Part II:

Part II: An Introspective Self Examination

Unequivocal Rejection

I am not a tribalist. I will not accept to be forced into that pigeonhole. Long time ago I decided to take an active part in formulating my own identity. And I decided to exclude the tribe from any definition of myself. It helped that I lived most of my adult life in Diaspora where I gained new identities that were unimaginable to me when I was growing up. I am a black man. I am an African in North America. I am colored. I am Moslem. I am a Canadian. I am a healer. I am a Somali of Somaliland. These are all different aspects of my identity. Every identity I have taken comes with a price tag in emotional currency and sometimes with a benefit or two. I have learned to live with all of them. Tribal identity? No. I could not live with it. I chose not to. A great many of my generation has similar discomfort with the tribal role. I suspect my Somali readers do share these same thoughts

Early Encounters

I encountered the absurdity of tribal reasoning early on in my life. In my first year of high school in what was then Amoud Secondary School. I was asked to vote for members of my tribe for the school committee. The organizer appealed to my tribal pride right from the beginning. He informed me that the school was in “our town” and belongs to “us” and therefore “we” should be its governing body. I did not bite for I knew otherwise; the government owned the school and not my tribe.

And the clever organizer appealed to my greed and self-interest. I was informed that committee members will give me favors but only if they are of my tribe. For example they will place more food on my plate when we line up for lunch at the school cafeteria. Now this was tempting, all of us students were always hungry and food was in short supply. But I knew that many times I was at the end of the line. If many members of my tribe got extra food those of us who come late will inevitably lose out regardless of tribe affiliation. That was not very reassuring. Food was a serious business in Amoud and I made my misgivings clear to the agitator.

He was not happy but not daunted. He wanted to bring me onboard, into the universal folds of tribal consensus. And he came up with another reason. I would be allowed (like other members of my tribe) to barrow books in the school library’s reference section. This made even less sense to me. Books are in the reference section because there are only few of them in the school. Now if members of my tribe take the reference books home all students will lose in the process. Even if I take one book home I will lose access to the 50 other books “barrowed” by other members of my tribe.

I pointed out to the tribal leader the inherent internal inconsistency of his reasoning. He was very unhappy. He branded me a troublemaker and an internal enemy of the tribe and a painful ostracism followed. But then I learned a valuable lesson: tribes in modern day Somali social life are more about corruption, favoritism and irrationality and getting unearned extra portions of food and other goods and services. . To this day I have yet to see any tribal reasoning that is not as shallow and nonsensical as those of the tribal agitator of my childhood days.

This early incident in my life has led me to question the tribe as an integral part of myself definition and to reject it as an agent of destruction in society. I organized my first anti tribal rally in the second year of my high school. I was an anti-tribal activist in my university days. I have placed my faith in Somali nationalism until the late nineties when it died on me. I felt orphaned and lost with the death of the Somali nation and its maternal ancestral concept of Great Somalia. I eventually found refuge and an adoptive home in the emerging identity of Somaliland nationalism.

There is nothing really unique in my experience. These are the shared trials of my generation. Some remained lost in intellectual wasteland pandering to murdering tribal kingpins, others are holding on firmly to the yesterday of Great Somalia even as they hold its ashes in their hands today. And still others have found refuge in a multitude of ”isms” that span the width of human thought.

Objective Self Examination

I consider myself a student of the sciences. In this fluid world of chaos and confusion I must stick with the scientific method as a means of salvation. I must not allow appearances to govern my thoughts. Where did I go wrong? Where did every body go wrong? Have I really defeated the tribe at least in the battlefield of my own conscience? Even though I think I freed myself of the tribal influence, I will subject my identity to an honest and objective self-examination.

I will call my readers who are part of my generation, in broad terms, to engage with me in this exercise for many of you will have personal experiences that parallel my own. We may be on a journey to nowhere, but at least we are not alone in it.

As I engage in introspection I am amazed at what I find in my mood, behavior and mind. Do me a favor dear reader and consider your own reaction as you interpret my meditation in the light of your personal experience.

        1. In the secrecy of my heart I count myself in my father’s tribe and not my mother’s even though I am much closer emotionally to my mother. It would have been the reverse had I been born in Ghana and practicing tribalism the Ghana style with a matriarchal lineage. Such self-identification will denote devotion to the Somali tribal system, not a rebellion against it.
        2. I preferentially attend to information from my tribal region.
        3. I am more likely to be emotionally upset when my tribe’s honor and dignity is attacked i.e. I take it personally.
        4. I disapprove of attacks against the dignity of other Somali tribes but then I base my disapproval on cognitive terms and not on emotional terms, in other words I don’t take it personally
        5. I have given more thought to Amoud University and not to Burcoa or Hargaysa U
        6. I have written more letters of protest against injustices that I thought were committed against my tribe than I wrote against injustices that befell all other Somali tribes put together. This by no means denotes a shortage of atrocities that befell other tribes or an excess of them that found their way into my tribal territory. Neither is true. I must have a warped tribally laced sense of detecting atrocities.

Painful Confessions

Regardless of my anguish at its bitterness, I am must come to the obvious conclusion and I must admit that I act, think and function as a tribalist. The data must lead. The scientific method allows for no exceptions. And what a horrible conclusion to reach! I am a tribalist? Woe betides! Have I worked so hard, for so long, for naught?

As I grew up my brain must have self organized itself to allow for structural (read physical) representation of the tribe. Social identity could follow color lines, language lines, religious lines or geographic lines. And social identity could be every bit as powerful as any internalized psychological construct. I should have known this all along. But self-deception is insidious and stealthy.

I should now admit that an aspect of the tribe has remained ingrained in me all along. And I thought, in my arrogance and ignorance, that I have beaten it long, oh so long ago. I like my fellow Somalis have to learn to live with this with this handicap.

The Émigré Somali

Like me the Diaspora Somali has immigrated with an implanted self-identity of the tribe that he has no hope of beating and no hope of ever washing off. The émigré has however encountered other cultures where tribes and tribal societies are considered backward and way too primitive. So he has learned to disguise the tribal language and adopt a new lingo that says much the same thing. In Somaliland the new euphuisms for different tribal self-identity include SNM, Awdal, Sool, Sanaag and Cayn. Similar euphuisms abound in Somalia proper.

Soon after settlement the Somali émigré started the construction of tribal cyber ghettoes that live in isolated Internet websites buried deep in the enmeshed global village and the omnipresent cyber space.

A physical distance separates the Diaspora Somali from his fellow tribes men. The distance would be expected to decrease tribal nexus. But alas it had a paradoxical effect. A tribal member inside Somalia has to be careful in matters of war with other tribes for he or his immediate family members may find themselves paying the ultimate price in that war. The emigrant Somali finds himself shielded by distance from the direct and personal cost of taking extreme tribal positions. And therefore in the cyber ghettoes the tribal nomad practices a pure kind of cost free tribalism. There is mounting evidence that Somali Diaspora drives and finances not only the economy of the country of origin but also its wars and conflicts.

To end this part here I stand dear reader, frightened by the implications of my meditation and convinced that you should be just as scared. For as you will see in the next part of this series the unseen hand of evolutionary extinction is at work and we are the unsuspecting victims.

Van Gogh: Old Man’s Sorrow

Part III: Evolutionary Stress on Tribal Society ( Will be posted July 9)
Abdishakur Jowhar MD, FRCP(C), DABPN
E-mail: [email protected]