Gurigeenni-Away (1): An Introduction

My name is Ali Mumin Ahad, I was born in Beled Weyne, Somalia. There I attended elementary school at the Catholic Mission of Beled Weyne, then I was relocated to Mogadishu in the Collegio Nuova Somalia (a boarding school) to attend intermediate school (Mons. Filippini, then named after Abdulkadir Sakhawaddin). I completed secondary school in Accountancy at the Technical Institute for Accountants and Surveyors of Mogadishu (Istituto Tecnico per Ragionieri e Geometri) in 1978. After I had completed my one year national civil service as a school teacher in Mogadishu, I was enrolled at the Somali National University where I graduated in Economics with honors in 1984. This allowed me to be hired as an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Economics of the Somali National University. A few years later, as a lecturer of international economics at the Somali National University in Mogadishu, I went to Italy for a cycle of training and as a visiting Professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. After the civil war erupted in Somalia, I continued to reside in Italy. There I achieved a MS Degree in Agribusiness. (Cremona). Then I started critically investigating Somali history, where in 1993 I published my first seminal article on the subject: “The historical sins of colonialism in Somalia”. From that time on I cultivated a strong historiographical interest in Somalia.

I came to live in Australia with my family in 2006. I continued my postgraduate studies as a candidate at La Trobe University. During this candidacy, I published three important works, a section of a book (Decolonizzare l’Italia, 2007) and two journal articles (“Could Poetry Define Nationhood? The case of Somali Oral Poetry and the Nation”, 2007 and “The Sab/Somali dualism and the definition of Somali national identity”, in Africa N. 3, 2008). I obtained my PhD from La Trobe University in 2010, disserting a work still in connection with the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia.

I would like to create a series of interventions on history, culture and livelihoods to allow the younger generation of people with African background, particularly those from East Africa, to be introduced to some of the real aspects of these cultures, regarding the places and lives of their parents.

As my writing always has a direct connection to the culture of my country of origin, I will often refer to its culture as well as its surroundings, including other places in the Horn of Africa. Countries like Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan are situated in the same geographical area and are also interconnected by culture and languages.

Starting by myself as an individual who has a deep connection with their country of origin and its culture, I will present aspects almost autobiographical from childhood to a young adulthood in an era of great transformation in both economic and ideological dimensions that, sometimes, characterized and produced as their consequence turmoil and disastrous events such as intra-state wars.

The aim of these short presentations is to create a bridge in the gap between my generation who grew up during their childhood in countries in Africa and a younger generation who have little or no knowledge of what had happened that probably caused the dislocation of their parents from their own places to live somewhere else.

The series of presentations are to document the feeling of the diasporic life of people who choose to live in another country by themselves or with their children and family. Most of the time the new generation, which is the children of those who came to Australia or somewhere else, have difficulty understanding their parents. Not only because of the language gap, but most importantly because of the cultural information that is missing for the younger generation. I will try to underline points of misunderstanding between the two, and fill that missing cultural and historical information about the background of their parents.

The title given to the present series of cultural, geographical and historical information is Gurigeenni-Away, which could be translated with two different meanings. The Somali word Gurigeenni means our Home, and Away means, where is it? So, the first meaning gives the interrogative mode of “where our home is?” The second meaning is given by the combination of a Somali word for Home and the English adjective Away, to indicate that Home is a far-away place. On one side, the new generation in Australia or somewhere else are interrogating their parents on Where is home? On the other side, their parents are still reminiscent of their own place, a faraway home. It is these two different perspectives that are making, sometimes, the relationship difficult between the two.

From these series of short interventions and the topics that will be shared here, it is hoped that the younger generation can comprehend more about their parents’ background and indirectly find answers to questions they would like to hear from their parents. In addition to that it will be presented to them (particularly to those of them who have Somali background) a present day picture of their country of origin, and its social and economic reality.

I hope my writing will be insightful to the younger generation who are willing to know something more about their parents’ place of origin.