Start time: 11:40pm
Hey pals, welcome back to another day of writing. I promise it won’t be feelings today. I want to do a little comparison of two similar generations living in different cities. I always ask people how their childhood was and I get different answers.
You might ask someone who grew up abroad and this will be his reply.
“My childhood was pretty Ok. I lived with both my parents. They loved us and took care of us. I went to school from nursery till I finished. I had a Quran tutor at home after classes. Sometimes I watched tv before I slept and sometimes my homework was too much and I was not allowed tv. On weekends, I had different types of games at home. I used to go to the park to play with my friends and it was always fun. I loved visiting my extended family too. We lived in the same neighborhood most of my childhood days. I miss my childhood and I wish I could relive the memory”
The reply for the same question when asked someone who grew up in Somalia will be this.
“My childhood was happy and sometimes tough. We were a big family and we lived together. I went to different madrasas and school and we moved a lot. I remember when I was class 5 and we had to leave the city. We stopped studying for a year and when I came back, I had to redo the same class all over again. I missed almost two years repeating classes and this made school tough. Family wise, I had a happy growing up and love from all sides of my family. I wish I lived abroad and I wouldn’t have seen wars and migrations”
You ask me the same question and my reply would be the image I have on May 1999.
“ I also moved a lot when I was a child. I lived in Bosaso, Kismayu and Mombasa. I remember not having a consecutive months in Dugsi because a war had to break out in Kismayo. I remember vividly on a Friday in 1999 when I got ready to go to the Friday prayers with Aabo and a war broke out. It was our clan who had the territory at that time and the other clan attacked and due to that, our fathers had to run for their lives. I remember been happy for not having Dugsi tomorrow and being very sad for watching my dad run away for his life. For anyone who grew up in southern Somalia, we all have the same experiences of running away for safety at least once in our lives and yet, for most of us, we had happy days growing up. We did not know or understand much the wars and its effects and we always had a smile on our face. We played on broken houses and bullet leftovers, we smiled not knowing how our parents struggled to provide us food and shelter. We survived everything. We are strong and fully capable to build our own mess if we just understand that. Where you grew up has no effect on you at all, what you take away from it has every impact on you. Let’s learn from our struggles to earn our satisfaction.
End time: 11:57pm
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