This prison memoir will not only give first-hand information of the experience of the brutalities of Siyad Barre’s Somalia but also of the life of a nomad child who is brought to the city to live with his aunt because there was no work for him due to the fact that his father did not own any camels to be looked after. In the city while growing up, hunger was never far away. That motivated Mahamed to perform well at school which gave him the opportunity to go to the United Kingdom. After he earned his university degree, he went back to his home town Hargeysa where he met young professionals’ like him. They decided to volunteer for their community, what became to be known by the international community as Hargeysa Self-help group and locally as UFFO. For their noble acts, Mahamed and his colleagues were imprisoned and what followed were eight long lonely years, where the studying of insects was the main entertainment of the day. The reasons why they were freed, while at the same time the rest of their community had been destroyed, were as strange and surprising as the reasons why they were jailed in the first place were bizarre. There was no time in Mohamed’s life to get depressed or discouraged when he and his group were freed as the reconstruction of the country had to start immediately.

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Presentation and book signing:

• Sheffield
  Saturday, 13 March 2010 at 1pm at Sorby House, 42 Spital Hill, Sheffield, S4 7LG. (see details)
• London
  Friday 9/4/2010, from 6.00 – 9.00 at Willesden Green Library Centre, 95 Highroad, Willesden, London NW10 2SF
  Sponsored by: Medeshi media group and Somali Advice and Forum of Information (SAAFI) (see details)
• Birmingham
  Saturday, 10 April 2010 at 1pm at Birmingham Central Library, Library Theatre, Paradise Place, BE 3HQ.
  Event sponsed by Kayd Somali Arts and Culture in collaboration with Birmingham Central library (See details)