Yusuf Garad is a positive role model for Somali journalists

I was extremely yearned to appear on the stage of celebrity. As a fashion-conscious boy, I liked my clothes, my hairstyle, my perfume, and my shoes to be discussed. I had a hot desire to be familiar among my friends. For a reason I still cannot figure out, I put that materialism on the backseat of my life and turned my attention towards my school grades. I began to take my notes regularly and started systematic organizing and reading of my lessons.

The days of the final exam crept towards the due and I began to devote more energy for the preparation of my lessons. Besides my remarkable fidelity, I was highly conscious what is going around me in the class. The excellence and the hard work of the others was a big nuisance to me. A brainy boy named Omer became irremovable tumor in my mind. The boy had an extraordinary talent for math. He could solve complicated Algebraic and trigonometric expressions mechanically and could write and speak English and Arabic smoothly.

More to the point, his dressing style could force every boy dash to and wander in SABAWANAAG clothes shop in the down town. His courageous expressions could compel the lips of every girl shout “wow” I became fed up about these and the flaming jealousy stretched in my stomach like the ulcer. I got into my head that I had no way to outdo him. The fifth day of the exam was cloudy and few water droplets popping sometimes. We were waiting the exam papers while some of the students were sitting under the Barasaf trees around the school and halfheartedly reading the acting subject which was math.

The rain droplets got strength, which coursed us to hide under the roof of the long, narrow corridor in the exterior porch of the Sheikh Ali Jawhar secondary school. Staying there we could see whitish brown water cascading over the rocks on the adjacent yards. The bell rang and the students rushed to their exam rooms. I entered my class and sat the third raw of the middle column and Omer also sat the same raw in the corner column. The invigilator came in and delivered the exam papers. On the papers, there were ten trigonometric “cos&sine” and view analytic geometric ones. With an apparent confusion, I started to do the work.

But the fear of losing and the suspicion of becoming nothing were the real entourages of mine. Beside me in the next column Omer was solving the problems one by one and writing numbers as fast as an old clerk. Every digit he put on his paper was like wasp sting in my heart. Was he Pythagoras? The granite part of my heart said “no” but the soft part was in ambivalence. While things were like that, Omer needed my scientific calculator to complete his work.

At first I hesitated to give him but after one minute or so I reconsidered my choices and found this a chance to decimate his grade and did a technical trick to the calculator. I deliberately changed the right mode of trigonometric cos&sine, which was “Degree” into “Rad”.  He used my calculator and set up all the answers miscalculated. He got 12 marks only in hundred scale based exam. Was his failure my end?  No, it was the mean to achieve. Was I achieved? No, I shared same destiny and failed to place myself in the first three rewarding positions.

Living in an arid land plus the alienating imaginary scarcity of water, pasture, and incompatibility among Somali clans and sub clans, Somali people developed a destructive culture which encourages aggressiveness and chronic retaliation. They also developed poetry style which easily stores the past grudges, prejudices, and antagonisms and made them easily retrievable and accessible to the later generations. As gadaboursi “Ogas Nour” eloquently remarked during his victorious war with Issa “kablalax iyo kikuyu halkay kaba la’aan yaadcay idoor wuxu kibirlahaa keenada aan galiyay inuu ciise igu soo kama’o waa kas aadame” where Kablalax of “Darood” major sub clan and “Kikuyu” of Kenya fled with fear and where we prevailed “Idoor” an unordinary name of isiqs, its idiotic act for “Issa” to attack us”.

In this case, Somali clans are ready militants and they are more inclined to attack one another. Have you ever attended Somali traditional ceremony? If yes, I could take for grant you saw a man who wrapped white sheet from waist to knee with another one on his chest and equipped with spear and bowed sharp knife with animal skin covered (bilawe). The man also had an anti-spear instrument made from animal leather and small woods which is known among Somalis as a “Gashan” the glimpsing knife, the spear, and the anti-spear stand for that Somali men are either ready to take an offensive war or being defensive against the potential attack.

This ill-fated and error-prone society that have a high propensity to chaos had met ruthless media with filthy and ill-mannered journalists on their way to peace and tranquility; the media that changed the bad condition into a worse; the one that magnified the smallest faults among clans and sub clans into a giant atrocities; The one which was catalyst for the gauche Somali civil wars and sectarianism. They encountered media that fueled feeling of resentment and hostility that claimed enormous youngsters in the Somali territory.

In an awesome period in which the contradicting informations broadcast by hostile radios, TVs, and newspapers harassed the mind of Somalis as the Jerry harasses Tom in the animated children cartoons and forced them to be ambivalent and sway between their inherited humane goodness and media-made ill repute and the BBC which is the most respected one was indifferent and vacated its role as a father of media, courageous and gracious man emerged as a life boat of harshly drowning Somalis. As a brilliant Somali journalist he served as a positive role model for the acting Somali journalists and turned the fire promoting media into an effective extinguisher which in turn changed the hugely corrosive acid of individual and tribal rivalry into a harmless and neutral one.

Like the gravity pulls down the upwardly flying space shuttle it’s a common that Somalis take hold of their heroes and hereon and try to put on them an appalling surnames. They call Madam Arowolo as a “tyrant” Sayid Abdullah Hassan as “impulsive” and Adam Abdullah Hassan as “mediocre yes man” but Yusuf Garad Omer kept walking through these libelous propagandas towards his duties.

As a central steering figure of BBC Somali service, he launched an effective program to train Somali journalists and to enable them be inline with modern journalism and equip them the idea of impartiality. He uprooted the weeds in the media sector by changing BBC into a harsh environment for the uncivilized, immoral, and self-righteous individuals. Through the power of BBC, Yusuf also remain giant promoter of peace and democracy and series predator of ethnocentrism, religious extremism, destructive tribalism, partiality, and bias.

A windy evening while senior residents of Borama were listening BBC in the busy cafeterias of the city my friend Ahmed Adan and I entered Goljano cafeteria and ordered sandwiches. As we unwrapped our sandwiches my attention was invited by critical interview Yusuf Garad had with one of the ONLF leaders.

ONLF leader: Ogaden region is bearing a burden of unjust……………….

Yusuf Garad: Isn’t it better you say the Somali Kilin?

ONLF leader: No, it’s just to say Ogaden because the colonial powers regard it as” Ogaden”      Yusuf Garad: How can you be against the border sat by the colonial powers if you believe this name “Ogaden” is just because of the colonial powers?

ONLF leader: een….een …een ……   …. The bewildered leader became tightlipped.

In a five minutes interview, Yusuf enabled enormous number of people who consider “Ogaden” as their symbolic father question the legitimacy of this selfish name. In this way the intellectually gifted BBC Somali head Yusuf Garad shrinks the growth of the evil.

Over the years, Yusuf Garad was allegedly accused by small naysayer BBC listeners who want to play with him lose-to-lose game as I did in my secondary school years. But the majority of the listeners and the Somalis as whole admire him as a savior of the Somali media sector. It was said “millipede” does not limb a loss of one leg” Therefore, the jealous, the wicked, and the cynic cannot put only one stain on Yusuf’s clean morale.

Farah Barkhad Nour (Kidifaal)

Amoud University graduate - Borama, Somaliland

Tell: 4527691

Email: Alfa.345@hotmail.com