Letter from Mogadishu

On the 5^th of September, 2012, I packed up my bags and moved back to Mogadishu! I know, sounds mad to choose to live in a city known as the “most dangerous city in the world” when I have options. But you see, I am absolutely tired of visas, immigration offices, work permits, deportation threats, sneaking out of countries coz my visa expired, and learning new languages. I will rather dust off my Somali than improve my Portuguese or Swahili, I figured.

Secondly, if Somalis in the Diaspora, who are known as “fadhi ku dirir”, or “armchair activists”, and I was one of them for years, don’t move back to Somalia, we will have crazies, extremists, former government-hand-out-dependents, anyone who couldn’t find a job in the West, run this beautiful country to the ground. We literally have to vote with our feet and come back in droves to reclaim Somalia.

This is my second time ‘moving back home’ but this time I wasn’t running away from London’s depressing gray sky. I packed up my bags in London in 2004 and said “I am going back home”, showed up in Mogadishu and 4 months later, I was back in London, with the same “I am going back home” slogan! For some odd reasons, I have always felt a pull to this city even though I don’t have a lot of positive memories from when I lived here years ago. That decision was speeded up when I worked on the 2012 Presidential campaign for a former boss and good friend. I was supposed to help him only for a week in the first week of August, but I ended up staying for the whole campaign period. Looking back, I think it was a blessing in disguise to have stayed, at the cost of getting into a difficult situation with my then bosses at the NGO I was working for.

I have landed at the deep end of Somali politics and at a crossroads for this country’s bloody history of the past 22 years. I have met few of the presidential candidates, so many of the MPs (who were electing the President), traditional elders, women, youth, and lots of whealer dealers. The month and half of the campaign taught me more about the state of Somali politics than an MSc in politics did! It was raw politics, so much clan dealings and negotiations that in the end, didn’t get the candidate I was campaigning for elected despite so many promises and optimism! I was amazed by the sheer lies of the many MPs who spent a lot of time with him and promised they would vote for him. In the end, only 8 gave him their votes compared to nearly 40 of what we thought were solid voters for our camp for the first round (there were 3 rounds)! This will take time to digest and learn from, because there might be good reasons for this kind of brave lies and promises which I can’t understand at the moment.

Despite the loss in our camp, we have gained a lot from this election. My first support was for the candidate I was working for to win but when he lost, I was so glad to see a fresh newcomer defeating the overly confident, brutal and loaded former President lose! I chose not to be at the election venue that day, thank goodness! But I was glued to the TV and on social media watching the reactions of Somalis in the Diaspora. It was an emotional day and there was so much buzz on social media that Somalia became a trending topic on Twitter! During the day, I went for a drive, to get away from the tension of everyone gathering around the TV to watch the process. I knew the real election would be delayed so I went to the beach with some friends and driving thorough Mogadishu was like a ghost town! OK, so the image most people have of Mogadishu is that it is a ghost town with nutcase suicide bombers, which is not all accurate. Part of the city is very busy and you won’t even feel you are in an unstable city, with lots of traffic, noisy traders, police every corner. The other part, lives up to the reputation. Ghostly, ruined buildings, empty of its former residents and just a stark reminder of how far this civil war has gone.  

I got back in time for the elections and it was one of the most stressful experiences as emotions ran high both on TV and on social media. Our candidate sadly lost on the first round but the battle to remove the incumbent President was more agonizing and longer process. At the first round, he had the most votes, 64 out of 220 votes and 23 candidates! I thought that was it, it was over for Somalia’s chance to turn a new page. I kept calling a friend inside the election venue who usually has a good idea of how things work in Somali politics. He reassured me that since the second runner up has only 4 votes less, it is over for the President! I turned to social media to see if anyone agreed, but no, the mood was one of defeat.

You could hear the noisy shock of the nearly 2,000 people crammed in the election venue, thorough the live TV coverage. The minute the results were announced, almost everyone, apart from the President, were on their feet. Presumably, those with the lowest votes just got annoyed and left to evaluate the financial damage and others had to reshuffle their allegiance and do last minute campaign to either boost the President’s votes or make sure they give all their support to the runner up. The first round was supposed to produce 4 candidates with the most votes among the 23, second round was supposed to eliminate 2 of the 4 and last round to produce a President. However, the first round produced such an unexpected and imbalanced numbers that it upset the neat plan, with 64 for the incumbent President, 60 for a totally fresh face, Hassan Sheikh, 37 for the incumbent Prime Minister and 20 votes for a businessman newcomer!

­To make the situation even more tense, and maybe because they realized they had no chance and now the real fight was to block the incumbent President from staying in office, both 3^rd and 4^th runner ups decided to throw in their towels! They both also gave short speeches calling for MPs to support ‘change for Somalia’, which we all understood to mean vote the new guy in.

Few hours later the result was announced, after a lot of behind the scene last minute desperate moves by both sides, incumbent President apparently giving cash out to MPs to buy their votes, from the tinted-windowed black landcruiser parked in the courtyard of the election venue. There are also reports for the Mogadishu mayor lobbying for him by asking the candidates with the least votes to give the President their support! The mayor is supposed to stay out of this, or at least not be so blatant about it, it shows the over-confidence of all those in his camp about his re-election!

The second round counting was such a surprise I couldn’t believe it, I don’t think anyone could. The count was like, for every 20 votes, 3 went to the President and the rest to this totally fresh new face to politics! If there was a written profile of the new guy online, google search would have probably crashed that evening! Everyone was on social media and on the phone asking, who the hell is this guy? How did he pay (no other way can he defeat Shariif, the deep pocketed) to get these many votes? The answer is probably, a lot of Arab money and he was lucky enough to be in a place where he was competing against a guy who symbolized what Somalis are trying to bury and leave behind, a never ending transitional government and a deeply corrupt one at that. Talk about being at the right place at the right time, with a bit of work of course, to get 60 votes in the first place, takes a lot.

This was a massive achievement. Somalia has been under a limbo “transitional government” since 2006 and we needed to move on to a more permanent and stable government.

Apart from the hope raised by these changes, the people I have met during the campaign, especially younger Somalis with a vision of future Somalia I could relate to, has ignited a fire in me to want to return and contribute somehow. This is a place I dreamt of returning and living peacefully, under a functioning government. This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I just had to make the move and think later, about how to survive in a city where you need a bodyguard to move around. Apart from the fact that it is very expensive, it is also not how I ever imagined living. And how do you make a decent living in Mogadishu if you want to stay away from politics and don’t have money for business? Too many questions and I would have easily backed out, the solution was in dive first and think later, as usual.

 

Donkeys, the last ethnic minority in Mogadishu.

I get inspiration and energy from Mogadishu markets. They are so alive with activity, noisy traders, heavy traffic, teaboys hassling. For the time you are there, it is like a time machine, you will totally forget you are in a city that hasn’t fully returned to normality. I love the traders optimism, I suppose they have no choice. People have to make a living. But still, they could trade in a low-key market with less chance of suicide bombers hiding in the massive and disorientated crowd. Majority of the traders show up in their thousands very early in the morning, 6 days a week, hoping to make enough to cover their basic needs. Some tho, make more in a month than most of us with useless university degrees make in a lifetime! It is a fascinating place to get a glimpse of a resilient free market that has survived 22 years of civil war, countless governments, warlords and extremist groups. A reminder that all this nation needs is an effective but minimal government to facilitate business and it will fly.

Walking through the market, a friend explained that when I Al-Shabaab controlled the city, they cleaned up the chaotic streets of the market and created a working system. They have ordered all the shop owners who used to ‘rent out’ the space outside their shops to petty traders to stop renting out an illegal space that is supposed to be a public street. They ordered the removal of all the shacks blocking the streets and now you can comfortably drive or walk thorough Bakara market.

People are selling everything you can imagine, from construction material, cheap made-in-China nylon clothes unsuitable for the Mogadishu heat, to university degrees! Yup, you can have a degree from “Oxford University” conveniently made in Bakara for few dollars. No need to pay a fortune and spend years stressing in the real Oxford Uni. I passed up the opportunity today coz I couldn’t think of a subject I would like to have an Masters degree on. I will think hard and go back to get me a home-made MA in minutes.

I spent the last month and a half in a Presidential campaign, meeting crooks, so called elders, wannabe ‘Ministers’ with absolutely no clue how government is run. It was an eye-opening experience but also depressing to get a glimpse of our future misleaders. A day spent in Bakara market gave me hope that we are not doomed. With this level of hyper active entrepreneurship, surely, we can’t totally go wrong? At least the ratio of honest hard working folks to the get-rich-fast from politics fat men gives me a bit of hope.

The most curious thing about Mogadishu markets is the visible presence of female traders at every level! How can we have a culture where women are equal, if not more dominant in trade, to men in business but totally invisible in politics?! Some of these women must be wealthy and influential, how come they are not trying to push for their agenda in politics and support women candidates or political organisations? I have so many questions and I can’t wait to meet women traders to ask them directly.

Of course, not everything I have seen in Bakara was good. I find it baffling that some male traders are rude, call you names, shout at you and expect you to buy something from them! WTF moment, lots of moments, actually. Men shouted at me “naa hooy, naa hooy, kaaley oo wax naga gado!”, which loosely translates to “hey you, hey you, come and buy something from us!”. In Somali it sounds a lot more aggressive. What do u say to that? “Mofo, thanks, but no thanks?” Lol. You will def scream "Dayuusbaro" and probably get shot. You better ignore them and walk on.

The other totally depressing thing you see everywhere in the market is the mistreatment of donkeys! They are overloaded, beaten, harassed, and looking malnourished. These animals must be the ultimate slaves for humans, how horrible for them. I am told since there is no enough food and they won’t work properly if they are not fed well, they are given drugs! Mixture of qaat leftovers and pills!! No wonder they look so skinny and permanently hangover, poor things! I won’t be surprised if one day these 4^th class slave citizens of Mogadishu go on rampage and take over the city. That day, I will arm them and help them find an escape root, eff this inhumane treatment. If you ever think you were born in the wrong clan and get treated like shit, think of these guys. They don’t even have a clan elder to speak on their behalf.

Characters I met in Mogadishu during the election

The pretentious academic who demands an award for having done a BA! The former activist and current mayor with serious corruption allegations. The self-appointed campaigner/hustler who only shows up to ask for expenses reimbursed. The pissed off warlord denied an MP seat who wants to shoot the whole vetting committee. The silently strong female MP vetting committee member determined to do her job at any cost. The red-bearded, softly spoken elderly man on a mission to protect the status quo. The irritated woman blocked by her sub-clan 'traditional elders' from MP nomination. The bodyguard asleep in the day, awake at night chewing khat but somehow knows everything that happened while he was asleep. The cook exhausted from feeding an army of campaigners, politicians, wanderers. The beautiful mysterious woman always sharply dressed, you can smell her perfume from a mile at every meeting but says nothing. The handsome young man, leader of university students and youth, well spoken and always in the same black suit and blue shirt. 

Goat bra and a case of mistaken identity

Story goes that in a small town in south Somalia (no GPS coordinates provided), paranoid American soldiers (don't ask what they were doing in the middle of a small Somali town, I can understand the paranoia, tho), came across a goat in a bra, similar to the one bellow.  

They have heard stories of Al-messed-up-Shabaab planting bombs in goat bras and sending them to compounds to blow up some shit. These Americans weren’t gonna take a chance, so they blew  up the poor goat’s brains before it exploded. However, upon a closer examination of the fancy looking pink bra, they realized it was a case of a mistaken identity. This was not an Al-Shabaab employed goat and was probably just heading to the mosque for Friday prayers, poor thing.

According to Somali customary law, you kill a living thing you have to pay a price. Unless you are a dog, in which case, no clan member can claim a price on your worthless little life. An elderly lady claimed the goat was hers and that the Americans should pay for having killed an innocent goat. The price normally depends on animal’s age, size and if it is a female, you pay more coz u didn’t just take a goat but also some fresh milk for breakfast. The only time in Somalia where females are worth more than males, welcome to goatcountry.

There are goats everywhere and most roam the streets freely but hit a random one and the owner magically appears with a story of how talented that goat was and why you should pay for a maximum penalty: it spoke 3 languages, had a PhD in conflict resolution, produced medicinal milk that cured aids, shat gold and ran 3 London marathons for charity. That was not an ordinary goat, goddamn it.

In the case of the tragic mistaken identity involving the Americans, the elderly lady was honest and didn’t claim her goat had any of the supergoat qualities. She just told the paranoid killers with automatic guns that they should pay, without specifying the amount. The Americans didn’t want to add complication to the ugly dead-goat-scene so they quickly paid her 200USD. The average goat price is around 25USD, easiest 175USD profit ever made! The owner was thrilled and instantly forgot about her dead goat. So thrilled in fact, she asked the goat murderers if they could kill the remaining 60 of her goats and pay 200USD each!

Senseless and violent death to one of the kindest young man I know!

Mohamed Said Maweel Duale, early 20s, one of the nicest young men I have met in Hargeisa, was violently killed yesterday!!

 Always smiling, very polite and helpful. I met him when I took up my current job and had to travel to El-Afweyn to implement an SMS feedback system. We took 2 cars and he was driving the second car with some security people. We drove for 2 days, spending the night in Burao.

Whenever we took a break from driving, he would come over to our car, chat with us, joke and make us laugh. When we got to El-Afweyn, he would spend the evenings with us at the compound, even tho his family is from there and he could have left after work. He would stay till late, always laughing and joking. He was an easy and pleasant person to hangout with. He was a young good soul and a hardworking. He started working as a freelance driver for NGOS since his late teens, bright and focused beyond his years. Unlike most people I met during the trip, he never interfered in my personal business or asked what clan I was. Instead, he gave me his personal mobile number, said he is native of the city and to call him if I needed anything.

Mohamed was working in the Ainabo district office of the DRC. At 5pm yesterday, he was asked to drive to a place not far from the office to help another colleague whose car got stuck. About 25km outside Ainabo, a place called Goosoweyne, where the roads to El-Afweyn, Ainabo and Burao meet, he was ambushed by pro-Khatumo state militias. We don’t know more details beyond the fact that he was violently killed, along with a friend he was driving with, his car and personal belonging taken by the militias. When staff at the Ainabo office got worried because he was late, they called his phone. To their shock, the militias picked it up and told them they have killed Mohamed and his friend and said where they dumped their bodies!!!

This looks like a random and horrible crime against 2 innocent, kind and very young men, all because of political division between Somaliland and Khatumo state. Doesn’t make sense and am heartbroken for him, his friend and their families.

To the supporters of Khatumo state, I don’t want to talk to you all as criminals, you are not. I just want you to know about Mohamed and his friend, the most peaceful person I have met here and won’t harm a fly. He was did not represent Somaliland. These were young Somali boys killed by other young Somali boys and you might unknowingly be funding or supporting the violence from the safety of your homes in the Diaspora. I promise to find you Mohamed’s photo and post it here, you have to know about him, he was a good soul.


I am not writing this to incite hatred or violence against Khatumo State supporters or add to the already dangerous tension between Khatumo State and Somaliland. I am writing because this regional violence has finally claimed someone I know, liked, and respected. And I know he is not the first or the last victim. Claim your rights to political independence or separation but what rights can you claim if you are taking innocent lives in the name of a struggle for freedom? This applies not only to Khatumo State, but to Somaliland, Puntland and rest of Somalia.

Without fair and transparent recruitment system, poverty is here to stay.

A colleague walked into office this morning and asked if I could help him be part of an interview panel for Management Information System's assistant position. I really didn't have time and don't particularly like interviewing. He is a nice guy so I felt bad to say no and went along. 

There were 4 candidates and the first one was so bad, I instantly regretted my decision. Shud have told him I was too busy and couldn't help, lol. The poor candidate was clueless and I don't know how he even got shortlisted to 4 out of 87 applicants! 2nd candidate walked in confidently, better. He was much better but he struggled to understand the questions in English, we had to repeat few times. When he got the question right, he gave very good answers. I thought maybe he was nervous. 

Candidate 3 was a female. I was excited she made it to the shortlist and looked forward to meet her. She walked in painfully shy and inaudibly greeted us. I thought, shit! Shy like that she might not make it to the end of the short interview without bolting out of the door. But she totally surprised me! She stayed very calm, focused and answered the questions with confidence and precision. I was like, damn! She knew her stuff, studied ICT at Hargeisa University (had no idea they had an ICT department, am going to visit), and then worked for a local NGO as their website manager. 

By the time the 4th candidate showed up, I was already sold and found it challenging to focus. I had to work hard to be fair to him and to make sure if he was better, not to miss out. He was actually good. Dressed sharp, spoke well, and gave good answers, but not a competition to the previous candidate.

At the end of each interview, the candidate is asked routine questions like when they can start, if they were selected for the job, and what was their salary expectation. To my amusement, all the male candidates, who performed worst than the girl, asked for a lot higher than she had! She was shy and asked few hundred USD lower than her pay grade! I found this very interesting and maybe a reflection of women's either low self-esteem or expectations. 

As I write this, my colleague tells me the girl got the job! Am super excited for her and even tho this is a short contract, I hope she goes as far as I think she can. 

I am excited about her win because I am constantly meeting incompetent Somalis pushed into jobs they can't perform thru clan/family or other connections. It is rare to find fair job selection process where people can compete openly and fairly and where the right candidate, despite their clan, gender, or political alliance, can make it thru the selection criteria based solely on their performance. Without a transparent, fair and open recruitment system, we are going to have key government and private sector positions filled with incompetent but well connected people who are obstacle to not only our basic development but this regions massive potential. 

From camels to weird spaceship travel, Somalis experience a culture shock.

Turns out it is not a one off incident but more common than I would like to admit. I am recognising the patterns. It starts with a clumsy security check procedure with a group of disorientated Somali travelers unable to follow basic instructions. The graceful elderly man with henna-red beard and his young male companion look composed till they had to go through the scanner and soon as they hear the beeb sound, indicating they have something metallic on them, they totally lose their cool and hurriedly remove items from their pockets, remove their shoes and belts and throw them at the table. I watch in a mixture of pity and amusement. The young man leaves the elderly man looking helpless and fends for himself. I was surprised by this as it is contrary to ‘Somali culture’, that loaded word that no one knows what it means anymore, for a more able-bodied to leave an elderly man behind.

I patiently wait for this chaotic scene to pass, go through the security check and proceed to check in. I am becoming familiar with the Somali nomadic traveler’s scenario. It is like people uprooted from their camel-travel planet and implanted in a concrete jungle with strange culture of filling forms, walking through scanners and boarding in an alien spaceship. Most of the Somali travelers I encounter at airports, especially between Kenya and Somalia, seem to be totally confused about air traveling and I am baffled by how majority of these people manage to own a passport, afford a ticket and figure out how to get to the airport, in the first place!

The check-in desk was closed so I decided to take advantage of the time and fill in the departure card. Soon as I arrived at the desk to pick up the card, I was approached by about 6 Somalis, all apart from one are deportees! They have never gone through an airport and don’t read or write. I have no choice but to fill the forms for them. First in line is this young woman who seems either super stressed or high on khat. She is unable to stand still, fidgeting with her phone and spoke to me in a broken English. I reply in Somali and she is surprised. It must be my very short hair and the way I am dressing. I fill her form, ask few questions, like why does she have a brand new Somali passport issued in Nairobi with no Kenyan visa? I tell her she better think of an answer before the immigration officer asks. The woman is so disorientated I am wondering if she has been yanked out of her hiding place this morning by immigration officers for deportation. I complete the form and ask her to sign. She refuses! She holds on to the form and looks at it seriously like I am asking her to sign her life away. A young man behind her urges her to sign and tells her that there are others in line waiting to be helped. She asks me what exactly she should sign as! I tell her to replicate the signature on her passport. Next was the elderly henna-beard man from the security check. He is polite and says he needs help filling the form because he can’t see well.  To my surprise, he has an American passport and he is dressed well. Am thinking, couldn’t he afford glasses and suspected he was also illiterate. I complete his form and he asks me to kindly also help the young man traveling with him. The young man hands me a blue paper with deportation orders issued by the Somali ‘embassy’ in Nairobi. I ask him for a passport or travel document to fill the departure card. The elderly man answers that he doesn’t have a passport and only has that “Go home”, blue letter. It was the same for the other 4 people waiting to be helped. They are being deported to Somalia and they are destined for Galkayo. I complete filling their cards, they say their thank yous and head for the immigration departure desk.

When I come back from checking-in my bags I find the disorientated young woman at the immigration being refused exit! She asks me to help her translate to the immigration officer why she has a blank new passport and how she got to Kenya in the first place. As I walk to the desk, another immigration officer in the next booth shouts out at me and asks where I am going. I politely tell her I am trying to help someone with translation but she doesn’t listen and repeated her question and asked why I am joining a full queue when she can help. I am thinking this is effing annoying and not what I want to deal with at 4am. She let’s me go soon as she realizes I can explain myself. In contrast, the officer I am translating for is very calm and polite. He must see this often enough to write a book about.  He asks reasonable questions and she provides either untrue or confused answers, which basically boiled down to her having entered the country illegally. I translate literally and in the middle of this interrogation, she kept answering her phone and spoke to some concerned family members. Both I and the officer got annoyed and I told her in Somali that she is acting both rude and suspicious and to put her phone away if she wants help. The officer asked who she is speaking to on the phone and why is her phone ringing non-stop. I then had to explain to him that she is harmless, just totally confused and to please just let her go home. Thank goodness he agrees. I wanted that young woman back to a place where she knows what the hell is going on. I don’t get it, do people like her have a family or friends to tell her to stay put where she is comfortable and safe. I am guessing she had plans to make it to Europe or North America. There is a side of me that thinks, who the hell am I to prevent her from realising her dream, if she has some beyond landing in a frozenland with gold pavements. It is a depressing situation to witness but am glad at least she boarded the flight and heading back home.

While we were in the middle of this confusion, I noticed few other side events. Like how the Sudanese man with the UN passport who looks like Somali got caught up in this and the rude female immigration officer who shouted at me started interrogating him also, lol. You are doomed if you look like a Somali at Jomo Kenyatta airport, you get some annoyed officers to take out their frustration out on you and honestly, I am slowly starting to empathise with Kenyan immigration officers. I found some of these scenes annoying even as a fellow Somali. I was losing my patience with some of the travelers, everyone needs help at every stage, it seemed. Start the change now and invest in basic literacy class. If you want travel in search of better opportunities and quality of life, by all means go ahead and do it. But for heaven’s sakes, teach yourself to read and write so you can fill your own forms at airports. You will also be able to read documents determining your life.  I want to scream about this but it is 4am and I am not fully awake to be preaching.

What I will do is write to the Somali government, if I can find the right department or person. Minister of Foreign Affairs, maybe? This is the responsibility of the Somali government and I think they should employ someone at all major Kenyan airports, especially in Wajir and Nairobi, to provide information, support and advocacy for Somali travelers. There are flights from Nairobi to all the major Somali cities at least 3 times a week and I can’t imagine how many people are stranded, end up in the wrong cities or denied entry/exit due to language and communication barriers.  

3 weeks prior, I arrived from Mogadishu to find 4 women and an elderly man in desperate need and one of the women was holding a brand new Kenyan passport but she didn’t speak a word of Swahili and was in the visa queue until I noticed her passport and asked why she is trying to get a visa for her own country. She laughed shyly and said it is her first time traveling. All of them couldn’t read or write and one of the ladies was in Nairobi to buy stuff for her business back in Mogadishu! Clearly, Somalia needs a massive literacy and numeracy campaign. How are people to make an informed decision if they are struggling with the basics? It is worrying.