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by Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Friday, October 30, 2009
If you were a pilot and all the aircrafts of your country have been grounded or their parts looted by thugs, where would you go? Where would you turn to for a living? That is the question many Somali pilots have asked themselves when tribal wars broke out in Somalia following the demise of the military regime in 1991. Some of our pilots have remained in the country while others left Somalia to test their luck in other countries.
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Capt. Faytaan at his home in Mogadishu, Somalia - Photo HOL
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A good example is Captain Mohamud Abdullahi Barre (Feytan), a Somali pilot with an experience of 50 years in the field of civil aviation. Feytan lived in Jalalqsi of Hiiraan region the last time I saw him (Hope he is still there, alive and kicking). When things got mixed up as a result of the war, Capt. Feytan became a farmer. If you visit him in his farm today you will no way be able to make a distinction between him and his fellow villagers who have never seen inside an airplane. I met him once in Mogadishu before I left Somalia in 2007 and I intensely admired his resilience to restart his life afresh in a entirely new field. I met him just by coincidence. That day I walked out from a building with concrete roofing where I was sheltering not from rain but from rockets, which were finding their way to Bakaraha. I guess he was too hiding in a nearby place but I can not exactly confirm that. A friend of mine introduced him to me and I felt extremely delighted with his vigour, vitality, his soaring spirits and glaring courage.
We talked for a while and soon melted in the huge crowd as each one of us was rushing to attend few errands. I have to admit that Feytan, the pilot-turned-farmer, and other Somalis of his type are a good role model for us all. They teach us to focus on the future rather than wasting time and energy on a "good" past that shall never come back or a "bad" one that injects nothing more than pain in our life.
Capt. Gure at Lund Conference in Sweden - Photo HOL |
People with positive thinking teach us that hardship is just a passing cloud, which shall soon be driven away by the forces of time. They tell us to build stern mechanisms of survival when winds of anarchy blow or a dust of horror rises. Such people are the ones who run the survival marathon with a steady determination of never looking back while avoiding themselves to fall on the sideways of despair. But there is another pilot I had come in contact with accidentally at the train station of Lund, Sweden.
He was invited to attend the Lund conference on the Horn of Africa affairs, which is held once in every year. That pilot and I have never met before but just for some strange reasons each one thought that he knew the other. "Have I met you before" the pilot asked me and I replied "No" much quicker than expected. "But your face seems quite familiar" he said. Then I gave him a deeper look to invest a little effort in the man who firmly believes that he had seen me before. His interest in discovering me has led me to convince him the way I did with others who have shown curiosities.
I started by saying "Maybe you have seen my picture in some websites and that is why you think you know me". Well that could be the reason" he responded. Which website do you write to" he went on. I said without hesitation "Hiiraan Online (HOL) and Authorsden.com (AD) are my favourite websites. I send contributions to the Opinion page of HOL though some of them do not swim through for publication. But when they consider my material for publication they often put my picture at the corner of my article or poetry, so,if you are a reader of HOL, you may have seen me in that website. Then the pilot released a big laugh into the air as he said, "I am the Managing Director of HOL. My name is Gure". To my amazement I shouted "Woow....Are you really Mr. Gure of HOL? "Yes I am". He said as the smile on his face stayed longer and quite thicker. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gure" I said, adding "I’m happy that I finally met you in person after knowing you for many years only by way of internet". He was a cheerful man in his mid forties, I guess, looking confident and extremely sanguine.
In exchanging few words with him, Gure told me that he is an airline pilot, whose aircraft has been hijacked in 1991 by gunmen who diverted the flight from its Djibouti´route to Gedo region. "Recalling the horrible incident, which started two and a half hours after taking off from Mogadishu airport, his head explored through a strand of distant memories till the scenario appeared vividly in his mind. Then a telephone call interrupted our conversation but we continued shortly after that.
As we went out of the Station we restarted our chat about the hijack episode. Cautiously taking the stairs, Gure said " The militia forced me to land in Garbaharey but due to fears that the plane might be shot down I was re-routed again to Lug where I made a safe landing on a dusty makeshift airstrip with no sings of emergency facilities. Then they took me to Beled Hawo by land. Being a hostage to armed militia, there was nothing I could do more than waving back to my plane to bid it farewell, saying in low tune " Good Bye.God Bless you"
Kids examine the wreckage of a Capt. Gure's Airplane, Photo: Hilarie Avril
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"While in Gedo region the elders treated me very humanely as they set me free without being harmed in anyway. As I regained my freedom, I proceeded to Beled Hawo and thereafter managed to cross the Kenyan Border over to Mandhera. I was then flown to Nairobi" Concluded Gure, showing gratitude to all those who have welcomed him at the airport as well as those who took part in his release.
Being a pilot without an airline did not discourage him from sustaining a decent life in the face of a competitive world. He had carved a niche for himself by becoming a website owner. Today, the pilot-turned journalist is a successful entrepreneur who runs one of the most-widely read websites ever created by Somalis. My encounter with these two pilots, Feytan and Gure, is a treasure I shall always preserve and cherish. On behalf of the Somali pilots wherever they are, both male and female (so far I know Asli Cabade as the only Somali female pilot), I wish to congratulate them for their courage to rebuild their lives even after losing their aircrafts and their country in general. I also congratulate all Somalis who have re-instituted their shattered lives and put themselves back to the map of life without robbing others at gunpoint.
Resilient Souls
Somalia has fallen from the towers of pride
But never have its people fallen from grace
They had lost their steam of snobbery
But never had their spirits plummeted
Even in the midst of extreme darkness
A light of hope is shining deep within
Giving them a buoyancy to ascend high
They are the sturdy people of Somalia
Whose country had gone into a disarray
But never surrendered to forces of evil
They are the people of Somalia
They are the resilient souls of the century
Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Writer and Film maker
Vaxjo University
Sweden
[email protected]