I’m Starting a Newspaper with One Computer, Three Months Worth of Paper and a Cartoonist
If Mohamed Amin runs out of money in the process of building his start-up newspaper, the “Hargeysa Guardian,” he will ask his sister, who works as a maid, if she can spot him. He and his illustrator colleague Abdirashid are the editors-in-chief. They have just hired their first reporter, who will cover youth issues. I told them about my old “Act One” column and they were inspired.
Mohamed Amin grew up in the countryside. When he was 10, he and his family fled Somaliland to live in an Ethiopian refugee camp while Siad Barre bombed their village (see earlier post for explanation). Then his dad died. Some said he had diabetes, others cancer. But no one could offer any solutions.
Mohamed studied hard, even in the refugee camp, and when his older sister moved to Djibouti, he followed her to attend high school there. He took English and writing courses at a protestant mission after high school (he personally practices Sufi Islam) and was then recruited to work as a newspaper reporter by a former commander in the guerrilla army that helped overthrow Siad Barre, the Somali National Movement. For the past 7 years Mohamed built up a career as a human rights investigative reporter for Haatuf Media Network, the former-commander’s contentious but popular Hargeysa newspaper.
Among other feats, Mohamed got a mentally handicapped man moved from jail into a mental hospital. He persuaded the police at the precinct, who felt bad about keeping the mentally handicapped man in jail but didn’t know what else to do since he sometimes threatened local residents, to “arrest” Mohamed for a fictional crime so he could sit in jail with the man and interview him. They agreed. The next day’s Mohamed’s newspaper ran his story on the cover. Within one day the Minister of Interior dispatched someone to remove the challenged man from jail and put him in a hospital.
In ten years Mohamed wants to run for president of Somaliland. He hopes Hillary Clinton wins the U.S. election, and thinks America is helping Iraq. “When I am president of Somaliland I will also help people in other countries if I have a strong army,” he says. When I voice dissent, he says: “What? Do you want Iraq to be another Somalia?” He has a point. The roots of Somalia’s present instability are in the vacuum that was created by Siad Barre’s deposition after a long tenure as dictator.
ABOUT THE ARTICLE: Mohamed Amin will be the star of my Somaliland essay.