CIAO DATE: 12/2011
Volume: 10, Issue: 0
December 2010
Cover and Verso (PDF)
Table of Contents (PDF)
Contributors (PDF)
Editor's Note (PDF)
Ahmed I. Samatar
Greetings to all of you! As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, I would like to, one more time, express my gratitude to the five institutions that helped establish the journal: Macalester College, Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, the College of the Holy Cross, and California State University, Chico. Second, I am pleased to report that the 2011 spring (April 7–9) annual Macalester College Civic Forum is programmed to focus on New American Citizens: Opportunities and Obligations for Somalis. An exciting combination of academic essays will be led by a keynote address by Cawo Abdi (Sociology, University of Minnesota), entitled “The Newest African-Americans? Somali Struggles of Belonging.” In addition, there will be a “life interview” of Macalester College Professor/Dean Ahmed I. Samatar by Professor Hussein Warsame (University of Calgary, Canada) and Nimo Farah (African Development Center). The program will also include oud performances by the renowned craftsman Omer “Bongo,” accompanied by Ahmed I. Samatar singing choices of classical Somali tunes. Thus, all in all, we will host three evenings of fresh intellectual exploration, artistic playfulness and cultural glow. It is our hope that as many members of the International Advisory Board as possible would try to join us. Please let us know if you intend to do so—we would want to welcome you
About Bildhaan (PDF)
From a Poet's Pen (PDF)
Bashir Goth
It may seem unbecoming for a poet to take pains to elucidate his work for the general reader. And I may agree with Robert Penn Warren who said, “The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, ‘Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.’ ” The poet, however, may be obliged to play the role of a critic in the absence of literary critics and in the presence of the younger Somali immigrant population for whom the language of Somali poetry may look like gibberish and the imagery archaic.
British and Somali Views of Muhammad Abdullah Hassan's 'Jihad,' 1899-1920 (PDF)
John P. Slight
Since the start of Hassan’s jihad against unbelievers and insufficiently pious Muslims in 1899, the “Cinderella of the Empire” had suffered terribly. 2 Hassan’s jihad caused “universal perdition,” with an estimated 200,000 deaths over twenty years in a territory of three million people. 3 An estimated 30,000 alone died in three years as the result of internecine warfare after the British decided the cost of keeping the “Mad Mullah” in check was too burdensome and withdrew to the coast in 1909. The withdrawal led Hassan to resume raiding Somali tribes in the protectorate. This, coupled with the British policy of arming these tribes to fend for themselves, contributed to the death toll. 4 Hassan was condemned by the British, but a few of the same observers also grudgingly admired his determination and sustained resistance to imperial power
Debating Somali Identity in a British Tribunal: The Case of the BBC Somali Service (PDF)
Abdi Ismail Samatar
The Somali Peace Conference sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), held in Kenya in 2003–05, was dominated by warlords and partisan mediators. 1 It endorsed a political strategy whose objective has been to recreate Somalia as a clan-based federation. Advocates of this approach claim that such a dispensation will approximate the society’s pre-colonial tradition and therefore has the best chance of restoring peace. An argument put forward in support of this agenda is that Somalia’s former governments, particularly the military junta, misused public power by favoring and rewarding certain genealogical groups. 2 Proponents contend that formally and openly using genealogical divisions as a basis for distributing public appointments and resources will prevent future clanist favoritism. This approach to political reconstruction mimics Ethiopia’s seemingly novel political project, which divided the country into nine “ethnic provinces” in 1991. 3 In the case of Ethiopia, the presumed rationale for this political strategy was to overcome past domination of the state by one ethnic group, rather than to revert to an old tradition. The imposition of Amharic culture and language on Oromos, Somalis, Afars, the people of the southern region, and other groups throughout the state—and the denial of their human rights—rationalized re-engineering the new order. The challenge for Ethiopia post-1991 has been how to undo past subjugation without reifying cultural differences politically.
Experiences of Somali Entrepreneurs: New Evidence from the Twin Cities (PDF)
Shannon Golden, Yasin Garad, Elizabeth Heger Boyle
In 2004, in the pages of this journal, Hussein Samatar put a human face on the difficulties that challenge Somali business owners in Minnesota. He also provided an overview of the impressive accomplishments of these industrious individuals. Here, we identify what has improved since 2004 and the challenges that remain. To do this, we use findings from a survey of 135 Twin City business owners (90 Somali owners and 45 non-Somali owners). We find that Somali business owners are optimistic about their longterm success. They tend to have plenty of informal experience with entrepreneurship through their parents, other family members, or friends. Somali business owners, especially those with street-front businesses, now talk regularly to each other, and this can provide another source of informal learning. In addition to the benefits of knowledge picked up informally through family or other business owners, Somali entrepreneurs appear to make excellent use of formal training (if they have had it) in their business practices. Less encouraging, we find that several problems identified by Samatar persist. Few Somali business owners have written business plans. In our sample, less than half of the Somali entrepreneurs in suuqs (malls) had bank accounts for their businesses. The percentage of Somali entrepreneurs who borrow from formal financial institutions, such as banks, is miniscul
Haweenku Wa Garab (Women are a Force): Women and the Somali Nationalist Movement, 1943-1960 (PDF)
Safia Aidid
In 1972, the Supreme Revolutionary Council of General Mohammed Siad Barre passed a resolution to erect several monuments in Mogadishu in honour of symbolic nationalist figures and events in Somali history. 2 These monuments would come to include Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, leader of a twenty-three year anti-colonial war (1898–1921) against the imposition of British rule; Daljirka Dahsoon (The Unknown Soldier), representing all Somali lives lost in battle; and Hawa Osman Taako, a woman killed at the time of a 1948 Somali Youth League organized demonstration that was violently disrupted by proItalian groups. 3 At an intersection, home to the National Theatre and in the heart of the capital, Hawa Taako’s concrete figure, sword and stone in hand, is permanently inscribed in the collective historical consciousness of Somalis. Historians of public memory have argued that the construction of public memorials like that of Hawa Taako often operate politically, acting as registers of present and future political concerns, and rhetorically shaping the shared values and identity of the nation. 4 The monument embodies a set of meanings and significations in its negotiation of national identities and narratives, not least of which are the ones defining the social and political positionality of those responsible for its construction. 5 The Somali Youth League (SYL) was among the political parties and social organizations dissolved when Siad Barre came to power in October 1969, yet the death of Hawa Taako is appropriated and allegorized as a national symbol of resistance, devoid of its true political meaning and agency.
Laura Hammond
One day, while drinking tea with Suad and her children in their small apartment in Lewiston, Maine, I asked her whether she felt pressure from her relatives in Somalia to send money. She chuckled sadly and said, “People say that there is a pill called ga’alqois, which means [literally] that which distances one from their relatives and close friends. Before you leave, you promise your friends and relatives that you will not take the pill and will not forget to send them money. Then when you arrive in the United States you see how hard life is here and you don’t send any money. People say that you must have taken the ga’alqois pill.” The “Catch-22” position that Suad describes here—of feeling pressure to send money to her family in Somalia and her feeling that they do not understand how difficult her life is in the United States or how little she can afford to send this money—is a recurrent topic of conversation, source of anxiety, and motivating force in many migrant communities throughout North America and Europe. Yet in the literature on remittances, the perspective of the sender has not received much attention. The lion’s share of the burgeoning literature on remittances focuses on the size of remittance flows and its impact on recipient household, community, national, and regional economies.
A Slow Moving Night (Short Story) (PDF)
Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
On the high mountainous land of the Sanaag region in Somalia, jiilaal season showed neither compassion nor mercy on its inhabitants. The trees stood still, the boughs refused to sway, even slightly, and the reflection of the sun’s rays shone on rocks with flat surfaces. A herd of sheep and goats moved about in a mad fury to seek sanctuary under the shade of a tree, which had shrunk within the past two hours or so, from a sizable length able to provide shelter to a negligible hue. Once they got under the tree and into the shade, the sheep huddled in concert. Some sat, some remained standing, and some hid their heads under the others, but the goats butted one another, competing for better positions. The day slowly progressed beyond the zenith, yet the heat persisted, driving the herd into a delirious lust for water. Ewe (she-the-sheep) finally had enough of it. Suddenly she broke out of the herd’s temporary huddle and moved on, westward. One by one, the rest of her family flocked behind. The goats, too, left the shade, but instead of trailing the sheep chose to scatter about, scrub grazing. Thousands of years of experience, passed down from generation to generation, had taught herdsmen to recognize the behaviors of certain animals. Thus it was quite apparent to both of us (my younger brother and I) that the sheep were on the move in search of water. It was our job, however, to keep them away from drinking, regardless. The reasons were many, but chief amongst them was that, in the jiilaal (winter) season, as well as xagaa (summer), nomads in Somalia water-feed their livestock in a managed manner.
Sheikh Ali Hussein (PDF)
Joe Darwin Palmer
East Africa: In 1966, the U.S. Agency for International Development built a residential school for the training of teachers in Somalia near the city of Afgoi on the Shabelle River, a dozen miles inland from the capital city, Mogadishu. The construction contract was given to a company in Nairobi, Kenya. There were no construction companies in Somalia or paved roads between Kenya and neighboring Somalia. Besides, anything of value would have already been stolen at gunpoint by bandits (shifta) so the necessary equipment-trucks, a bulldozer, a pavement roller, transmission wires, concrete poles, generators, stationary diesel engines, asphalt, toilets, plumbing, and so on-were sent by sea from Mombasa. There were no stores in Somalia: no grocery, no hardware, no McDonald's. There in the bush, the Americans had Kenyans build single-story dormitories, residences, and classrooms for two hundred students and their teachers. The mosque and minaret stood higher than the bush and the campus buildings, as high as the water tower, but nothing could be seen at a distance because of the acacia trees and desert scrub that grow everywhere on the savannah plain. In the center of the complex, the first mosque and minaret ever built by the United States government loomed over the dining hall and kitchen. The students' stone dormitory and their classrooms stood alongside the dining hall. At one edge of the campus, in the bush, stood the water tower and the electricity generator with its putt-putt diesel engines in the powerhouse, as well as the "houses," stone huts with tin roofs where the native staff and teachers lived.