My Eid experience at Mandera

By Fuad Abdirahman

As part of my journey in search of hope for my people, this time unlike before, I celebrated my Eid at Mandera town. The town occurs in the midst of three border crossing— Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

But this particular Eid was new experience to me: I was 1000km away from my hometown of Garissa, yet I was feeling more like home. The praying ground was not far from the hotel I spent the previous night. I checked the time and it was 8 in the morning; time to go out and join thousands of worshippers streaming towards the venue. Unlike when I was a young boy, this time round I did not need new clothes, but anything clean regardless of whether it has seen me hard times. Talk of significant transition from boyhood to manhood!

As I gravitated towards the Eid ground, I noticed that the speakers was switching from Somali to Swahili quite often something that rarely happens in my native town of Garissa. I was gripped by nationalism because we are walking to inculcate the people that they are not less Kenyans and that the national language of Swahili is a recipe for whatever that we are trying to achieve.

Am now among the pool of people streaming to take their place in the open ground. I listened carefully to every speech and small talk delivered by either the religious leaders or officials of the county government. There was a sense of bitterness in every breath they heaved and in every word they uttered. They surely were angry lot. They were mad at the government. At everything, it seemed.

Then something crossed my mind: It was an experience from last night as we entered the town of Mandera. A police officers on patrol stopped us and subjected anyone on board a series of questions ranging from where we came from at that “ungodly” hour to what we came to do in the town. We explained our mission and after lengthened call to his superior, he let us in.

The officer was true. The place was a ghost town with very few cautious people walking around. It took us half an hour to locate a hotel as the place was on virtual shutdown.

Today, the desperation was evident from the speeches delivered at the Eid ground. The speakers talked in turns of how they have been forgotten by the national government and how the mass exodus of non local professionals has thrown the region to an unprecedented education and health crisis.

Then an issue of ‘cimamad’ (famously known as Arafat after the Palestinian freedom fighter Yassir Arafat) became a hot topic of discussion. The MCA for Mandera township lamented that the residents were being targeted by people wearing the turban. He said that the Somali militias that cross over the border don the (turban) and that Arafat that the Kenyans security apparatus have of late started wearing a mask.

“Any person that hide his face must have a sinister motive,” he said.
As I returned from the Eid ground, I was feeling a sense of bitterness. I previously thought the problem was the rocky roads which are very hard to access, but there are many more problems in the region. I am never an emotional person, but today I was almost moved by the sad stories I heard.

I also came to understand that delivering in Mandera is not an easy feat during nighttime.

Men in Mandera pray that their wives don’t break the water in the night as taking them to the hospital for proper delivery is not an experience to behold. For her to reach the maternity with a police escort, you have to depart with any amount between sh 500 to sh 1000. Need I say this, you must fuel the police vehicle. The insecurity in Mandera is a reality that we must address.