Courting the Other Side of Somalia

Though the cycle of war and death continues unabated, there is life inside the country. I am always impressed by the unparrareled resilience of the Somali people which is the only hope for the possible continuity of the Somali nation. For many, the average reader, life in Somalia is unthinkable.

A Somali life could be extremely dangerous, fatal, lonely, exasperating, and dull, with few peers for company and complex security risks and codes to negotiate.Obviously, the peculiar challenges of living in Somalia without a state are known to everybody. The gloomy predicament of living in Somalia had forced many to flee the country apparently in their hundreds of thousands.

There is nothing like the rise and fall of Somali life.There is real life.And yet, there are two ‘what abouts’. What about the tens of millions of Somalis starved to death, displaced from their homes, and killed in a cross fire. And secondly, what about the new suffocating and boring life under the Shabaab. Apart from making the life of Somali women, the most hardworking and sole breadwinner in the country, terrible and difficult, the Shabaab has shown distaste to all elements of Somali culture, including the resilient and age old national treasure that Somalis are good at, poetry. In particular, the last one year in Shabaab controlled areas saw a move away from once more-common forms of interaction between Somali men and women: sex, cohabitation, and sometimes marriage.

If one wants to understand the emotions, risks, and ambitions that inspired Somali poets a recently posted article On inside Somalia: Where Poetry is Revered is the place to turn. The article doesn’t show much of the context- it is not by any means a genuinely path breaking account of poetry in Somalia- but it does show the existence of some form of poetry in adversity. The remarkable coping mechanisms succeed in rescuing an entire people and its culture from amnesia, if not outright denial.

The most astounding, but also the least documented/reported, developments in Somalia over the last decade or so, are many. Among which the most prominent are flourishing real state development, the proliferation of universities and the blossoming of Somali poetry. Given the context of the death of a state, this is a perfect anomaly. With all the anarchy and chaos and a series of elusive peace and reconciliation conferences there is life and hope in Somalia. There are healthier diversions. Somalis seem to have confronted chaos in different, soothing, restful, calming and innovative ways. It is against this background that the current analyst attaches a recent report on the status of Somali poetry in the links below.

Link herehttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/100210/inside-somalia-where-poetry-revered?page=0,0

Link herehttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/100210/inside-somalia-where