SEEKING VOTES FROM THE VICTIMS OF THE DROUGHT.
By Mohamed Ahmed Abdi Ba’alul.
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| Mohamed Ahmed Abdi Ba'alul. |
All living creatures are looking up the pale sky, pleading
for the mercy of Allah, as the South Eastern monsoon winds herald the rainy
weather. Desperate eyes are looking up
the sky, expecting to see the fluffy, cotton-like clouds under the blue roof,
or to sniff the sweet aroma that introduces the drops of mercy to the barren and
brown country. Animals that once produced milk and meat, or promised cash to
their fellow pastoralists, are reducing in to fleshless frame of bones. The fear of oppressive death came to every
haggard, down-trodden cow, sheep or goat with looks that tells you that they
this time cannot make it anymore.
Emaciated and dehydrated, cows could not hitch up the weight
of their rattle bones from the ground; they cast pleading stares to their
empty-handed Guys who could not return the favour of the old good days. Though,
it was speechless, they had the instinct to understand the sentence of death or
farewell from the eyes of the desperate human fellows.
The nature told us, when the sky become pale, the earth
becomes pale too. All green pastures that looked like a green-carpeted fields
grew in to brown, dust-filled floors. Due to the scorching heat plus absence of moisture, plants sacrificed their stiff, blade-like leaves to the
nature. Grasses and weeds edged back to their roots to cope with the harsh
conditions of the dryness, or to dodge away from the invading mouths of their
predators. The exhausted and sapped earth was left nothing to offer to its
dependents. Its surface were crusted, a thin hard crust that hold bare leafless
stalks and branches, which are as ugly as the horns of monstrous evils . A
crust that when it was broken, the dust forms. Every moving thing lifts dust
into air, a walking man makes a layer of dust as high as his waist, while a vehicle on the dirt road is leaving
clouds of dust that will be long to settle back again. As the sky continues to
seem like that, the earth had nothing, except plumes of dust and misleading
water-like hazes of the Kaleel heat.
As the funerals of starved animals become a daily scene in
every region, the nature is now, starting to ring the bells of death to the humans
too. Recently, the first five humans, who regarded themselves as sacred souls,
and citizens of this republic have been reported dead as the victims of
droughts. The death of human being is
the next thing that everybody with a thinking head could reasonably predict to see at any moment. Because it was apparent that government and its NERAD had failed to make us prepared for the worst, despite of early distress calls.
It is not a rainy spring, but a political spring. Thirsty and hungry people came out of their huts, whenever a sign of coming dust turned ups from the roads. Later, brown smog approached to prove itself as neither winds of rain, nor the water-carrying tankers, but a column of vote-seeking Land-cruisers with presidential nominees, government officers and MPs on their boards. The sight of these Lad-Cruisers were the feeling of a let-down to the awaiting mob, whom with their perched throats, hardly swallowed the lumps of truth.
The smell of the hot stinging dust has covered the noses of
the help-seeking crowds, as soon as racing cars came into halt. Men stood, silent with
dismay, whereas women had come out from their house, chose to stand beside
their husbands this time, but not behind them as usual. Together, they stood
shoulder to shoulder to face the front-line of the political mockery.
Poor nomads! The pure
culture of hospitality and values of generosity are what forced them to show a
welcoming gesture to their guests; pretending fake smiles and gathered their
strength to subdue the furies swelling inside them. They had been providing
banquets and serving dishes brimming with the meats of their hardly survived cattle
to the suit-wearing fools from Hargiesa. Fools that never had bothered to share
their sympathy to the impoverished communities or feel the shame of seeking
vote from the help-seekers. These political trippers reminds you the three imbeciles that were traditionally known as the three Maanlaawe(s); factitious characters of a Somali folklore.
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