Somalis in Minnesota

On Foot in Fear

14    people of minnesota Intotal,twenty-oneyearsofarepressiveregime’sruthless war on its people, followed by the brutalities orchestrated by the warlords, made the country, particularly the south, a hellhole of violence. The toll on the lives of the general populace was unbearable. With danger all around, the citizens had no alternative but to get out of harm’s way, and they fled the cities. The majority trusted their feet to carry them to safety, trekking to Ethiopia and Kenya in lines that stretched to the horizon. At times, as rain poured down, nights became indistinguishable from days. Soon, those who had once cheated death were overtaken by hunger and exhaustion. Others lost their lives trying to sail to Yemen on precariously unsafe boats. An estimated one to two million Somalis escaped to neighboring countries.15 On Foot in Fear Naftu orod bay kugu aamintaa Life (in danger) trusts only running! Somali proverb As Somalis fled the south, they knew not where they were heading nor how long they were going to be away from their homes. Misery was their constant companion. One example is the story of Dr. Amina Siyad, who paid the last penny of her family savings to procure a small fishing dhow in May 1991. Along with ninety others, she and her two young daughters fled to Mombasa, Kenya. Miles into the Indian Ocean, the boat ran out of fuel. Ten days later, now sick and starving, the refugees finally reached shore by wind sailing. Alas, Kenyan authorities refused to allow them to disembark, keeping them in limbo for another nine days before forcing them to sail back to Mogadishu. There, Dr. Siyad could hardly withstand the horrors of death, destruction, and danger all around her. In November she managed to get a flight to the northeastern the Somalis    15 city of Bosaso, where she and her daughters reunited with her husband, who had escaped earlier. “Eventually,” she stated, “from Bosaso, along with many other displaced people from the southern region, we crossed by [a] boat to the refu­ gee camp in Yemen.” She concluded, “Having first sought survival, we now sought life,” a new life in Yemen.16 At this time, Somali writer and Nobel Prize for Literature nominee Nuruddin Farah was teaching in Kampala, Uganda. Farah, who rushed to meet the fleeing refugees, among them many members of his family, enumerated the sheer magnitude of the devastation on the faces of those he had met in the camps in his nonfiction book, Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora. He begins with a gripping narrative: “I remembered the renegade tears coursing down the refugees’ cheeks. My younger sister had been in the first boatload of Somalis to arrive in­ Bombasa . . . Other than my immediate family, I ran into other Somalis in Mombasa’s refugee camp, escapees who had brought along with them damaged memories. Time and time again they spoke of the terror which they had lived through, their demeanor undignified, their eyes mournful, their temperament as runny as the lachrymal catarrh affecting the uncared-for orphan.”17 The choice to travel from north to south or from south to north depended on what time one left or to what clan one belonged. But, as the Somali adage asserts, in such danger, it is best to trust only one’s own feet: “just run” was the motto playing in the refugees’ minds. Finally reaching camps on the Kenyan border, they found their place of refuge to be burdened with horror, psychological trauma, physical and sexual attacks on women, poor sanitation, and lack of food. As Abdikadir Jama, a father of five whose home is now in Minneapolis, tells, I was born and raised in Erigavo, a city at the tip of the northern part of Somalia. I left for Mogadishu 16    people of minnesota Distinctive Somali Traits Though the following may sound like a dose of vanity,Somalis’socially distinctive traits of bravery, beauty,poetic prowess,and pride have been noted.It is said that Somalis have no fear of fighting: British journalist Richard Dowden stated,“One abiding, horrifying but typical image [of Somalis’ bravery] stays in mind: a young Somali dressed inT-shirt,flop-flops and macawiis, the traditional skirt-like wrap,running at aAmerican armoured Humvee,firing anAK47 from the hip.Bravery,ten points. Stupidity, also ten points. He was cut to shreds.”Another British writer, Gerald Hanley, embraced the war-prone...