ART-SOMALIA: Struggling to Survive

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Philip Ngunjiri

NAIROBI, Nov 3 1998 (IPS) - Artists from Somalia, struggling to survive an eight-years-long conflict in the Horn of Africa, drew attention to their plight at an exhibition at the National Museums of Kenya which closed last week.

“The international community doesn’t want to hear anything about, Somalia where the ordinary citizens are yearning for peace, but this doesn’t mean that the country is beyond reprieve,” says 44-year-old Abdelrahman Mohamed Samater who was one of 120 Somali artists exhibiting their work.

“The day is coming when we’ll all say ‘No’ the warlords who have been the only beneficiaries of this stupid feud”, he says.

Other artists reprsented in Nairobi came from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and South Africa.

“The response was quite overwhelming,” said Maria Frauenrath of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-Somalia, one of the organisers of the exhibition who awarded prizes to some of the Soimalis – Amin Amir Mohamed, Wahiib Mustafa Mohamed, Abdi Gaab, Lul Abdulahi Abdi and Xaliimo Xaagi Jamaac.

“Their work expresses the sadness of Somalia. Innocent people there have been subjected to poverty due to known reason that need only common sense to solve,” said a visitor to the exhibition – Milke Vivik-Sluit, a tourist from the Netherlands. He paid 500 dollars for a painting out of sympathy and “love for peace.”

“I wish I could do more for the impoverished Somali women and children,” he observed.

Prizes for the Somali artists ran to clocks, radios and encyclopedias and they also received the money from sales of their painting. ‘The money was not the main purpose of the show but will serve as an appreciation to the artists who participated,” said Frauenrath.

The jury also announced 30 artirts had won water-colour painting sets for their work.

Between 1991-1992 some 300,000 people in Somalia died of starvation and famine-related diseases as a result of the fighting between rival clans following the ouster of ex-dictator Siad Barre in 1991.

The civil strife prompted an ill-fated intervention by a U.N. force in 1994. Washington withdrew U.S. troops – that comprised the majority of the U.N. force – after supporters of the late General Mohamed Farah Aideed killed around American soldiers. In March 1995, the United Nations also pulled out, leaving Somalia at the mercy of its warlords.

The artists say they want to stop the mayhem. “Not every Somali is war-like, we have nice people in Somalia,” says Samater.

According to UNDP, more than one-fifth of world’s population – an estimated 1.3 billion – live on less than one US dollar a day. Some 840 million people go hungry every day or face food insecurity.

“Poverty is not to suffered in silence by the poor, nor can it be tolerated by those with power to change it. The challenge is to mobilise action state by state, organisation by organisation, individual by individual,” UNDP chief, James Gustave has stated.