Somalia

I am thinking about Somalia. I watched two old documentaries about Somalia from the 1960s: The Parching Winds of Somalia and another one that I can't locate right now...a nice one about a Somali nomad boy and his way of life. The documentaries were made available for viewing on Bartamaha.com, a Somali website that provides Somali news, videos, etc in English, so I am assuming if they were approved by the Somalis who created this website that a certain percentage of Somalis (at least, perhaps the ones living in the United States) would approve of them as true history as well. I think the regime changes and wars that they had endured changed some of their old time culture, and I am sure that the refugees who are here in the States who lived during the "good times" have some nostalgia for those older more peaceful times.

Even in the more peaceful times, most Somalis lived a life that would be very hard by Western standards, but according to these documentaries they seemed very happy to live this life. Even those living in the Somali cities had a much different lifestyle in more peaceful days than what they have now...in the 1960s, for example, they had an incredibly strong feminist movement--even supported by some men--which was fighting against forced cliterectomies for girls. I don't know if the Somali women are still fighting against it in their own communities; I know that women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and films such as Wustenblume (Desert Flower) are educating the world about this issue...

In any case, the more I learn about Somalia, the more I want to learn, to better understand my neighbors here in St. Cloud.