A Fierce Famine Stalks Africa
Somalis traditionally did not number years but instead gave each a name that immortalized important events or crises.
Nineteen eleven was the year of forbidden food, meaning a hunger so profound that people were reduced to eating haram foods that Islam proscribes; nineteen twenty-eight was the year of registration, widespread drought forcing northern Somalis to finally submit to registration by their British colonizers in return for aid; nineteen seventy-four was the year of the long-tailed, an interminable drought in the whole region that contributed to the fall of Haile Selassie.
Famines have visited the Horn of Africa so regularly in the past 25 years that there has been no time for new poetic appellations.… Seguir leyendo »