Xiinow, oo wali ma tii baa kaa tagan?

^Waabad is fasaxday from SOL. Typical

Stuff iyo .......

Lol no battle scars. Seemed the calmest out of the various Somali 'teams' playing (I played for them by the way which wasn't looked on favourably by 'my' lot ).

Some of the guys I kicked ball with in Dubai are from there. Good bunch.

Interesting. This could get messy.

Mad_Mullah;980634 wrote: Hmmm, where did the ban come from? Shabab popped up in 2006, before that we were of the radar. Due to the the sharci selling, passport swapping/altering Somalis were doing.

What are the chances of spotting some of these in magaalooyinkeena soon? http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-11/ikea-sends-its-new-flatpack-refugee-shelter-to-syria

lol@nuune MM 1. Somalis who can travel there can only travel there if they are married/child of someone who already lives there and has a residence visa (someone who lived there before the ban on Somalis back in 2004). 2. No one with a Somali passport can go there on a visit/tourist visa. This is what needs to change. At least for business travellers.

Mad_Mullah;980617 wrote: UAE has easy system, you want to stay, pay a yearly fee. That's it. If you claim to be a businessman you should be able to afford. Why would anyone lift restrictions of a country that's one of the poorest and most dangerous on the planet? Are you joking? UAE/Qatar might be friendly but that's it, they are not in need of us so I don't see why they would change. + Qatar hardly has any Somali businesses, most are in UAE + Kenya. Not sure if any of that makes sense to be honest. We (Somalis) need to be able to travel to where the products/markets are. Wealthy business men in Somalia should be able to pay a higher fee/deposit to travel to UAE/Qatar and source products. Enough business is done by Somalis in UAE to easily demonstrate it would be a good move by the UAE govnt with low risk (high deposit, business owner, history of transactions etc). It just requires a process the UAE would be happy with. Somali govnt should be proposing something instead of sitting idle.

Horta what are the government doing to ease the restrictions on Somalis? The restrictions are still in place by friendly countries like UAE and Qatar. I'm sure a limited lift on the numbers with higher deposits taken by the embassies or immigration could be pushed through for genuine somali business people and tourists. Carabtu waa dad lala hadli karo.

nuune;980562 wrote: So Alpha has a 9-5 job in there, hmm Not exactly 9-5. More like 8-10 then 12-2pm. He has a 2 hour lunch break.

This is getting crazier by the day

Safferz;980247 wrote: And my angle was quality of life, of which health, financial resources, education, etc are all interrelated factors. You can't just talk about economics without talking about health, you can't talk about health without talking about education, you can't talk about education without talking about economics. I'm not disagreeing that Somalis value children (as social capital), what I'm disputing is your point that children generate actual economic wealth back home, when all the indicators point to the contrary. There is a correlation between high birth rate and poverty (and the trend is similar for large families in Western countries, though there are exceptions), that's not really up for debate. Fair enough but none of what you wish to happen will happen (back home) unless the economic factors change first. When the economic factors dictate that xoolo and camel milk isn’t an adequate income those families will have to adjust. Adjusting could mean moving to the cities where education is more important. But then what would be the point if there are no jobs? It’s the performance of the economy which has a bearing on everything else (birth rates, poverty, levels of education etc). The indicators you’re referring to don’t take the nomadic perspective into account.

The discussion was broadly on the economic reasons for family planning (home or abroad) before you threw in the health reasons (granted this more of a concern back home). My argument was focused more on the economic aspects of large families (home or abroad). Culturally, kids are an asset whilst in other countries kids can be portrayed as a burden (even with free schools). It is inevitable things will change for those of us living in the diaspora but more so for adoption of the local culture, lack of support (no village support) reasons rather than economic (the welfare state remains).

Safferz;980234 wrote: My arguments are actually quite well structured and relevant to the topic, I'm sorry you can't follow. But sure, here are some figures -- infant mortality rates by country ( CIA , World Bank ), maternal mortality rates by country ( CIA, WHO , UNICEF ), obstetric fistula in Somalia ( Fistula Foundation , UNFPA Fistula Campaign ), women's literacy rates in Somalia ( UNESCO ). Some key points and excerpts from the links and reports: - under five mortality rate is 225 per 1,000 live births (placing us in the bottom 3 in the world, in some rankings #1) - one in 10 Somali children die before their first birthday and one in 12 women die from pregnancy related causes (bottom 2 in world) - less than 30 per cent of the country has access to safe water - acute malnutrition afflicts 17 per cent of children - 2.12 million Somalis, more than half of whom are children, were in an Acute Food Security Crisis in 2012 - estimated incidence of obstetric fistula per 1000 deliveries is 3-5 - adult literacy rate: 49.7% of men, 25.8% of women Now how is all this related to the economic reasons for family planning in Canada with which you based your original argument? I am following. Will scrutinise the stats later.

You haven't provided any stats. One minute you're talking about your surburban life in Canada and how other Somalis are less off because they're part of larger families and the next your talking about obstetric fistula in Ethiopia!

Safferz;980220 wrote: I'm talking about statistics and development indicators, and you're giving romanticized images of nomadic and rural poverty. Do you know how many Somali women back home are illiterate because our culture deems it more important for them to be wives and mothers than to be educated? Or that many of these large 'merry' nomadic families deal with chronic malnutrition? Did you know Somalia has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world? That our women deal with birth complications related to female circumcision, and that obstetric fistula - a condition where women are literally ripped open by childbirth and can no longer hold their urine and bowel movements - is a massive problem in Somalia, because our women start having children too young for their bodies to deal with pregnancy and childbirth? And I hope I don't have to explain to you what all of this means for Somali society as a whole, and what economists, political scientists and development analysts have shown about the links between women's health and wellbeing for families and society as a whole. Countries like ours continue to fail so long as that's the reality for women and children. You don't need to be a parent to understand what's at stake here. Please note that stats on Somalia are not accurate (they can’t be). As long as we are a nomadic people, there will be large families. The more there are the more hands to help with the land and cattle. Maybe one or two can find work in the cities to support the family. As long as we have whole villages prepared to help raise these kids, there will be large families. Its survival and maintenance economics rather than what you would read in any UN journal. Maybe the first step is to understand and appreciate how the above circumstances (a survival necessity) contribute to birth rates. Having kids is an economic advantage in our neck of the woods. Pen pushing outside do-gooders won’t change that unless the broader economic circumstances change and/or our culture changes. Of course issues of birth complication and health risks should be dealt with (that wasn’t what the thread was about previously).

Before one can tell others how to live as a family one needs to have lived in his/her own family. Data or not, I find privileged qurbo joogs telling mothers back home how to live their lives distasteful. Who are they to tell mums not to have another kid or to have 4 instead of 6? Why have kids at all? When she could have that nice big house to herself. 3 children or not, somewhere down the line there was a big family that didn't have much. They grazed the lands and tendered to the camel. The more the merrier to do this. If they were to 'plan', for reasons unknown, its likely you wouldn't be here today. But, because of our culture (more so before the wars), large families were the norm. There are large families doing well in the west.

Why is this topic usually brought up by people who are adament fewer kids is the way to go but have no offspring themselves? Having many kids is part and parcel of our culture. If it wasn't most of us wouldn't be around today typing into keyboards.

I'm sure the original cost included extension of runway. Let's hope they do a proper job this time around. Who are Narco ya Alpha Edit They are a Kuwaiti Eng firm

Wake wake up, its the first of the mooooonth. Come back from fb crazy people

Whats are the details? Is this specifically in relation to Obamacare or is it general budgetary/fiscal?

Dee dista

^Is that official Ibti? What is there to refurbish in Berbera?