Lady Khatumo Wins the Final Battle of the Ball

It is 5:00 pm on a Friday afternoon. Work at the office never finishes eh! But after a long commute, I arrive home and eat my usual spaghetti dinner. I made sure I had a good grip on my cup of fresh coffee before collapsing on my sofa. One glance at the television and it is Chelsea vs. Arsenal.

"There is something oddly different about this ball game though," I wonder, as I gobble up larger and faster sips of my Khatumo Coffee.

Suddenly, instead of a competition between two teams, I find myself watching three: the Traditional, Presidential and Executive Councils of Khatumo State, all converged in the midst of this large stadium, flexing their muscles as they get ready to play the Khatumo ball-game. Oblivious to the absence of a referee and even goal posts, each group hurries to kick the ball towards the direction each imagines to be the goal; up, down, right, left, loops, free kicks, it is open season.

Nevertheless, the large crowd of Khatumites keeps cheering anytime they see beautiful ball movements.

But as the game progresses, occasionally a ball would strike a player below the belt.

"Stop the game," yells the fellow from the third row. "My uncle in team Presidential has been hit, you know, below the belt. I am sure that is a foul. A penalty is due."

"What about my man in team Traditional, who during the first half was also wronged when he passed the ball East towards Garowe?" yells another fan from the second row.

Meanwhile, burdened by a sense of responsibility to continue the game, team Executive keeps kicking the ball in any direction other than East or West.

"So you are saying that all those games played over the past two years, the fans have been refereeing the Khatumo ball-games," said a voice from behind me. "There's gotta be a referee, you know. An authority to refer to whenever we need to settle our disputes or need guidance towards the right direction."

"By the way," the voice continued, "are women allowed to play the Khatumo ball-game?"

"Yes," I replied. "But they are limited to a few insignificant posts. Catching a stray ball here and there, you know."

"So we are watching a political game between a few individuals whose common denominator is the fact that they are all men and old," said the voice, which by now seemed like that of a lady.

"Well, I would not be that unkind, but that is kind of true," I finally conceded.

"So who is that player with the number 5 shirt?" asked the Lady, pointing at team Presidential.

"Oh, that is my uncle," I answered with pride. "He defends and leads this team so well, doesn't he. He is a brave man with two balls, geesi laba xiniinyood ah," I continued to brag.

"So he must be a tough and strong fellow," said the Lady.

"What do you mean by a strong fellow?"

"You know. Strong leaders who do not rely on sub-clannish sentiment, and on outdated artificial titles, as a source of strength to disrupt their people's games and thus their wishes."

"And how do you measure the strength of tough old fellows who can't get along?"

"Certainly not by the size of their balls," said the Lady, and she giggled. "The older theirs are, the less productive they become."

"You mean the less re-productive."

"Perhaps that too," she laughed, genuinely this time, and I noticed she was letting me have that one.

"The people's right to assemble freely in their hometown," she said instead. "Their right to debate, discuss and deliberate the direction of their local affairs. That should be a sacred duty. No rational person would disrupt such a gathering."

And here the noise of the stadium went out of the afternoon altogether.

"Travelling from Lasanod," she said, "were the same Khatumo ladies whose flowers were accepted last year. This year they were bullied and beaten and prevented from taking part in Khatumo III."

She let that sit in the empty air where the cheering had been.

"The people of Khatumo never changed their allegiance to their administration. So what changed?"

I had nothing. Down on the field somebody was still moving the ball beautifully in no direction, and the crowd, when the sound came back, was still cheering it.

"The paralysis hovering over Khatumo revolves around petty gripes between two parties," she went on. "He said this about you, and he said that about you. Meaningless personal grievances and gossip triangulated by a third party. So, what's the big deal if I said something as a joke and you found it offensive? Wouldn't you dismiss it as a non-issue?"

"Perhaps," I said. "But only if it were up to me. See, anytime you take a little jab at an individual, you also have to deal with all the sub-clans of that person, who according to tradition would also appear to have been wronged, and feel entitled to damages by way of generalization."

I wrongfully reasoned, and she let me hear myself do it.

"Most wars in the world are about resources and land," she said. "Neither party here has caused the other physical damage. There is no land in dispute between them. Somaliland and Puntland have already wolfed up the land, save for Buhodle, where the flames of freedom are too hot to be extinguished. What is in dispute is a mere perception of foul mouth. And so the fate of nearly a million Khatumites is stalled because a few old men cannot settle a question of bad-mouthing. A few old men erroneously engaged in a waiting game of who blinks first, naively willing to go to their graveyard along with a Khatumo they never truly owned."

"Then who owns it?"

"Ask who funds it. The fundamental question of who funds the Khatumo machinery should decide its eventual ownership, which puts the ball back in the corner of we the people. Before we start kicking it haphazardly again, we should be selecting people trained to hypothesize not only external threats but internal ones. People who agree how a dispute will be resolved before it occurs. What happens when a Presidential team member disagrees with an Executive Council member? Answer that in advance, or you will answer it in the newspapers."

"These are normal stages," I offered, reaching for the comfort of my foreign training. "Any group formation passes through them. Forming, storming, norming. Khatumo has already stormed and normed. Come Khatumo III we will be at the performing stage, where members mature and political compromise becomes the name of the ball-game."

"You have a name for every stage except the one you are standing in," said the Lady.

I did not enjoy how accurate that was. Individually, Khatumo folks are successful business leaders, some of them multi-millionaires, some with world-class education and credentials, and yet at the group level we fail at things far smaller than ourselves. Many of us in the diaspora (and here I counted myself, since honesty had already started and it seemed rude to stop it) have earned degrees that have never once been used. What good is an education that cannot put bread on a table, cure a simple disease your own people suffer chronically, or help build a local government led by someone with moral authority?

"Speaking of who is the stronger leader among them," she said, "aren't you as strong as your weakest link?"

"What do you mean, weakest link?"

"See, in Khatumo country, thousands of people cope without clean drinking water and without a clinic. Not enough to eat. Add to that the bickering of the governing old fellows, and life becomes unbearable. A true leader shows courage and humility. You measure his strength not by the number of military tanks staged and showcased, but by the number of health clinics he helped to build, and the number of people whose trust he has earned.

"A true leader also asks why the medical practitioner allegedly sent by WHO to serve this Khatumo city has not shown up for the past two years. Why the FM radio unit sent from Mogadishu has never been switched on in Taleh. There is a worthy cause on which to flex a Presidential muscle. Not a title. A title is a socially constructed thing that men internalize as a God-given entitlement, and it has never once dug a well."

"Bullying armies from Burco and Bosaso can send bigger bombs," I said, wanting for once to be the one with the hopeful line. "But when the kids in Kalabaydh and Kalshaale colour their school walls with the blessed kalimahs of Khatumo, the enemy's days are numbered. Nothing defeats the will of a modern Dervish. Clear of the clannish thinking that clouds even the learned, this new breed dares to imagine a Taleh that carries its history forward with high-rises and decent health services."

"Then let them imagine women in the room," she said. "Is there a single one on the Traditional team?"

"Well. Ahh. I don't think so," I hesitated. "See, in Khatumo land we keep things the old way. Respecting the traditional elders."

"I will give my respects when Queen Elizabeth of England dictates policy directions to its Parliament and Prime Minister," concluded the Lady.

Sitting quietly on the high rows of the stadium, I found myself once again watching a new Khatumo ball-game begin below, and the same three teams jogging out into the same absence of goal posts.

"These leaders disappoint me," she said. "The more the men play, the less Khatumo there will be. Unless we can find an alternative."

"What alternative?"

"An Arrawello, perhaps."

And I turned, finally, and looked at her properly, and understood who had been standing behind me for the whole of the second half.

"For a thousand years your grandfathers have told one story about me," she said, "and it is always the same story, and it is always about what I am supposed to have taken from men. Not one of them tells the other half. That the wells were dug. That the roads were safe. That the disputes were settled, and quickly, and by somebody. They remember the punishment. They forget the administration."

I had no answer to that, and she did not appear to need one.

"Then who," I asked, "would you have referee the next Khatumo ball-game?" And I was already wondering whether the correct question was what his name would be, or hers.

"It is not even a person. You fool."

"Then what is it?"

"A constitution. Drafted, written down, and referred to whenever you are in doubt or need help troubleshooting a conflict. Written with the civil society you keep forgetting to invite. And for starters, you may begin with the article that Khatumo is premised on the fact that it is neither Somaliland nor Puntland."

The stadium was gone. The sofa was still there, and the television, and Chelsea were a goal up with twenty minutes to play, and my Khatumo Coffee had gone cold in my hand while eleven men in blue moved the ball beautifully towards a goal that was exactly where they had left it.

Miracles of Khatumo continues.

A. Hindi. [Email: admin@khatumo.net]

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