AU/UN IST News
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
It’s a bright morning in Kismayo, a port city in southern Somalia. Adan Mohamed slowly emerges from a mud-walled house, his orange reflector vest clashing with the determined sun. It’s another working day, similar to the last 30 years he has worked as an airport marshaller at the Kismayo airport.
“A marshaller is someone who guides the aircraft when it lands and leads it to the docking area,” explains the father of four who handles an average of fourteen flights a week. Adan is the only employee at the Kismayo airport. Officially, there’s no employee, following Somalia’s descent into anarchy and civil war, the civil aviation authority was rendered useless and staff fled the airport. But not Adan, he chose to stick there and in the two decades of incessant violence, he has single-handedly run the operations at the airport.
While the runway is intact, the airport, which is now overseen by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), other facilities at the airport can be described as basic at best. “There are challenges,” he says. “That is expected because this is a country that has been without law and order for a long time.”
As a commercial carrier taxies off the runway to the terminal, Adan quickly employs his wooden paddles-he had to fashion out a solution due to the lack of equipment-and skillfully gestures methodically until the plane comes to a halt. The passengers begin descending and quickly rush into the terminal; few bother to look in the way of the man who just helped them arrive safely.
Adan is used to such indifference. He’s seen worse. In more than twenty years, the airport has changed hands from clan militias to the Al Shabaab, to rag-tag government aligned forces before the city was finally liberated.
The airport is now under the custody of the Interim Jubba Administration and over the coming months, the responsibility will be handed over to the Somali Federal Government. There is hope then that the airport, often overshadowed by the city’s famous port will finally receive some attention and care.
Against this backdrop, Adan nonchalantly carries out his work but there’s little he can do to conceal his passion. He has continued working without pay since the collapse of the central government.
“It is what I studied. Anyone who is trained for a profession loves that profession and even if there are challenges, the passion is still there. I have been here for so long and I’ve persevered because I love my job,” says Adan.