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THE ROAD
TO KISMAYU IS HOT, DUSTY AND ARMED TO THE
teeth. It seems like everybody is killing
everybody. From the right, from the left,
massacre after massacre, senseless and
grotesque. Bodies riddle with
bullets, limbs left on the roadside,
pregnant women gutted, bodies stripped and
decorated with fragmentation grenades.
The wide scale slaughter in the Juba Valley
once Somalia's bread basket, were so brutal
that survivors later would remark that they
could barely recognize the bodies of their
loved ones.
It does not matter. It was the will of God,
or it was written, they would say.
Those massacred never allied themselves with
any of the warring factions or guerrilla
organizations. Just God-fearing Somali
Bantus who worked from sunrise to sunset in
banana plantations owned by absentee
landlords. Militia gunmen from the Central
Province and Mogadishu gunned them down with
machineguns mounted on battle-wagons, the
ubiquitous customized vehicles known here as
Technicals. Later their dead bodies were
picked up and loaded onto the Red Cross
rusty Death Truck and donkey carts, their
dead bare legs dangling out of the back and
jouncing along the bumpy road.
People have lived with clan warfare and
anarchy for so many years they don't care.
Nearly every family has lost someone. And in
some cases a whole family has been wiped
out.
Visiting Western journalists from
neighboring Kenya were baffled that the
killings in the region had little to do with
the opposite side in a civil war. In fact
the clan militia rarely clash. Only a
handful of them died in mutual skirmishes,
and this probably over the ownership of the
narcotic drug, khat. No. It is the Somali
Bantus and other minority clans who are
dying and no one in the world seemed to
care. The Belgian contingent of the
international task force based in Kismayu
remained in their garrison, oblivious of the
carnage under their watch.
As they drove through streets strewn with
dead bodies and deserted plantations and
hamlets Ahmed asked his wife if this was
what she wanted.
"Yes," she answered. "I want
to get out." There were tears in her
eyes.
"I love you both," he said. Then
he turned to his stepson.
"Be brave and I promise to send you
school."
"I will," the boy said solemnly.
Sometimes well after midnight, the driver
slowed the vehicle. A makeshift road
barricade appeared in the middle of the
narrow track and the driver stopped.
Half a dozen wild looking gunmen glanced
inside the Land Cruiser and pointed their
guns at the faces of the frightened
passengers. But when they saw the Browning
machinegun and the guards perched on the
hood of the vehicle, with their forefingers
on the trigger, they waved the driver
through the town of Kismayu.
"That was close!" the driver said
to no one in particular. The guards began to
sing Magool and Ahmed Mooge's love songs.
They were high on khat!
Soon they were speeding past more deserted
farms and villages farther away from Kismayu.
Before long the road became bumpy, but the
driver did not reduce his speed, waking up
the family with the jolt of the vehicle.
Finally, late in the afternoon they pulled
up to a tiny village on the edge of a
country road. A middle-aged man opened the
door of a circular hut. He appeared very
friendly. He greeted them with a smile, a
rare commodity in war-torn Somalia.
"My name is Karama. From now on I will
drive you across the border, God
willing," he said with a salesman's
smile. He was wearing a hand-embroidered
scull cap, like a sheikh, and a small white
towel wrapped around his neck. "So you
must listen to me carefully," he added.
They all nodded in agreement. After filling
them in about the road to the border town of
Dhobley and the things they should expect,
including the shifta (bandits) who rob the
refugees, he left them briefly and returned
with a steaming kettle of tea, stale bread
and fresh bananas, still smiling.
Their old driver, who rarely spoke unless
spoken to, harangued with Karama in a
language Ahmed did not understand, but which
sounded like Kiswahili spoken throughout
East Africa and parts of Somalia's Juba
Valley. After this, their old driver and his
three armed guards disappeared without
saying anything to Ahmed.
Later in the afternoon Araksan shivered at
the sight of armed border police, but was
quickly reassured by their smiling driver
that everything's under control. True to his
words, Karama spoke to the sergeant in
charge of the border post in his softly,
softly approach and Ahmed watched money
change hands.
"Okay," the sergeant screamed in
his parade ground voice, "but hurry up,
you're blocking the road!"
A few miles inside Kenya's arid Northeast
Province, where Karama said bandits
frequently robbed refugees; he pulled his
vehicle into an empty space used by UN
refugee officials to process the flood of
refugees from Somalia. But now no one is in
sight. He dropped them off and after
distributing cups of warm water from a
much-battered Jerry can and offerings of
sweetmeat, he walked them to the shade of a
thorn tree and left
them there to fend for themselves. He was
still smiling as he disappeared behind a
cloud of red dust, watched longingly by his
terrified passengers.
They were now on their own - strangers in a
strange land!
It was as if the bush, too, felt fear. The
wind dropped and the birds stopped singing.
There was quiet, an overwhelming calm. Not a
single leaf stirred. They could only hear
their own breath and the drone of a lone
airplane overhead. They were clearly sitting
targets, waiting for the robbers to come and
slaughter them and make away with their
money and jewelry.
"Come on. We've got no time. We've got
to slip into the camp as soon as it is dark
enough."
An hour later the family walked into the
squalid Ifo Refugee Camp in the outskirts of
the tiny Ifo Village and easily mingled with
hundreds of new arrivals waiting to be
registered. Ifo Village that formerly served
as nomadic encampment or caravanserai is as
barren as the surface of the moon. Within
days of receiving their registration cards
as bona fide refugees, they decided to hire
a van to Nairobi, Kenya's sprawling capital,
some 950 miles away.
Araksan was uncharacteristically silent and
preoccupied but her husband reassured her.
"Don't worry. We're going to be all
right," he whispered.
To be continued….
*******
A SHORT STORY IN
SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH FOR OUR YOUNGER VISITORS
By
M.M. Afrah©2005
Afrah95@hotmail.com
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TAKING
POINT BY M.M. AFRAH
