MAANDEEQ NATION

Dear Reader,

First and foremost, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Maandeeqnation blog.

It is important for every blogger to explain and clearly define what role his or her blog will play in tackling the specific subject that it has chosen as a topic.

It is from this point that I announce that the entries you will read in these pages will be about Somalia. Some of you may be wondering what the word Maandeeq stands for and how it is linked to Somalia and its people.

Maandeeq, in the literal translation of the word from Somali to English, stands for a she-camel. However, in the context of the Somali experience, it is viewed more symbolically than from what the word actual stands for. The “she-camel” imagery, pioneered mostly by Somali poets during the colonial era and the struggle for independence, was later translated to denote sovereignty and autonomous rule of the Somali government and people – both at the national and state level.

It is from this relative background that I got to name this blog Maandeeqnation: a blog which discusses the nation-state of Somalia.

Besides, the discussions in this blog will be carried out in many levels; all in all, in terms of politics, economics, industrial, social, educational, and even in terms of the activity (or inactivity) of institutions such as the media, NGOs and even the civil society in Somalia.

I hope this blog will go a step ahead and make all of us appreciate the crisis that has evolved and is still enveloping in this Horn of Africa nation. I hope my entries will enable many people to discuss the role of governance, leadership and transformational politics in trying to save this country from its own political death.

I was born in Nairobi, Kenya and am thus a Kenyan citizen by birth, but I have had the privilege (if you would like to call it so) of living close to 8 years in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. I went through my primary and secondary education in this war-torn country. I had quality education; great religious teachings; made good friends; had both violent and friendly neighbors; and lived a prosperous life in Hamar (another name for Mogadishu.)

Now that I am no longer living there, it is important to look back and try to make sense of the mess that is ruining this country. (The political situation on the ground in Somalia has compounded since I left in 2005.)

I leave with you the English translation of the great poem “Maandeeq” by the Somali poet, Abdullahi Suldan Tima’ade, which is considered as one of the most influential poems in Somali language.

Hope you enjoy it.

Don’t forget to leave your comments, ideas and thoughts. They are every bit worth it.

Thanks.

Abdi Latif Dahir

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The she-camel carried off from us by colonialism whose tracks I’ve kept following

The she-camel on account of which, for so many, springtime sleep has escaped

The she-camel we clung to wherever she was

The she-camel for whom we sleepwalked over every obstacle

The she-camel whose protection is the night owl’s wailing call

The she-camel whose rearguard poison-snake struck death

The she-camel whose possession the two foreign accomplices contended

Clasped was freedom by force, it wasn’t bestowed on us

Grown men and youths on the day they leagued together

When God helped us and victory was the people’s

The she-camel whose victory chant I composed and sang

The she-camel for whom I spread out thorny fronds of acacia and maraa-tree

The she-camel for whose sake we bore hunger and such thirst

When her time came at the noonday of the birth pangs

Her udders full ready to suckle

Only the man of un-wisdom holds her lactation can be stopped

When we had no missiles, nor automatics

The she-camel to defend whom from the lion we dared not back away

Leaving her to the ostrich is something that will not happen!