The Somali community in the UK: What we know and how we ... - ICAR

social parameters” is detrimental to education and
employment, a drain on income, and destructive of
family relationships. In addition:
Excessive khat use is also associated in
some cases [with] psychotic disorders,
paranoia, and hallucination, which can
lead to clinical depression and mental
health problems, particularly in those
who have experienced the trauma of
civil war. (ibid)
A recent development is the increasing use of
khat by women, who rarely chew in Somalia.
Somalis suggest that this is connected to the high
proportion of single mothers in the community
who feel trapped by poverty and social isolation
and seek the company of other women. But they
also allude to the increasing freedom of women
and their new independence from men in the
changing circumstances of the UK.
Women and gender roles
I remember living a medium life. Me,
my husband and eight children. I
remember my baby calling, “Mama,
mama”. Quite normal.… But the war
breaks. We fled. Far away to south
Somalia....Two months on. Everything’s
out of hand. We run away from the
civil war. Me, my husband and eight
children.… And we go from Somalia
by boat towards Kenya. But suddenly
the boat is sinking. The boat is
overloaded…. The boat broke. Water
breaking into us…. I can’t swim. The
boat sinks. Who will rescue us?....
200 people are dying, drowning. I’m
losing my family to the sea. Five of my
daughters are lost…. And my eldest
son, he’s just begun his life, he’s finished
university. He’s lost. That makes six of
my children. Dead in the sea, in one
day.… Suddenly, an Italian tourist boat
is passing.… people come to rescue us.
They grab my baby, who I’m holding.
And another child of mine…. All the
time my baby’s calling “Mama, mama.”
Suddenly, I am hauled into the boat like
a baby myself…. I am crying. My whole
body. Crying.… Do you hear me?…
I cannot forget that day. Although
I’m here before you today, you can’t
have imagined the life of one Somali
woman.… am breaking my silence.
The world should know my life, my
baby calling “Mama, mama”. The world
should hear this life.
Quadra was not there herself to tell her story
in the small Soho theatre where Somali women
were Breaking the silence in June 2003. She found
it too painful to be present, and a friend spoke
her words on her behalf. 128 Other testimonies
of war - suffering hunger and violence, witnessing
rape, torture and death, surviving flight and refugee
camps - were recounted by the performers. Somali
is an oral culture - storytelling was once part
of everyday life, and it is from Somali women’s
personal accounts that we have the most vivid
pictures of Somali experience. 129 Having less of a
public voice than men, women are eloquent on the
events of their lives.
The ten women on the platform were of all
ages - from a great-grandmother to schoolgirls -
representing different stages of immigration. Older
women who arrived in the UK before Quadra had
a more benign experience of arrival. In the early
days, Somali seamen, lodging in port areas since
the nineteenth century, left their wives with kin
at home to bring up the children and tend the
herds in what was then the British protectorate
of northern Somalia. Many Somalis had also been
living in Aden, where British ships would dock,
but in 1967 the country gained its independence
128. Page 8 of Breaking the silence script, kindly given to me by Ruqia
Hersi.
129. For two other collections of short testimonies by women, see Somali
Women’s Association (1987/8) and Hassan (2000). Secondary sources
consulted for this section include: Ali (2001); Berns McGown (1999); Castley
(1991); Cox (2003); Dirie (1998); El-Solh (1993a; 1993b); Farah and Smith
(1999); Griffiths (2002); Harper-Bulman (1997); Polese (2001); Sales &
Gregory (1996); Summerfield (1993).
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