Gurigeenni-Away (2): Recollections of My School Years in Beled Weyne

It is very difficult to choose where to start this short piece that I intended to share with much younger and brilliant open-minded people as you are today. However, I do not know a particular wording, phrase, or topic to begin these conversations with myself and, indirectly, to those who I think are my patient readers, my own children included. I would like to start by describing places, events and activities of my adolescence, the beginning of my schooling and later we will extend these conversations between us to a wider perspective.

I was born and raised in a country that was an Italian colony for a long time before its independence in 1960. However, I was not born under colonial rule, but in an eve of national independence. I started school in the late 1960s, in a private Italian school. The school of the Catholic Mission in Beled Weyne which was in the same place of the Campo Militare (Military Head-Quarter), also known Lama-galaay, that is, The Prohibited Place (being here the sacred place of the original people’s village, the place in which the city started). It was in front of this school gate which was beside the gate of the Military Regional Head Quarter that I first came to know about the military coup in Somalia. The 21st of October of the year 1969 was the moment I started to be conscious of Somalia as a troubled state. I was only eleven. The week before the president of the republic was assassinated, even though still in my childhood, I was starting to be aware of the difficulties of the time. The day of the military take-over, the school was closed. We went back home. To play with our friends.

It was from that time on, the wake of the October Revolution in Somalia, that I started acquiring more ample vision of my country, not only of Beled Weyne or Mogadishu but also the places along The Imperial Road leading toward the Capital, like Beer-Haano, Graziani, Bulo-Berde, Jowhar, and Bal-Ad. The Imperial Road was built in colonial times with the purpose of connecting Mogadishu (then capital of Italian Somalia) to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia). The Italian Fascist government conquered Abyssinia (ancient name for Imperial Ethiopia) in early 1935 and continued to occupy it until the Italian defeat by the British in 1941. The Italians had had their short lived Empire of Africa (Orientale Italiana), which was comprised by Somalia, Eritrea and the just conquered Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

As like many African countries Somalia was not self-sufficient and needed both external assistance for its development projects and humanitarian aid to feed its people. In Beled Weyne and its surroundings during the dry season’s lack of rain, drought was an inevitable event. When the sorghum harvest, the main cereal grown by the agriculturalist population for internal consumption, was not enough because of the lack of rain in the season, then the European Community (that was the name before they became the EU) would send food aid to Somalia, mostly maize, beans, flour and vegetable-oil that had to be distributed to the people. Not only the inhabitants of the town of Beled Weyne, but also people coming from further away, pastoralists whose animals perished because of the drought.

It is sad for those like me who in their childhood have seen the long ques of mothers with children and old people waiting for the food donated by European countries and the United States, to see the same situations continuing because Somalia today is still among the countries that are in need of that kind of assistance. It is a cycle of misery that no Somali government ever succeeded to bring the country out of. It happened in the 1960s, it happened in mid 1970s, it happened in the 1980s, it happened in the 1990s in the middle of a civil war and with the El-Nino phenomenon. It happened again and again. It’s happening right now. The causes, moreover, are not just the ecosystem which is changing with one drought after the other eliminating the livelihood of many in the country. There are also regressive politics constructed on social injustices, political and ideological conflicts that have destabilized the country and made productive Somali society stagnant while agriculturalists and pastoralists are abandoning their habitual places to strive in IDP (Internal Displaced People) camps around the capital Mogadishu. Their children growing without the opportunity to go to school.

In pre-colonial times, Quranic school being the only formal education institution in Somali society, it was an integral part of the Somali culture and tradition. The learned people of Islamic doctrine and the teachers of these traditional schools constituted the intelligentsia of a country which had not had a written language. At the same time, in the absence of a Somali state institution before colonialism the religious men, together with traditional clan and tribal chiefs, were acting as leaders among the various tribes into which the Somali population was divided.

During the most part of Italian colonialism, particularly during the two decades of Fascist government, schools for Somali children were very limited and only established in major towns by Italian Catholic Missions. Educating the Somali population was not a priority project for Italian colonialism. However, it is an undeniable fact that the Italians introduced modernisation in the country and planned to populate it with Italian nationals. Therefore, during the colonial time, schools were only for the children of Italian residents. With a few exceptions.

It was only during the Italian post-fascist administration, after the new Republic of Italy was accorded in 1949 the Trusteeship by the United Nations to prepare Somalia for its independence to become a sovereign state that schools started to function on the orders and support of the United Nations. So, the first formal education for Somalis only started in the 1950s. This was the time of the new Italian administration after the colonial one. It was that administration that put forward education programs for the Somalis with the help of the United Nations who had the supervision of the Italian administration in Somalia.

These first students who completed their intermediate and secondary school were those students who went to school in early 1950s. They were young people eager to study, often in difficult conditions, but they had Italian teachers and they succeeded to conclude their schooling. Some of them would be given scholarships to Italy and Russia. At their return they would become functionaries in the public administration and school teachers, a backbone for the new independent state. However, these people recognized how their country was very backward respect to the countries they studied in. Those of us who started their schooling in late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s were the luckiest generation. We started school in a sovereign state. We had good teachers as well as good schools.

In Somalia the number of schools were limited, like the number of hospitals. Roads and transportation across the country were difficult. However, by the end of 1960s there was at least an elementary school (from Year 1 to Year 5) in each regional administration. Some regional capital cities (towns) also had an intermediate school level (from Year 6 to Year 8). However, only the capital and few other cities in the North had secondary school levels (from Year 9 to Year 12).

There were also some Mission schools funded by Catholic Missionaries (Italian), few others by Mennonite Missions (American) and Arab Egyptian schools during the 1960s. These schools were considered private schools. Until the mid 1960s the education system was still using foreigners and expatriate teachers like Italians, Egyptians and Americans (of the Peace Corps).

In the Catholic Mission School of Beled Weyne where I first started my schooling, my teachers from the first grade to the fifth grade were the nuns of the Mission, Suora Isidora Fossat and Suora Adelina Londero. After they saw my interest in reading, they let me use their own small library which I used to borrow books from. I enjoyed reading. Like the majority of the houses in my suburb, our house did not have electricity and lighting. I used to read the books I borrowed in the evenings with an oil lamp. After my reading I used to go play with my friends. Our main sport was a racing sport with two teams on the main road of the suburb during the night with the light of the moon. Physically we were athletes. Every one of us could compete on international level of games. But we were just youngsters in a suburban part of a small town with a big name, Beled Weyne. (The Big Town). At the end of the low-daar (tagging game) we used to sit around on the ground in the middle of the deserted road in the night to tell stories after stories until it was late in the night, then each of us would go home and sleep well. We’d then wake up early the next morning and have breakfast anjeero or muufo with sesame oil and tea and run to school.

My school was very distant from home, some kilometres. Every morning I was walking from home to school. In blue shorts and a white shirt holding my exercise book and the Sussidiario (a subsidiary, an anthology for each class with all the subjects). In between home and school there was the river with a footbridge, a walkway made of wooden boards and supported by long steel wires fixed on iron pillars at both ends. The Liiqliitato footbridge was connecting our suburban area of Campo d’Aviazione (which was named so because of the airdrome built by the Italians during the preparation to their conquest of Abyssinia) to the centre of the city. Of course, that footbridge was shaky when many people were walking on it, at the same time, from one side to the other. Hence the name Liiqliiqato.

Everyday hundreds of people going to the markets at the centre of the city were using it. When people were crossing each other on the footbridge suspended over the tumultuous waters of the river, it would shake scarily, nevertheless the people trusted its capacity to hold the weight of dozens of people at one time. Twice a day I was using the Liiqliiqato footbridge to go to school and come back home. Being Beled Weyne on a U bend in the river, there was another bridge on the other branch of the river bend. It was a bridge built by the Italians and made of iron onto which big trucks could also pass over. This bridge is still there today, and the local people call it Buundo Weyn (the Big Bridge) as well as the suburb in which it is located. I am mentioning this because some of my friends who lived in the same suburb used to go to the public school which was situated in that part of the city. Therefore, they were using two bridges to go to school every day.

Early mornings, when we were going to school, was the time that everybody was using the Liiqliiqato to go to work or to go shopping at the market. While I was at school already, my friends in the public school would go through the city centre and use the Big Bridge to arrive at their destination, the Beled Weyn Elementary School. But the easier way to go to school from our part of town was for those who were attending the Arab-Egyptian School, another private institution with much more students than the Catholic Mission School of Beled Weyne. They just had to cross the Liiqliiqato and walk a few steps and they were there. The Egyptian School was on the other side, on the bank of the river.

It was at this Egyptian School that my mother had wanted to enrol me in at first. I already knew how to read and write in Arabic because I still was a student of the Quranic school too. So, it would be very easy for me to attend an Egyptian-Arabic school. On the starting day, the day of enrolment, my mother took me to the school, ready to start that same day. While we were waiting our turn to enter in the enrolment room and I was ready to start my first class of elementary school at the Egyptian school, my mother witnessed one of the Egyptian teachers punishing a student hardly with a stick, again and again. It was at that moment that my mother changed her mind and decided to cancel my enrolment. She understood the Egyptian school teachers’ methods of education and she did not approve of it at all.

It was her change of mind at the moment she saw a method of education she did not believe would be helpful to form a person, that gave direction to my life. Indeed, the next day she took me to the Mission School, where a Catholic nun accommodated us with kindness and respect while informing us on the school rules and on the academic information a parent was required to know. The only thing my mother was underlining to the nun was that I was a Muslim by religion and that she did not want the school to teach me or to introduce me to religious subjects. She was assured on this in the clearest way.

I started my elementary schooling here. The rectangular classroom was very long and wide. The students were few in number. Less than one dozen in all. The nun-teacher was old and short with an inquisitive look in contrast with the half smile she always showed to her students. Behind the teacher’s desk a map of Somalia hung on the wall showing in the legenda a population of just one million and two hundred thousand. Paintings with letters of the alphabet were hung on the walls of the classroom. Observing these letters carefully, we began to write in our exercise-books following the calligraphic forms, as required by the nun-teacher. After the letters, the words and then the verbs. I already knew how to read the letters of the alphabet. In that class I learned to write and read well in Italian. Every morning we used to have one hour of dictation, then another of reading. Later we were doing our math exercises in class and also getting some for homework.

Year after year, I improved my Italian proficiency and my writing, so that I started writing in Italian. That time I became a voracious reader. The Catholic Mission School in Beled Weyne was a good environment to study, very quiet and with well-kept gardens under the shade of the many palm trees growing in the peninsula formed by the bend of the Shabelle River that the school compound shared with the Beled-Weyne Military Head Quarters. In the compound there was a small church used by the nuns and a priest. The school had a policy of no interference in our religious beliefs.

Our second last year of elementary school coincided with the military coup in Somalia. In the occasion of the first anniversary of the Revolution (as it was called), our school was invited to participate an event held in the square where the national flag flies, in front of the Governor’s Building. The school has chosen me to read a short speech in praise of the revolution prepared in class with the teachers. I read it and almost fainted from nervousness, to this day I am not good at public speaking.

One year after that event we graduated from the elementary school. As the school did not have an intermediate level, our option was to continue our studies in Mogadishu, at Mons. Filippini Intermediate School. That year only a few of us were transferred, as decided by our parents, to Mogadiscio in Collegio Nuova Somalia (a boarding house for students of private Italian schools in Mogadishu) and to be enrolled in an intermediate school very close to the Collegio Nuova Somalia, both managed by the Catholic Church Mission in Somalia. In the Boarding House there were more than one hundred students from Mogadishu and from other regional areas outside the capital. Students in the boarding house were friendly and well-ordered because of the strict rules of the institution. The timetable at the Collegio Nuova Somalia was clear and simple: time to wake up and have personal hygiene, time for breakfast, time to go to school, lunchtime back in the Boarding House, time for a stroll, study time in silence, play time (basketball), tea time, dinner time, again study time, movie time once a week, and finally bedtime.

In Mogadishu there were also other Italian public and private schools, a Lyceum (Liceo Scientifico Leonardo Da Vinci, Regina Margherita Middle Years School, Guglielmo Marconi Middle School) for the children of the large Italian community (sometimes also open to the children of Somali high bureaucrats and politicians). Besides these there was the Scuola Media Mons. Filippini, an Italian private school funded by the Roman Catholic Mission and open to Somali children. Other communities who were living in Mogadishu for long time as well had their own schools: schools for Indian children and schools for Pakistani children.

Life in the boarding college was very interesting and it was an opportunity to meet many people, those who I continue to be friends with to this day. For now, I leave this here. I would like to say thank you for your interest in reading these recollections of my childhood and school years in “Gurigeeni-Away”.