Good article from the guardian. Most don't realise the connection between statelessness and somali state of mind. But I am glad some folks are started to take this connection abit more seriously.
I remember posting a note about statelessness and state minds to the UK Somali Student Association yahoo group. Below is an excerpt:
Never have I had enough of time and concentration to compare us with them. Them being those lucky ones with a dedicated, though sometimes not so dedicated state, that serves them, works for them and caters for their need; from sense of a nation-hood and a sense of
belonging, from guul-wade to minishiibiyo, from passport control to aw-kuku and from odey-cabdille to police stations. Fortunately when
the short holiday came, and most of the universities were closed, I had the chance sit back and pour myself a cup of tea while reflecting on the state we are in or the state we never had. This mood of creating a comparison between things have paved the way for me in
many instances, and I have always been fond of employing it whenever I feel somehow disorientation from reality or when i am in complex dilemma. But before i could continue to engage in a scholarly comparison, another scenario un-folded.
Note: statelessness is affecting our state of mind and health!
Thu Jan 30, 2003 7:50 pm
So I asked myself, who is to blame for this?
This question needs a deep answer; it needs clever and considerate observation of the situation we are in. The reason why our community
is in such a mess doesn't necessarily mean that we're incompetent, but it shows how being without a state can affect those of us outside Somalia. The psychological effects of being without a role-model (or president) or a state (functioning government), contributes to the low-moral and esteem phenomenon that has become common amongst our community. The feeling of having no place to return to causes serious stress to older generation and drags them into a status which gives way to pessimism. And later leads to the proverb "Nin qoyani biyo iskama dhowro". The result is to see them gathering cafes' discussing nothing else but pessimistic topics spear-headed by the divisions caused by tribalism. When there were a state back home,
people had a common-unity, a sense of similarity under the state and that sense united them. Nowadays such things are long gone and though
Somalis need heroes who can bring back the glory of the old golden days, but their purposeless stubbornness blocks all hope. Majority of the community are stressed and feel out of place. They gather in marfishes and chew jaad to drawn their feelings of disapointment. Men who use to be of some importance are reduced to shifts of jaad chewing crowds. They have dreams of Somalia getting better and that dream is being shared by our old mothers who are locked in small houses, afraid of going outside, preventing to slip on the slippering snowy surfices. In Somalia, they use to go round to other mothers and performs tasks like "abaay abaay", arbaca bun-duboow and many other enchanting activities. Children don't play outside as they used to do. They don't play "kuun kuun" or dhuudhuumashow or "kabey bilato, ha bilato" and chasing home-made socksed footballs. Many of us have been victimised and racially attacked leaving us in fear for ever. Every year we effortly wait for the fate of many of our youngsters, and the cause of death? stabbed or murdered in the streets.
Truthfully, we're suffering from anxieties that even those in Somalia don't suffer from. Abuses are hurled at us every time and every place the name "refugee" or "asylum" is mentioned. We are
considered a parasite community. I really think those who call us names have the right to do so, coz it is our fault that we became un-ashamed parasites. What is a Somali mother to do in London? sell "yaanyo" in the suuqa weyn ee Southall? There is nothing our parents can do but to depend on ceydha, coz they is no other possible income for them except "Ayuuto" whcich comes once in every few months. We are in this kind of situation and the intriguing thing is
that our fellow Somalis back at home blame us for fuelling the war, funding every warlord and feeling the gunmen. It is true that the
wars that happen in Somalia these days do seem like the proxy wars between the west and the east during the cold-war. Old men gather in tribes and collect "QAARAAN" to buy more guns, to create more fire. The more they collect, the more the fire of war burns.
Those who directly fund the war clearly have blood on their hands, but how what about those of us who don't fund the war and send money
back to their relatives back in Somalia? Are we doing any good or harm by sending hard earned currency every month and creating a new dependency? Sure, we are creating some sort of dependency and by creating this dependency, we are not doing ourselves any good. We are
just transferring the dependency our state use to have on foreign aid to our own families. And the stress that is associated with sending
money every month while you work in back-breaking jobs is very high. Many Somalis gave up and became the "Marfish members" and other gave
up both hope and their lives. Communities use to depend of their state to provide basic services but there is no longer a state, so, it is us who have to provide enough money that can buy basic services to our families.
Citizens from dictatorship governments are better than us. For example Ethiopians, Kenyans or Djiboutians don't even think of those basic things but we do. They don't coz they have some sort of a state however weak it may be.
INSTEAD OF SENDING MONEY EVERY MONTH, LETS INVEST AND CREATE NEW HOME-
GROWN ECONOMIES THAT WILL CREATE JOBS AND SUSTAINABILILTY.
LET'S HAVE A STATE. THIRTEEN YEARS IS A LONG WAIT FOR A GOVERNMENT.
Cheers
JamaaL-11
Here.
Sounds very similar to the article.
Then when I posted I was taunted for making such a connection, but the same folks later realised the connection was real and serious.
Anyway, noble sentiments of willingness to help will not, by themselves, help these kids pull up their grades. As mr. me has said, find 2 people on the same page on this issue. And only when you've met that challenge will you be able to do anything tangible.
