The headline, "Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine." fills a space far from the top of the NYTimes webpage; in seeing out the news, tucked into a subheading, far beneath the cries of the budget impass, the daily trends of New York, it seemed strangely fitting. Another forgotten corner of a forgotten land, filled with legions of forgotten people, who are now starving by the thousands, while the world whittles away its attentions on the disfunctional western governments and their self-enabled fiascos, or 65 people killed in one of the richest nations in the world by a lone madman; and yet, what of the thousands dying every day, the nameless, the countless, those who, in their multitude, will be hidden from history, admonished to obscurity, a cruel fate. I am brought back to the words of Kapuschiski who wrote of these very lands decades ago, as timeless as the struggles, the utter fragility, ongoing:
"...in the dry season, most pastures disappear entirely, and pools and wells become shallow or dry up altogether. If the drought persists, hunger ensues, animals perish, many people die. The young Somali starts getting to know his world. He studies it. Those individual acacias, those torn-up clumps of sod, those lonely, elephantine baobabs are signals telling him where he is and which way he should go. Those tall rocks, those steep, stony faultlines, those protruding cliff edges, instruct him, indicate directions, keep him from losing his way...The youngster will then comprehend that the features of the landscape are varied and changeable, and that one must know the order of their permutations, their significance, what they are telling him, what they are warning him...It is here that begins the great Somali game, the game of survival, of life. For these trails lead from well to well, from pasture to pasture...The dry season becomes a time of fever, tension, fury, wars. People's worst traits surface: distrust, deceit, greed, hatred."
"...in the dry season, most pastures disappear entirely, and pools and wells become shallow or dry up altogether. If the drought persists, hunger ensues, animals perish, many people die. The young Somali starts getting to know his world. He studies it. Those individual acacias, those torn-up clumps of sod, those lonely, elephantine baobabs are signals telling him where he is and which way he should go. Those tall rocks, those steep, stony faultlines, those protruding cliff edges, instruct him, indicate directions, keep him from losing his way...The youngster will then comprehend that the features of the landscape are varied and changeable, and that one must know the order of their permutations, their significance, what they are telling him, what they are warning him...It is here that begins the great Somali game, the game of survival, of life. For these trails lead from well to well, from pasture to pasture...The dry season becomes a time of fever, tension, fury, wars. People's worst traits surface: distrust, deceit, greed, hatred."
