By Bill Eichenberger
This month, 50 nongovernmental groups -- including CARE, Save the Children and World Vision -- warned that the situation in Somalia is "likely to continue to deteriorate in the coming months."
The Somali civil war that triggered the unprecedented crisis -- traced to 1991 -- was preceded by six years of revolution as the regime of Siad Barre struggled to maintain power.
Long have the people of Somalia suffered.
Columbus photographer Abdi Roble, a Somali emigre, and writer Doug Rutledge spent five years on The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away, a collection of pictures and essays that document life in Somali refugee camps and follow the family of Sheik Abdisalam from Africa to the United States.
The book also explores the two largest Somali populations here -- in Columbus and Minneapolis.
Roble, an award-winning freelance photographer and once a star soccer player in Somalia, came to Columbus in 1989. When he arrived, he knew of only two other Somali families living in the area.
Today, more than 45,000 Somalis call the city home.
Rutledge has taught English, English literature and English as a second language in Columbus for more than 20 years.
The Dispatch asked the pair a few questions.
Q: You had role models for the project, didn't you?
Roble: Yes, yes, we conceived of this project as in the tradition of documentary photographers such as Dorothea Lange (who photographed the Depression) and Jacob Riis (who photographed post-Civil War urban squalor). We wanted to make a history of the Somali diaspora, especially to give Somali refugees something they can hold onto as a culture since they've been displaced from their homeland.
I met a Somali woman in Minneapolis, and, once she saw what Doug and I were doing, she said, "I don't care what my children learn in school; this is their history."
Q: You spent a week in the Somali refugee camps. How would you describe the experience?
Rutledge: It was absolutely heartbreaking. We met a 6-year-old child who was suffering from malnutrition and wasn't receiving any medical treatment. You just wanted to pick him up and carry him to a hospital.
You know what else was heartbreaking? Walking into the U.N. banquet tent and seeing all that food after you'd just spent the day among thousands and thousands of malnourished Somalis.
Roble: They would run out of their huts and grab us by the arm and say, "Come and see my husband." They want you to tell their story.
But what we could give them was nothing compared to what we took back from the experience. We gained more than we gave.
Q: How dire was/is the situation?
Rutledge: There were 150,000 refugees in the camps and 50,000 more outside in the desert waiting to get into the camps. Some had been waiting as long as three years in the desert.
Q: How did you go about photographing Somalis in Columbus; Minneapolis; and Portland, Maine?
Rutledge: The trick is to be a part of their daily lives and yet to photograph them in all their dignity and humanity.
I think that's part of Abdi's genius -- that he sees beyond pain to their humanness.
Roble: The way I think about it is: Are you a good human being? If you take the camera away from the photographer, is he or she a good human being? If so, hand the camera back.
Q: A significant number of Somalis live in Columbus, and yet they remain largely out of sight. What do you hope your book will achieve?
Rutledge: The Somali Diaspora is a chance for folks to get to know their neighbors, to understand a little better their customs -- why they dress the way they do, why they behave in certain ways.
We hope the book encourages neighborliness.