Postby Voltage » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:02 pm
I don't think we are a nature of xaasids per se Admin. I think you are ignoring the big elephant in the room. The big elephant is Qabiil. Our xabiib is the one who we think is good for our qabiil. Our cadow is the one who is good for our qabiil. The people whose achievements we should celebrate are people we think are good for our qabiil and the people whose achievements we should put down are people we think are rivals/enemies to our qabiil.
This is already laid out through centuries of acculturation and cultural transformation in our harsh, desert, and resource lacking environment in the horn of Africa.
Balse maanta, I think there are individuals who are above such cut but from my own observation such people are almost always people who have forsaken their nation and people. From what I have observed, as long as you love Somalia and wish it the best it is really hard to separate yourself from the clan mentality because it is the vehicle in which you approach your nation, its what ties you to Somalia even when most of your family have left.
Take me for an example, I might as well have been born here. I went to kindergarten, elementary, middle, high school and now am in college. I ahve never set foot in Somalia since I left as a toddler nor do I remember anything about it. I am not old enough to have called on upon qabiil as a force to help me in anything. Yet while trying to find my link back to my origins, qabiil has largely been the channel in which I achieved that. Halkeen ka imi, aabahay halkee ka yimi, hooyo tolkeed waayo, ayayday tuuladee awoowgey ku aragtay, maxaa dhacayaa berigaas, tariikhda soomaaliyeed maxaad iiga sheegi kartaan, even while learning somali i learned the accent of "afkeena" (notice the emphasis on our clan and family group). So it became rooted in me, it became the prism through which I materialized my Somaliness in my internal psyche. it became the manifestation of SOMALINIMO in me, ileen Somali meel laga soo galo waa inaad leedahay.
However, when i did finally go to Africa this summer, it was like I was changed to be honest. Qabiil seemed nothing to me. When I saw masses of Somali refugees in Eastleigh walking in the mud and squaler and holed up in those cramp apt buildings I was able to sympathize with them and see them as Somali. I was not concerned that one was my clan or another was not, I was equally impacted by the misfortune that had befallen all. Masses of people who were landless, cast out from their home, and sent on a forced exile. Throughout my whole acculturation to becoming Somalia that I underwent behind the safety in the west, this is what was hidden from me---the real faces, and the real stories that was the collective sum of the Somali experience.
I discarded it then, but after coming back within months I transitioned back to my old state of mind though not fully and with the understanding of what I had seen which is a barrier from the excess of qabyaalad.
Now I know I wrote a lot as is natural for me but what I am saying is I dont think Somali people are xaasids baa nature, I think centuries of acculturation has entrenched qabiil into our psyche which then DICTATES whom we should we appreciate or whom we should not, whom we should endorse and whom we should not.
This explains why someone would think positive about Abdiqaasim but as soon as he is president (and because of that in a position of power to influence our qabiils directly for good or bad) we would discard what we personally believe of him and judge him simply on how our qabiil dictates we should judge him.
Last edited by
Voltage on Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
