Somaliland Central

The Somali language was not written down until the 1970’s and poetry – as in ancient Greece at the time of Homer – is one of the principal forms of mass communication as well as entertainment. And Somaliland an oral society – even a post-modern oral society – the poet is king. In 1972, the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre administration chose the Latin alphabet as the official script for the Somali language and tried to use writing as a means of imposing the control of the state on the new Somali nation. However, Somali people by nature are dual language society more than 6 centuries, written scripts were used Arabic language.

De facto poet laureate, Hadrawi’s feelings about the country he has helped to create is decidedly ambivalent.

     “The people of Somaliland love Somaliland: what is small and good is better than what is big and doesn’t work,” he said, comparing the new small Republic of Somaliland to the old, unified Somalia. “Much good has been accomplished, usually despite the government. The government is supposed to represent the nomads, but it is the government of technology, people in three-piece suits living off the taxes of the nomad people,” he says harshly.

      The same technology that helped make him famous – and which he continues to use – the tape recorder and the video – are now increasingly the conduit of foreign cultural influences and part of a global consumer economy that he sees as undermining Somali society. “We are slaves of technology,” he said. Somalia is increasingly part of the global world, but the problem, according to Hadrawi, is that it absorbs much more from the outside than it transmits. “Everything that you see in Somalia costs money – these glasses, these plates – and advertising creates a thirst for more and more. Every day, I buy so many things that come from Britain and America, but nothing that I make is sold in Britain or America. It is good to have an exchange, but there is exchange only if I am in a position to offer something. Today we are under one global concept and it is not good for mankind. When there is diversity – the diversity is what makes life beautiful. Uniformity in taste is totally useless.”

       While oral culture has been given new life by technology, he sees this as like the bright light at twilight, harbinger of the end and not the beginning of something new. “Poetry is alive, but the conditions of life that it expresses are at end,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of our skills and our knowledge and our culture because of this modern civilization.”

      Yet, what Hadrawi may not fully recognize is that he is very much a product of the hybrid culture that is growing up in Somalia, a defender of tradition and an agent of many of the changes he deplores. The traditional Somali poets tended to be closely tied to their clans and limited in their range. Hadrawi’s universalism — even his critique of globalization and technology — is the critique of an educated man who has read and traveled. He is a man with one foot in the old, oral world and one in the new world both of writing and the tape recorder.

      “This is a transitional period, when our society is moving from the past to another kind of history, roles are changing and the role of poetry is changing,” said Rasheed Ahmed, a good friend of Hadrawi, who was a socialist newspaper editor during the early Barre years and now the head of Somaliland’s War Crimes Commission, which is investigating human rights violations during the Somali civil war. A man with a light brown skin and green eyes, he has the scholarly air and graying beard of an Islamic mullah, but offered a remarkably lucid and worldly analysis of Somalia’s dilemma in excellent English. “Life is more complicated now and poetry is no longer enough. The Somali nomad is integrated into the global economy, with trade of livestock to the Middle East and buying products from abroad. The Somali nomads used to make their own clothes, but now the camel man is wearing jeans. But he is still a pasturalist and his education and his skills are still the same. The world of technology is imposing itself on our world – you find it in every corner of our life. But the Somali nomad does not produce technology but is a consumer of the products of the Western world. And it makes for an imbalance in our life. Poetry is important. It’s a necessity for the Somali mind. But poetry can’t tell people everything they need to know about the world. Poetry can give you feeling, but it cannot solve your problems. Poetry does not speak the language of facts and figures and to solve our problems we need analysis, research, planning. Hadrawi raises some important questions. But the answer it not to isolate ourselves and go back in time, even if we wanted to, it would be impossible. Development cannot be stopped. We have to use technology. We have to reconcile with technology and to impress our own personality on it, Somali culture and national characteristics on it.”