Why I Cherish WardheerNews

The website www.wardheernews.com, the most "scholarly and journalistic" online magazine in the Horn of Africa, means a lot to me. I learned about WardheerNews (WDN) decades ago while in the City of San Diego in California–the city known by the nickname "America's Finest City" and named after Saint Didacus in Spanish. It came to my attention while perusing through the pages of the famous San Diego Tribune while strolling along the beautiful coastline of the Pacific Ocean where I could see from a distance some of America's finest warships, perhaps the United States Navy's best of the best and the most sophisticated Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Auxiliaries and frigates. The city for retirees, San Diego has the best weather in the United States with over 71° Fahrenheit in summer and above 50° in winter. In total, the city enjoys 300 days of sunny weather. To better understand the site's policies, it is best to peruse through the following lines to better understand the major requirements for posting articles and research papers: "Through admin@wardheernews.com, our readers may present their views and ideas to our Editorial Board members. Every effort will be made to respond to our readers comments without any delays. WardheerNews accepts articles that are exclusively intended for our readers. Articles are usually published after thorough scrutiny by our Editorial board." On the other hand, "WardheerNews does not publish or post articles found to be contravening the rules and regulations set forth by our editorial board team. Articles found to contain profanities or intended to malign the good names and reputations of individuals or groups will not be posted. Also articles published or appeared in other sites will not be considered for posting." The writer of the article on WDN succinctly explained how the website came to gain popularity, the names of the founders and their work stations and their educational backgrounds. It was on that material day that I learned the names of the people who made it a reality and who, up to this day, continue to make it running without any encumbrances. Even though I had known the town of Wardheer together with Walaal in the current Somali region in Ethiopia since adolescence, never at any time did I misconstrue the newly discovered WDN to have any relationship with a historical town. The title of the story, according to a close friend and honorable political leader was: "The Hassan Brothers." "The Hassan Brothers" as we now know today are Ahmed Hassan, Khalil Hassan, and Abdelkarim Hassan. Sons of the famous Abdirahman Hassan, the three have a saintly heritage and advanced and prolonged ancestral historical lineage because they hail from the most ancient city of Berbera along the Red Sea coast in the current unrecognized Somaliland State. Their great, great, great-grandfather was a man much revered by the Ottoman Empire such that they built him a beautiful palace solely for Islamic propagation. It was in 1984 while strolling with a friend Ibrahim Sambul near the palace and working for the American Engineering Firm MWK International, Limited, Incorporated that Ibrahim brought to my attention a strange historical narrative that almost jolted my nerves. My buddy requested me that we pay a visit to the occupants of the palace that required complete rehabilitation. After exchanging salaams with the generous and ebony colored ladies who served us the best quality northern Somalia tea popularly known as Barraad, my attention was altered by the beauty of the palace. After thorough observation of the finely manicured lawns and the old Ottoman Empire Arabesque design of the fountains and the general outlook of the construction design of the building, I felt perplexed by the historical legacy of Sheikh Yusuf who was offered the privilege to advance Islamic revivalism. Unfortunately, the Sheikh’s biography remains unwritten to this day. Reading has been my tradition long before the new WDN discovery and that I had been an avid reader of Newsweek and Time Magazines, some of Kenya's dailies, and the finely written weekly and that is the Weekly Review whose editor-in-chief was the Kenyan Harvard University educated Physicist and Historian Hillary Ng'weno. Mr. Ng'weno was also the founder of Nairobi Times, a paper that enjoyed good readership. While I admired the monthly publication Glamour and Drum Magazines and Somalia's Xiddigta Oktoobar, Heegan and Halgan among others, my first article on WDN appeared in the month of April 2006 respectively. The article was about the struggles of African students in the United States. After discovering the literary sagacity of the editors, is when I became a frequent freelance writer. For a long time, I've been impressed by the importance of viewing knowledge from different perspectives and that's why I chose the ways of polymathy and philomathy. The former means the ability to learn and acquire enough multifarious subjects while the later implies the love for studying and learning. From childhood up to now, I've been inquisitive of every noble subject and that specializing in a specific field has never been my long term plan. It was only two years after it was launched that I jumped on the bandwagon by contributing nonstop, a habit that continues to this day. “And”, “because”, by the way, sorry our esteemed readers, for starting a sentence with “and” or “because” is ungrammatical. What I meant is, in high school, I had devoured most of the African Writers Series written by distinguished authors such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Taban lo liyong, Okot p'Bitek, Nurudin Farah, Ngugi wa Thion'go and others. I traveled the world over many times while a young man and no wonder it was James Hadley Chase who made my imaginary journey to the Orinoco River in South America a possibility. Chase gave me the chance to read his literary treasures like “There's a Hippie on the Highway, “An Ace Up My Sleeve”, and “The World in my pocket” and “Like a Hole in the Head” among others. Even though Commander Neil Armstrong was the first to relay back to earth the message “Houston, Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle has Landed” after traveling 240,000 to the moon on Apollo 11 in July 20, 1969 after the exhilarating landing, on the other hand, there was a 1975 book by Briton Jack Higgins that carried the same name and turned in to a film a year later. Maya Angelou was a great writer and because she was dark skinned, her poem “Phenomenal Woman”, must have been an eye opener and empowering for the millions of women who were struggling with stereotypes. If Rudyard Kipling, a man who was born in India was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his simple poem "If" for the botched Jameson Raid in Transvaal, South Africa, Maya Angelou who was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, and who left a fine legacy for humanity, was never considered for one. In my college years, my Iranian-American English lecturer, a braggadocio who spent 20 years in England, gave me an X while marking my English paper that contained the word "Briton." No wonder, another lecturer, a Mexican-American did the same since, to him, incumbent only implied a noun "the holder of an office" while mine referred to the adjective form of necessary or the responsibility of executing an assignment. Whoever said, "English was born in England, raised in America and died in Africa" must have been a literary racist vigilante whose aim was to tarnish the image of the African Continent. It is bigotry that created the different races we have today though there is only one race and that is the human race. Even though I read from a newspaper the prognostication regarding the future of computer technology while working in a small town in central Somalia with an American organization called Africare Incorporated in Jalalaqsi in 1983 in an era when the typewriter reigned supreme, it was twenty three years later when I got fortunate enough to own the old type desktop computer whose memory card was the flimsy floppy disk. After all efforts to navigate through the old type computer that was given to me by a White female co-worker after paying her a visit to her house while I was an Aircraft Marshaller (one who controls planes after landing) for Vanguard Airline failed to materialize, I sought the help of two Somalis who turned out to be “Jacks of none, masters of none” or technologically omnipotent. While an Aircraft Marshaller, there was a young man who was White and a great friend. His name was John. Those days America was so peaceful such that as a Muslim, I could perform my daily obligatory and supererogatory prayers without any suspicion from the airport employees and regular travelers. John loved to debate and discuss about religion. He was a Christian but I never bothered to ask him his denomination. In response to his question the name of the place where Muslims conduct their daily obligatory prayers, to test whether his knowledge, I responded telling him it is called 'Masjid'. “You mean Masqee”? he responded back. I was amazed by his clear pronunciation of the prayer house many pronounce as Mosque. Masjid and Masqee almost sound alike in pronunciation. In the 16th and the early 17th century, there was the Masque ceremony in Europe which should not be misinterpreted or associated with John’s pronunciation. Despite being college students, they were the types Somalis refer to as “waan daadshey”, a portmanteau implying blagging, bragging or “little knowledge is too dangerous.” Both were of the opinion that the computer was useless and outdated. However, after severe scrutiny and seeking guidance from reading a few books on computer studies, the gift of Karen, the lady who gave it to me as a gesture of goodwill, eventually opened up for me new corridors related to Information Technology (IT). Daily reflective practices and continuous craving engrossment devoid of procrastination gave me the option to pay attention to detail. After saving enough money to purchase a used desktop computer, I started writing exhaustively materials that were worthy of posting on WDN. Focus and critical thinking enabled me to come up with new topics that were commensurate with the editors' preferences. After discovering that the editors were literarians who emphasized the significance of eleemosynary work that could benefit humanity, I got immersed in more writing by putting together more educational tutorials of varying subjects. Philanthropy or acts of kindness are multidimensional from Islamic and philosophical perspectives and that's why I felt compelled to educate our youth through unstoppable writings on WardheerNews. The name Wardheer in Somali is a combination of 'War' for 'news' plus 'dheer' implying 'afar'. Thus, when joined, it means "News from Afar." Unlike other sites that give preference to articles and research papers written by their tribal members, act as mouthpieces for the warlords and fundamentalist groups they have lineage with, and those who fund them through corrupt means plus the retinue of political rejects who share with them contemptuous and distorted ideological formations, WDN is open for debate and inclusivity of opinions from contributors from all walks of life. Even though I don't know if the trend has vanished altogether, from what I gathered from fellow Somalis scattered worldwide, back in the nineties there was a website that was managed by tribal minded editorial team whose corrupt policy was "pay a little" or as they say in Kiswahili “Toa Kitu Kidogo” abbreviated TKK to have an article posted. Such demands to have articles posted on WDN have never happened in the past and present time. WDN is interested in the exchange of ideas without regard to tribe or clan, gender and sex, political or religious affiliation and place of origin. The site has been established to educate humanity. A look at our contributors on the "About Us" section contains a balanced approach to the names of unique foreign writers notably Professor Georgi Kapchits, a man who has mastered the Somali language, was a former broadcaster of Radio Moscow Somali Service, an author of numerous books written in Somali and currently engaged in releasing a dictionary containing 5,000 Somali proverbs. Amazingly, in a previous email exchange with the distinguished professor of Somali and Amharic languages whose friendly response began with "Gacaliye Aadan", on questioning him if he ever lived in Somalia in the past, he wrote back that he was in Puntland for two weeks only in 1992 in his lifetime. Dr. Kapchits is a Russian citizen and the author of Soothsayer Tasted-Somali Folktales. The digitized site also prides to have Marco Zoppi (PhD) who is a fellow at Roskilde University in Denmark with special interests in the welfare conditions of Somalis in Scandinavian Countries. WDN contributors are not chosen on tribal affiliation by the editorial board, but their commitments to the service of research and disseminating knowledge that are worthy of sharing with the readers. Some of WDN contributors are authors who have written books while others are reputable individuals who served international level jobs. WDN Contributors include the prolific writer Hassan Abukar, author of Mogadishu Memoir, Ismail Ali Ismail (Geeldoon) who authored Governance: The Scourge and Hope of Somalia, Faisal Roble who was a former Editor-in-Chief of WDN and currently holding a higher position with the City of Los Angeles, Safi Abdi who resides in Turkey and author of Offspring of Paradise and Said Jama Hussein who is known for his proficiency in Somali linguistics and etymology and author of Safar Aan Jaho Laheyn. Amazingly, the previously mentioned Professor Georgi Kapchits new dictionary written in Somali that contains 5,000 Somali proverbs. The beautifully cover crafted book with the new title Qaamuuska Casriga Af ee Maahmaahda Soomaaliyeed meaning A Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs has been released and is up for grabs for those willing to learn more about Somali proverbial expressions. I cherish WDN because of the amalgamation of writers from all walks of life who gave me the chance to learn diverse knowledge that touch on different subjects. It is a venue for those interested in grasping everything pertaining to “Somalinness.”