CIAO DATE: 06/2011
Volume: 9, Issue: 0
June 2009
Cover and Verso (PDF)
Table of Contents (PDF)
Contributors (PDF)
Editor's Note (PDF)
Ahmed I. Samatar
About Bildhaan (PDF)
A Buraanbur (PDF)
Caasho Sheekh Maxamed
Illaahow boqorow baryadaada ha igu qadin Allow samadaada oo igu beeg ballaqan Allow awoodd buuxda oo aan baaqan lagu aqbalo Allow buuggaaga sharafta leh bog lagaga qoro Allow u bayaami sida waa baryiyo dharaar
Lee Cassanelli
This article is a preliminary and exploratory examination of three distinct traditions of intellectual production in Somalia: the Western secular tradition, the Islamic religious tradition, and the indigenous Somali poetic tradition. Historians who seek to reconstruct Somalia’s past have found valuable knowledge in the products of each of these traditions, and analysts of contemporary Somalia have argued that Somalis must draw on the wisdom and experience of all three if they hope to escape from their current national crisis. Unfortunately, most scholars of Somali Studies (myself included) draw their assumptions, pursue evidence, and conduct their research from within only one, or at most two, of these intellectual traditions. As a consequence, our understanding of Somalia has been limited by the fragmentation of knowledge as it is produced, transmitted, and received by successive generations of Somali Studies students and scholars.
Battling on Two Fronts: Introducing Maryan Omar Ali (PDF)
Ahmed I. Samatar
It is a bit muggy but still a gorgeous and clear morning in Toronto, Canada, in early August 2008. A brief and comfortable train ride from the center of the city, one of North America’s most cosmopolitan urban concentrations, delivers me to the stop where Ms. Maryan Omar Ali, Aryette, was waiting for me to visit with her. After a few minutes of looking for each other among a throng of people in the arrival area—I have not seen Maryan for more than 17 years—we greeted warmly and then left the station together for the very short bus ride to the large building where her residence is located. Maryan, despite the passage of so many years and some testing health-related experiences, looked buoyant, tranquil, and eager to show me around and then engage in a thorough conversation about her background, passion for Somali literary aesthetics and production, and developments in her life in recent years. We arrived at her compact and neat apartment. Her mother, Sahra Omer Goud, whose strong and kind voice I have heard over the telephone on numerous times, was at the door with a genuine welcoming smile. Once I entered, I could smell the appetizing aroma of the legendary Zeila cooking—perhaps the most sophisticated culinary tradition in all of the Somali-inhabited territories in the Horn of Africa. As is customary, we took off our shoes and walked into the living room. Before we sat, I requested to go to the bathroom to put on a comfortable macawis that I had brought with me for the occasion. We washed our hands and began to devour a tasty lunch of spiced and grilled wild-caught salmon, delicious rice cooked with cloves, cumin, and cardamom and flavored with a dash of raisins, followed by lots of fresh salad and fruits.
The North-South Divide in Everyday Life: Londoners Sending Money "Home" (PDF)
Anna Lindley
These views neatly capture the ambiguous feelings that soon become apparent when asking Somali Londoners about sending money “home.” A relative minority of the Somali regions’ so-called “missing million” have settled in the Global North, but they provide the bulk of remittance funds. A key node in global trade and finance, London has also witnessed “globalisation from below”: by the beginning of the 21st century over one third of the workforce was born abroad.2 While 39 Bildhaan Vol. 9 40 the dynamics and impact of immigration and asylum in London are relatively well-recorded and well-researched, the fact that London is also a key source of remittances for poorer countries has only come to the attention of researchers and policymakers in recent years. The World Bank in 2008 suggested that migrants in the U.K. sent official remittances amounting to some $4.5 billion in 2006. The “new economics of labour migration” represents the only systematic and detailed attempt to theorise remittance behaviour. It contends that migration is a household-level response to constraints in local credit, insurance, or other markets.3 Deciding whether a household member should migrate involved weighing the costs of migration (such as foregone family agricultural labour and travel expenses) against the anticipated benefits (such as remittances). In this way, remittances became central to migration decisions, reflecting an implicit contract between the migrant and those left behind—underwritten by altruism, self-interest, mutual insurance motives, or loan repayment obligations. This model fits the realities of voluntary, temporary, most likely male migration from cohesive households in rural Mexican communities, which have provided much of the empirical material for theory-making particularly well, but seems to have less purchase in other contexts.4
Faithless Power as Fratricide: Is there an Alternative in Somalia?21 (PDF)
Abdi Ismael Samatar
Mohamed Suliman’s lovely and famous song for the Eid is not only suggestive of the joys of the past but reminisces about the great values that the Somali people shared and which served them well during testing times of yesteryear. Here is a line from the song: Hadba kii arrin keena Ka kalee aqbalaaya Ilaahii ina siiyay isagaa ku abaal leh Simply put, this line and the spirit of the whole song echo Somalis’ traditional acumen to generate timely ideas and the competence to listen and heed productive compromises. These attributes that nurtured their collective best interests have been on the wane for three decades and are now in peril or even to perish for eternity. As a result, much despair is visible in the Somali landscape. Yet it is worth remembering that there is no inevitability about the extension of the present despondency into the future as long as civic-minded Somalis are resolute and remain wedded to their compatriots’ well-being and cardinal values.
Ihotu Ali
In October 2002, a once-thriving economy and Franco-American town was in decline. Lewiston, Maine was already hurting after its textile mills closed and thousands of residents lost their jobs; however, a sudIhotu Ali 83 den influx of Somali refugees arguably had an even greater impact. Somali refugees had come to Lewiston, either directly from refugee camps or from “war zones” in inner-city Atlanta, to escape violence and settle in a town where housing was affordable and it “seemed like a good place to bring up kids.”1 Their children attracted federal dollars into Lewiston schools and, with local university degrees, many Somalis worked in Lewiston hospitals and opened small businesses to employ one another. However, when crime and welfare caseloads began to rise, the Lewiston Mayor wrote a public letter urging Somalis not to invite any more relatives to Lewiston. He claimed the city needed “breathing room” and was “maxed out, financially, physically, and emotionally.”2 Hollywood’s release of Black Hawk Down incited the issue, intensifying the memory of soldiers killed in Somalia, and native Lewistonians angrily protested in the streets.3 City officials were able to avert a major conflict, however many other cities across the United States have felt similar tensions when newcomers suddenly enter a community. In Lewiston and beyond, resettled Somalis face accusations of having terrorist connections, unfairly receiving public assistance, or not deserving the full rights accorded to other Americans. It was not always this way. Over the past decade, the United States has increasingly restricted the social and civil rights of non-citizens by limiting their access to public assistance, cutting funding for social services, questioning their loyalty to the nation, and deporting them. In this country of immigrants, where immigration is perpetually controversial, it seems the pendulum of public approval has swung away from today’s newcomers. Perhaps Somali refugees entered the U.S. at an inopportune moment. Since the 1990s they have arrived in the thousands, many as penniless refugees in the midst of an anti-welfare movement, as xijaab-wearing4 Muslims in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and as taxi drivers and hotel staff in a period of competition over low-wage and “illegal” labor. Somalis defy America’s social categories as black, Muslim, and Arab-African immigrants. Many of their ways of cooking, family structures, religious duties, and communication styles challenge U.S. cultural norms, workweek schedules, and apartment occupancy rules. This academic project will analyze the cyclical changes in U.S. support for immigrants and refugees. It will focus on Somalis in Minnesota as a case through which to view the health of the nation: Have we maintained our values of tolerance and respect for diversity? Are Bildhaan Vol. 9 84 we still willing and able to integrate newcomers into a multicultural United States?
Yusuf Sheikh Omar
This brief study explores Somali youth experiences and perceptions of integration experiences in the school context, comparing the differences and similarities of those who live in Melbourne and Minneapolis. Additionally, the study touches on parents’ experiences with their children’s attitudes in the new environment. Based on interviews with Somali youth from the cities of Melbourne, Australia, and Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States, they are generally aspirants to, and positive about, the current and future educational opportunities they have in Australia and the United States. Those from Minneapolis tend to articulate these opportunities more clearly. Youth and parents agree that Somali girls perform better at school compared to boys. Students’ preferences for post-secondary programs are varied but the most popular reason is to help Somali people who are in difficult situations because of the protracted civil war. Both student groups from Melbourne and Minneapolis mentioned several educational challenges. Girls believe that parents pushing their daughters to marry early is the biggest obstacle that may prevent them from continuing further studies and future professional work. Whether they are in or out of school, most Somali students who participated in this study are friends primarily with other Somali youth because of cultural and religious affinities, with the added benefit of pleasing their parents. Finally, with the exception of two girls, Somali youth in this study feel they have been fairly treated by their teachers.
Intellectualism amid Ethnocentrism: Mukthar and the 4.5 Factor (PDF)
Mohamed A. Eno, Omar A. Eno
The prolonged, two-year reconciliation conference held in Kenya and the resulting interim administration, implemented under the dominant tutelage of Ethiopia, are generally considered to have failed to live up to the expectations of the Somali people. The state structure was built on the foundation of a clan power segregation system known as 4.5 (four-point-five). This means the separation of the Somali people into four clans that are equal and, as such, pure Somali, against an amalgamation of various clans and communities that are unequal to the first group and, hence, considered “impure” or less Somali. The lumping together of all the latter communities is regarded as equivalent only to a half of the share of a clan. In spite of the inherent segregation and marginalization, some scholars of Somali society, like historian Mohamed H. Mukhtar, believe that the apartheid-like 4.5 system is an “important accomplishment.”1 In a book chapter titled “Somali Reconciliation Conferences: The Unbeaten Track,” Mukhtar chronicles this episode as one of various “success stories” 2 that have emerged from the Sodere factional meeting of 1997. As the historian posits it, this could be called an achievement, particularly considering the fact that “for the first time Somali clans agreed about their relative size, power and territorial rights.”3