LET US VENERATE OUR LITERARY LIBRARIES
| Front Page |
By Hassan Ismail
With regard to our social and cultural values, Somaliland literature was, is and will be our guiding principle next to our holy religion in terms of tackling our societal stumbling blocks and evaluation of our degree of development through constructive poetic criticism on periodical basis to measure how far we have gone in every aspect of life. Given the essence of literature in general and poetry in particular according to Somaliland history, we should accord our walking literary libraries including Boobe Yusuf Dualle the respect and honor they deserve by furnishing them with the requisite resources, facilities and funding to cover the printing and publishing cost so that our artistic works, which are primarily unpublished, can be turned in to printed books available on display in the national book-points.
For instance, whenever an icon from Somaliland passes away , be it a literary or political figure, it is none other than Boobe who concisely writes down the historical profile of such prominent people in our local papers together with websites upon their departure to the other world.
Hence, the roughly prepared biographies as well as other works kept by our culture vultures should be obtainable in print so as to render them in to other languages and thereby creating enabling environment whereby we could swap historical and cultural heritage with Moslem countries of oceans of literary works studied at globally accredited institutions.
Further, our up-and-coming young generations are chiefly ignorant of our richness in literature and as the result, they look at Somaliland poems and songs with contempt despite having robust tertiary education, which might sound meaningless considering their backwardness in respect of their culture and traditions. Worse, they are able to recite poetry by famous western poets including William Shakespeare whereas they know nothing whatsoever about our literature.
In reality, Somaliland is about to be cultural wasteland provided that we do not stem the rising tide of artistic desecration by our young crop upon their graduation from universities. In brief, we are supposed to upgrade the quality of our indigenous literature in lieu of looking down on it .
In conclusion, I wish to exhort my fellow somalilanders particularly the youth to inherit good poetic legacy from the elderly for our old people have poetry in their minds at varying degrees. Our culture is unique compared to all other traditional inheritances in the world, so we have to be proud of it and thus, rescue it from ruin.
Internationally, cultural diversity is an important issue veneration of which is mandatory on every individual irrespective of his/her nationality.
Therefore, if we do not brag about our decent heritage and various parts thereof and emulate western culture instead, we will lose our identity as a sovereign nation.
Some back UN staff who were mainly from Europe and America, were invited to
a wedding reception at one of the 3-star hotels in Hargeisa. To their dismay, they were not impressed by the organization of the nuptial ceremony for it was typically westernized in every facet. Shortly afterwards, they left the party disappointed because there was no modicum of indigenous traditions throughout the wedding rituals.
Home | Contact us | Links | Archives