Free The Africans by David Lamb Page B

green pastures of Kenya, Somalia is a foreboding land of desert and furnace heat. The people are nomads, lean and tough, and during the
tangambili
(the long, hot months between monsoons) the entire country slips into slumber, and nothing, nothing at all, carries the vaguest hint of urgency.
    Great herds of camels plod along the sandy, sun-blanched streets of Mogadishu, the capital, headed for the waterfront and export to Saudi Arabia. Donkeys amble by, ignoring their masters’ whips, and they move wearily past the mosques and beaches where old ladies sit sweltering in black
chadors
that cover everything but their eyes. The donkeys haul carts, loaded with bricks and cement blocks and sometimes grain, and from the rear of each beast hangs a canvas bag to catch its droppings. In the bone-dry fields outside Mogadishu, women stand eight-hour shifts as human scarecrows, perched on rock piles that elevate them above the maize, motionless except for their flapping arms that scare away the birds.
    One day I met an old man named Abdullah in a Somali village. He had a wispy beard and watery eyes and, he said, a great loneliness. Two of his three wives had died, and nine of his eleven children had gone off to the city. All but three of his camels had succumbed to drought or the Somali-Ethiopian war that has draggedon for a thousand years. “There is little to do now but wait for death,” he said.
    Abdullah had not followed his children into the city because in Africa the cities are for the young and the able-bodied. They do not absorb the elderly, and if you walk the streets of an African capital, you see virtually no old people. To be poor and old in an African city is not a happy fate, so the aged remain in the rural communities, where the changes are less threatening and the extended family concept makes sure that a helping hand is always near.
    Each Sunday, Abdullah’s eldest son, Ahmed, who is a primary-school teacher, drives from Mogadishu to visit his father. Ahmed always brings a few shillings, several cigarettes and a cup or two of maize. Abdullah appreciates the visits but he is puzzled by his son’s life—the Renault car he prefers to a camel, the slacks and sweater instead of flowing robes, the clean-shaven face. And Ahmed’s two young sons are just as puzzled by their grandfather’s customs. After visiting for an hour or so, they always start fidgeting. “When are we going home?” they ask their father, not meaning to be impolite.
    Abdullah’s wife prepared some potatoes one Sunday when Ahmed and his children visited. Everyone sat on the ground, outside Abdullah’s mud-and-stick hut, eating the potatoes with their hands from a tin pot. Several chickens and two goats wandered among them. Abdullah seemed not to notice the flies but the children swatted at them constantly.
    “Grandfather,” the ten-year-old boy said, “how can you live like this? Why don’t you get a table? You don’t even have the sweet kind of potatoes like we get in the city.”
    The old man looked up, hurt, but said nothing. In a moment he dropped his gaze and went back to eating.
    *
Askari
means “guard” or “watchman” in Swahili. Armed with clubs, stones, whistles and sometimes spears, they guard private residences of anyone wealthy enough to own, say, a television set, as well as banks, hotels and most commercial enterprises with an inventory worth stealing. The majority are employed by large African-owned security companies that charge a client $180 a month for an
askari
’s services. An
askari
works twelve-hour shifts, usually seven days a week, and earns about $40 a month.

THE MEN AT THE TOP

    We spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for self-government, we would quickly create utopias. Instead injustice, even tyranny, is rampant.
    —P RESIDENT J ULIUS N YERERE OF T ANZANIA
    T HE TELEVISION SCREEN fills with an image of heavenly clouds. A choir of voices swells in the background. The music grows louder, and as the