Sunday, May 1, 2011

My Father’s Farm by Malyun Abdullahi

         
In Eastern Somalia, a small village stands far from the nearest city, near in the forest where hyenas, deers and foxes roam. This is where I grew up. My city was sandy and had trees. There were no oceans. I came from a family of farmers.  We were living in a small town.  It had a lot of farms.  Our farm was growing different kinds of vegetables and fruits, such as mangoes, lemons, bananas, watermelons and other kinds of vegetables too many to list here. There were also some birds and cats on the farm. My father’s farm was very big.  It had two wells and a pond.



A lot of people lived on the farm, including lots of children.  There were eight boys and six girls.  Also, other children were living with us.  They were our cousins. Our mom and dad cared for us. My uncle lived with us, too.  We shared four houses.
Our days were very busy. Every day my mother woke us at 5:00 am and she said to us, “Pray now.”  After that she sent us to do different jobs.  Some of my brothers worked at the farm and my sisters worked at the home. Also, we had goats.  My sister and I led goats to the forest.  When we finished working, we went to school. We were at school until 1:30pm. Nobody stayed home except the young children.  They stayed and played all day.
After school when we went back home, we prayed, ate lunch and slept until 4:30pm.  All of my family ate lunch together. For lunch we ate pasta and rice.  In the afternoon my older brothers worked at the farm.   They were irrigating and farming it.  Occasionally they used a machine to irrigate farm and occasionally they didn’t.  When they finished working they played indoors at the farm.  They threw rotten vegetables at each other.
Every spring my father planted crops and they grew. He planted tomatoes, carrots, bananas, potatoes and cabbage.  When the vegetables and crops became ripe, my father took them to the city to sell them.  He sold them to the city and got a lot of money.  That was the first benefit that we got from our farm.  The second benefit was using our vegetables to cook food.  We never bought vegetables in the market.
Every night the children came together.  We sat on a big mat and my older brother told us funny stories until bedtime. He made fun of history, and sometimes he told us about cannibals.
When I was four years old my brothers and sisters went to school, and only my young brothers and I were left at home.  I cared for them until my brothers and sisters came, because I was a brilliant girl.  Everyday after my brothers went to school, the younger children and I entered the farm. We played in it, and we ate the fruits. Sometimes we played hide and seek, and other times we played ball.  
One day my young brothers and I were playing outside of the house.  After fifteen minutes we heard the bray of a hyena.  At that time he stood behind our home.  We were so scared because he attacked us and he tried to eat us. The young children cried and I said to them, ”Shut up, don’t cry.” Suddenly we ran to the farm and we hid behind the plants until my brother arrived home.  When they came, we went outside and told them what happened to us. They felt scared about what could’ve happened to us. They told us to stay inside after that. After that day I didn’t want to stay home with the young children because of the scare with the hyena.
The next day I said to my mother, ”I don’t want to stay home, I want to go to school.”  Then my mother replied, “You are young and you can’t go to school.” I was sad, because I wanted to go to school to learn and to be educated.
     On a summer day at our farm the children and I went to the forest to play and watch the animals that lived there. We watched tigers, monkeys and deer. My older brothers were swimming in the pond and the young children were playing in the forest.  They liked to play hide and seek and climb the trees.
After 30 minutes, five boys arrived. They looked like bad people and like they were up to no good because they were mischievous children, and they insulted us. We also insulted them.  At last they fought with us. Suddenly my sister gave a concussion to one of them. She had thrown a rock at him.  Blood spurted from his head and one of the other guys took him to the hospital. after this incident we didn’t trust them. After that day we never saw them again, because they were mischievous children and they had no house or parents.

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