soil of my book Getting Somalia Wrong? The book has been translated into Somali and is being checked by Somali intellectuals before being released.

 

There was an unexpected international visit on the sixth and final day of the fair. A heavyweight foreign delegation, headed by the British ambassador to Somalia, Matt Baugh, popped in to look at the books, art and other items on display, and listen to presentations by young representatives from regional Readers' Clubs. They arrived in a quiet, relaxed way, without obvious security.

 

The organisers of the book fair told Mr Baugh in no uncertain terms that they considered him the ambassador to Somalia and Somaliland, and presented him with a Somali pot, some books and a shiny new red, white and green Somaliland flag. He told the audience that the book fair was 'magnificent' and announced that a British office would soon be opening in Somaliland, which would in time offer consular services.

 

The Hargeisa International Book Fair was far more than a book fair. It went on for six days, and every day seemed better than the one before. It was a feast of books, poems, songs, games, music, plays, art and film. On the last day there was a circus complete with human pyramids, tumbling and juggling with fire.

 

Books on sale at the fair included Somali translations of George Orwell's Animal Farm and, new this year, a collection of short stories by Chekhov. There were Somali children's books and a Somali-English-Arabic Physics book. There was also a mini-library where people could borrow books and read them in a specially designated quiet area.

 

The fair was packed-out every day. There wasn't enough room to accommodate everyone in the large hall of the Working Mens' Club in central Hargeisa, so a big screen was set up outside for the overspill to watch and listen to what was going on inside. A few soldiers strolled around, chatting to people or eating mangoes under the shade of trees. They helped check people's bags as they entered the hall, or politely turned people away when the place was full. One word kept springing to mind when I thought about the book fair, 'gentle' - a term not usually associated with Somalis.

 

One reason why the book fair was so packed is that there is not much for young people to do in Hargeisa. As the book fair's organiser, Jama Musse Jama, says, there is no theatre or cinema in the city. He is keen for the young to engage in cultural activities, partly because it keeps them out of trouble. And there is a lot of trouble around in the region, not least piracy, other forms of crime and the violent Islamist militia Al Shabaab, which is merged with Al Qaeda.

 

I have over the past few years been visiting Hargeisa every six months or so. It changes every time I return. This time I noticed new yellow cab services in the city, with shiny gold signs and smart sunflower yellow taxis with black lettering. Hargeisa is packed at this time of year as many diaspora Somalis spend their summer holidays here. There are long traffic jams and it is often difficult to get a table in the many hotels and restaurants opening in the city. There is a real holiday atmosphere in town. One evening, I even saw a stretch limo decorated with green, red and white lights. The driver told me it is mainly used for weddings. I was told the Hummer I saw belonged to a wealthy businessman.

 

The Somali intellectual, Mahamoud Sheikh Dalmar, who has returned after decades away, told me one of the main changes he has noticed is the way people walk and talk. He says they move and speak freely, whereas during the dictatorship of former president Siad Barre, they kept their heads down and voices low. He also noticed all the different languages being spoken. "Everybody spoke Somali before," he said. "Now I hear Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, American English, Canadian English, London English, Cardiff English...."

 

The book fair is itself a sign of freedom. The dominant voices in the Somali media are usually those of the politicians and religious leaders. The organisers of the book fair have given a voice to everybody but them. The young, women, poets, writers, artists, environmentalists, scientists, historians, linguists and members of the business community all gave presentations.

 

During the short time I was in Hargeisa, a number of Somali stories hit the international headlines. China helped rescue a ship taken by Somali pirates, the UN declared the number of Somali refugees in neighbouring countries had reached the one million mark, Oxfam warned of a pending food crisis in Somalia and Somaliland, a UN report described massive corruption at the heart of the transitional government of Somalia, and a former minister was blown up in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Such stories show how troubled things are in the Somali territories, but they do not tell the whole picture of what is happening in the region.

 

The organisers of the Hargeisa International Book Fair, Jama Musse Jama and Ayan Mahamoud, are a bit like Somaliland itself. They are plucky, creative, entrepreneurial and independent-minded. The do not take no for an answer and are very good at doing things for themselves.

 

Mary Harper is Africa Editor at BBC World Service News and the author of Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State, Zed Books, 2012. www.maryharper.co.uk

[Jacaylbaro]

Shortly after I posted a blog about a book fair in Somaliland, I received a comment from a contributor to a highly respected international magazine. He asked whether it was a joke. As if I was making the whole thing up.

 

[Jacaylbaro]

Hargeisa Book Fair – Arts, Culture and so much more

 

 

July 20, 2012

 

And so to Hargeisa for the Hargeisa International Book Fair, an inspiring gathering of artists, authors, poets and more. Established by Jama Musse Jama and organized by the wonderful Ayan Mahamoud and her excellent team, the Book Fair is now in its fifth year.

 

Hargeisa may have no theatre, no permanent library and no cinema, but this literary festival is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon. Literature, poetry, film, music, theatre, are all celebrated here, building on Somaliland’s proud oral tradition; its already inviting very favourable comparisons to the UK’s own Hay Festival. This year’s festival saw the publication of a new collection of Somali proverbs. Edited by Georgi Kapchits, formerly of Radio Moscow, this new collection, entitled ‘Somalis Do Not Lie in Proverbs‘, is designed to make sure that the Somali oral tradition is given the recognition it deserves.

 

The Hargeisa working men’s club, decked in the Somaliland colours, provides the setting for the Book Fair’s popular presentations and discussions, while outside busy stalls and makeshift tents display books in Somali and English, organic fruit and locally-made textiles; Coca Cola is also very much on display – courtesy of the new bottling plant in Hargeisa. Among the throng – and it really is very, very busy – you can find Somali translations of Chekhov or English translations of the essays of Galaal. Copies of Mary Harper’s important new book, ‘Getting Somalia Wrong‘ were, I am reliably told by the author, sold out – twice.

 

As Ayan will tell you, you do not build a community by simply focusing on institutions – an army or police force, a government or local administration. You do it by also by creating a shared identity and common values – by changing people’s minds; by helping them grow.

 

It is for this reason that the UK has been a proud sponsor of the Book Fair for three years now. The UK is proud of our historic links with Somaliland. Somali diaspora communities are among the UK’s most well-established, with Somaliland communities present in almost every major city across England and Wales. The diaspora play a vital role in all aspects of UK society – from local councillors to some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs.

 

The UK’s support for Somaliland covers a wide spectrum. As well as our ongoing support for festivals like the Book Fair, we are also providing significant development aid and will continue to do so. Most excitingly, perhaps, we are working on a new initiative together with the Danish Government. The Somaliland Development Fund will help support the priorities of the Somaliland Development Plan, helping the government support prosperity, tackle poverty and deliver basic services, such as health and education.

 

Giving Somaliland’s young people something to do (some 70% of Somaliland’s population are estimated to be under 30), stimulating minds with things other than khat – these things matter. Put simply, arts and culture matter.

 

But I am also acutely aware – and often reminded – that much of Somaliland’s success has been delivered despite international aid and assistance. Somaliland’s relative stability has been enabled by Somalilanders themselves. So as we increase and strengthen our collaboration with Somaliland, how do you think we should focus our assistance? How should we make sure that aid helps, not hinders development? I look forward to hearing from you.

 

As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, I would like to echo the words of the Foreign Secretary and wish all Somalis, and all Muslims across the globe, a peaceful time with their families. Ramadan Mubarak!

 

 

 

Matt Baugh

[Jacaylbaro]

On the Foreign and Commonwealth office website

[Somalia]

Wiil Cusub;852197 wrote:

*** said majority of H-town residents are illiterate, when Hargeisa alone has more student and pupils than whole Puntland or any other Somali region.

Faanka iyo beenta iska jooji.

 

It is estimated that there are close to

15 thousand students are taking the secondary exams

this year.

 

According to the Puntland Ministry of Education, across the board there are close to 200,000 thousand students that are currently enrolled in education institutions. More than half of those students are enrolled in primary schools, with at least 20,000 thousand attending secondary school next year.

 

http://allafrica.com/stories/201205100122.html

Over

17,500 students across Somaliland

will take the annual secondary school and university entrance examinations at the end of this month in 140 exam halls.

 

Zamzam Abdi Adan, Minister for Education, said a total sum of 5,846 candidates aspiring to enroll in the country’s institutions of higher education will sit the test in 42 exam centers in all provinces.

 

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1504205

 

Well done, you have 2000 more students taking exams, woopti doooooo.

[GaroweGal]

Raamsade;851505 wrote:

Book Fair in a city where the vast majority of its residents can't read or write? Only Somalis can come up with crap like this.

Reminds of a time when a dude claimed Mogadishu Seaport was "world class" despite the port lacking sufficient storage space, no container cargo handling capacity including complete absense of a single crane to unload container ships, a standard fair in most haf-decent ports.

LOOOL!

[burahadeer]

Jealous people,eat your heart out,figures why there's no solution in somalia!!