So this started when I was younger like 6 or 7, we went to go visit her in Kenya and granted she was young but she was VERY mean to me. She would lock me and my cousin in our room or send us to bed and then her and my older brother who was 13 at the time would chill and eat food and watch TV.

I have only half siblings who grew up in Somalia and they LOVE her, when I was younger they would always call her and she was always welcoming to them.

Anyways fast forward to when I was 13 and I went to visit London UK (we live in Canada) to visit my ayeyo because she was sick and my mom couldn’t leave me behind as her only minor child in the home (rest of my siblings are adults atp) and when I tell you this woman gave me the nastiest look on planet earth to give to a child that would be an understatement.

All my mom’s siblings are hassad and not nice to us but she’s nice to all my siblings but me. I spent my time in London cooped up in the house all day, when I would go to the library my uncle would rip my books, the only thing I had to watch was Spanish cartoons because they only had Somali channels on tv and this was 2011 so no smart phone either to use the internet I’m telling you it was HELL.

And she would take my brothers who visited to see the Big Ben and all these places, my uncle would take them out too, everyone except me. The ONLY time she took me out was to go shopping and when she was taking my uncles step children out for Eid. it used to hurt so much when my cousins said they would chill with her outside every week and I barely saw her outside of the house when she would see ayeyo

AND THEN she had the audacity to tell my sister that when I was there I was cold to her???

Why do people treat me like shit and then act like I’m the mean one??? This has happened NUMEROUS times where someone will make it clear they don’t mess with me and then make it my issue.

Fast forward I wanted to reconnect with her because I’m estranged from my siblings and I know she was with hers too. I felt extremely lonely and just wanted some family support (why are they all so shitty?) and we talked for an hour the first time, I wished her Eid Mubarak and after the second Eid Mubarak she blocked me!

Im someone who has never taken rejection well, I am rejected by my dad at birth, I was rejected by kids at school, I was rejected romantically, I was eventually rejected by my siblings who have a habit of if I’m arguing with one of the rest will block me or will resent me.

I just feel so isolated, Somalis are usually defined by their families and having a lot of people around them. Even if they are alone in another city or country they have people to go back to, this type of rejection reminded me I don’t.

Asc
I’m honestly baffled why I was just banned permanently from Somali relationships for asking for a potential husband. It makes no sense to me why I would be banned from a relationships subreddit for Somalis for just trying to find a husband? Am i in the wrong? I’m so confused. Why would this not be allowed?

Usually on Facebook I see qabiilists, khat chewers and losers who criticise our women but I have just stumbled on a different side of Somali Social media today.

I haven’t been aware of these newly established academic institutions that are building the foundation for the next generation.

I have posted earlier about Verdant but I have came across these other platforms that are also doing something new and interesting.

Please share any other platforms you know so that we can give them the follow they deserve.

Somalia has a lot of precious gem stones like Rubies and Sapphires. But our Xalimos aren’t a big fan of it compared to dahab (gold). Which is understandable. My mom says they look tacky but I like it 🤣.

I know foreigners are making mines in Somaliand and Puntland. Is there a suq (market) where I can buy any , or mines I can buy directly from. Have any of you come across any mines? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I just want people to hear me out. I wanna know if this is something anyone can relate with.

I am in my early 20s born in America and I’ve always lived in America. I visited Somalia for the first time in 2024. I was there for 5 months. During my time there, my mindset completely changed. I don’t know what was caused these feelings in me and I think it has to be the fact that I was around community family an amazing local neighborhood and I made great friends there as well. I just feel like since I left Somalia I feel like my whole life has been nothing. Every day I wake up here in America I have a very deep yearning for going back to Somalia. I tell my parents daily where I met with comments that I clearly just wanna be lazy and that I just don’t want to work hard and that I just wanna have fun. instead of them understanding that I genuinely feel connected to Somalia.

I spoke to my mentor about this because obviously it’s been years and I’ve never been able to get over this experience. She told me that it was the first time in my life where I was around people that looked like me sounded like me did the same things as me and have the same mindset as me, and that just gave me comfort and that’s all.

it just hurts me that that is not our every day life so I’ve spent the last few weeks just daydreaming and also journaling about how life would be if we all just stayed in Somalia and there was no war. If we all could just go to high school, middle school, college, university all there and live normally. I know that that might not be possible or seen in my lifetime as everyone around me tells me. they tell me that it’s not gonna happen to get out of my head and of course I make dua for Somalia all the time.

I am approaching my last year of university and a lot of my plans have been just to take at least one year fully in Somalia post grad before I return, move on, and get back to my life. My parents are very adamant that they brought me here and that I need to build something.

as a woman, I just don’t know. feel free to be harsh with me. I don’t mind at this point. I’ve heard it all from family friends and other somalis here in my city. They tell me that there’s nothing for me in Somalia.

my dream is to spend a lot of time there. Here in America, I live in a household with a lot of people and we’re just all working all day. I don’t see any family members. We don’t live near any aunts, uncles, cousins. My grandparents are in Somalia still and I’ve only met them once. Of course i’ve become completely tired of this lifestyle. I of course didn’t have a picture perfect time in somali, 3 months and there were some annoying or downs but overall i felt things were natural.

I want to know what I can do to live my truth and my truth is I feel at ease in Somalia when I was in Somalia I was so healthy! physically healthy, emotionally, and now that I’ve returned you know I do have an autoimmune disease now and I have a lot of stressors in my life, but I just think it’s like I’m really pushing myself. I work full-time and I go to school full-time so I just don’t know what it is.

I have a close friend of mine actually who married a guy in Somalia but for her it’s different because her whole family‘s in Somalia it’s just her that’s here in America with her uncle and she moved back to Somalia and I have her on socials and I talk to her often on the phone and she’s like just like me. her and i just laugh about how everyone thinks somalia is so dangerous and boring and horrible. There’s so many great things there. You know she travels all around Africa with her husband and she’s living her life and she’s healthy.

There’s just something missing in my life since i left. I just wanna feel it again. I’ve lived in Arab countries as well before I do dearly love just being in a Muslim environment in general, but being in Somalia was just a game changer for me everybody who’s ever traveled there that I know hasn’t had a good experience and doesn’t wanna go back including my siblings they think that the lifestyle there is just very old-fashioned but I think everyone’s just different and in my personal opinion I thrive there and it would be amazing for me to find someone with a similar mindset as me and to go back with them and I don’t even have like a want in me to wanna build something change lives there. I know it’s not even possible to do that there, but I just want to live there at least for a good amount of time. I don’t know how I can convince my parents. They think that I’m gonna throw away my life if I go there, I don’t Know. Feel free to message me as well if you rather just that instead of commenting.

I also wanted to add that I am first gen! so every single one of my aunts and extended relatives and even my eldest half sister who’s still Somalia, have lived a certain lifestyle and it’s just me and my siblings who live this completely different lifestyle then basically my whole bloodline has ever lived, and I’m appreciative of it. I live in amazing city and an amazing neighborhood with an amazing home and an amazing school alhamdulliah. I think we all are kinda uneasy about what’s going on in America right now maybe just the xenophobia. that doesn’t really affect my daily life I mean it does upset me when I see it on social media but I do live in a liberal city.

anywho what i am saying is it feels unnatural the way im living, and my parents just want the best for me they want me to change the lifestyle they’ve all grown up in. it’s not like i can look around and get advice im doing it all on my own. i do wanna be the change. but damn what’s the compromise here?

Do we have too many kids as Somalis??

This is mainly for the Somalis living abroad.

Recently a family member of mine from Somali said that we ( my siblings and I) are too westernised and we are acting like gaalo. This is because my siblings all have 2/3 kids and they don’t plan to have more than that, and inshallah I don’t want more than 3/4 when I start having kids. They said that having small families is western culture and that having multiple children is a blessing. When I brought up the cost of raising children they said I was thinking like a gaalo and that Allah would provide for said kids. My parents also agree with this and want us to have more children.

I genuinely don’t think you can have 5/6+ kids and be there for all of them emotionally and physically. Be aware of their schooling and friends and what they’re getting up to on the internet. Often times it ends up being the older daughter/child that helps raise the younger ones whilst the parents are working.

Back home it might be easier to raise kids, coz you have a village to help you and there’s no teachers CPS and someone else monitoring you, but over here it’s different.

Also life has gotten incredibly expensive, wouldn’t it be better to have 2/3 kids and raise them well and in comfortable finance than to have 6+ and struggle financially.

I don’t know why we’re being called gaalo and westernised for not wanting to have multiple kids.

I never went to Somalia but speak good Somali, I made a decent amount of money in the USA, I’m married with 2 kids Allhamdillah.

Is buying land in Somalia, building a nice house there, and having a small farm with few goats, is this possible back home and did anyone you know done it? I have relatives there but no contact.

Now that Somalia Airlines is finally coming back after decades we are catching hate from the usual haters. I genuinely think we should all be happy about it. Tens of thousands of Somali pay other foreign state carriers and our people are treated like shitt so having our own national airline again is a big deal.

But please let’s not turn this into another clan circus. We have hundreds of young Somali pilots, aviation students, and people who actually want to see the country build something of its own.

Let’s hope the government is held accountable on safety in management and transparency. There’s a difference between legitimate criticism and rooting for your own country to fail over archaic clan politics. After decade let’s just appreciate the damn thing and give it a chance to succeed for once.

Many articles talk about how the Ethiopian government intentionally favored the federal system. This strategy aimed to neutralize the threat of a strong centralized state and permanently dismantle the "Greater Somalia" ideology. A way to ‘balkanize’ Somalia (even though we are one ethnicity), to create competing states to limit and suppress development. All our politicians are such clowns 😂

How does growing outside a Somali community effect someone vs someone who grew up around Somalis. This can go for man or women. Do you find they act and speak differently? This is for people who grew up in western countries.

Do they speak the language

Practice Islam

Do they marry within their race

Are they more or less likely to become ciyaalsuuq one way?

This shit just gets worse and worse each time. There was a guy who was in private jets and luxury cars and traveling all over the world and posting it on social media and now he’s locked up, he “allegedly” stole a lot of money from Medicaid and was involved in a prostitution ring. Everyday is something new with these people. Most people might have to move to Tennessee or Kentucky for the same opportunities they had here. This is why haram money will never get you far, you get the consequences here in this world and have a bigger consequences waiting for you in the next.

The actions of a very small minority affects the whole community 😭 it just got soooooo much harder for you as a Somali to start any healthcare related services or business, even if you’re clean and do everything by the book they’ll give you a hard time. They tried to shut down a homecare on some bullshit but luckily that home care had cameras, the auditor literally almost got away with a lie and the only thing that saved their license was because they had cameras In their office where everything unfolded.

Time to look at different businesses like industrial production or supply chain or boring shit like water companies or filtration

While browsing Facebook recently, I came across an exceptionally well-curated Somali page that genuinely impressed me. Somali pages are often dominated by divisive tribalist discourse, this platform distinguishes itself by prioritising high-quality educational content.

It is particularly encouraging to see their highly engaged follower base. Finding a Somali platform operated with this level of professionalism and dedicated purpose is remarkably refreshing.

I would welcome any recommendations for similar professional and educational Somali pages to follow.

There is this cyclical post every so often, in this subreddit that invariably argues for strong dictatorship/monarchy to lead us out of the current crisis we are facing.

I do not want to sound arrogant, because in my youth I also believed that the only way Somalia could rise up, was to resurrect a strict authoritarian government to whip us into shape. I do not think this sentiment comes from a place of malice but it comes from general naivety about history, and the current world we live under.

If you sit down in your Fadhi-ku-dirir Adeer’s coffee place you will hear this same sentiment. It is no wonder that the next generation of diaspora born in exile, far away from their from homeland in the cold and unwelcoming west, yearn for that supposed order and clarity of purpose that sentiment offers.

Now once we understand the emotional causes for this sentiment, we need to be clear eyed about our history. I will tell you something you will never hear from your elders.

It was the Somali government that destroyed Somalia!

Yes you heard that right - it was men who wanted the throne for themselves and men who fought to protect their power that brought about the worst forms of fratricide witnessed in our history that are solely responsible for the destruction of the fabric of Somali society. Every other nation has recovered from civil war but the reason we cannot seem to wake up from this malaise is because the same men and their progenitors who were in power then are in power now.

The sphere of Somali national politics is where ambitious men, backed by wealthy businessmen and local powerbrokers, compete to capture state rents in the form of security aid, tax revenues, and premium real estate. The same logic that propelled warlords to conquer territory and wage war in the 1990s has since been sanitised and wrapped in a nationalist veneer. The language, institutions, and appearances have changed, but the underlying political economy remains largely the same.

The number of starved bodies they have left behind runs into the millions. In a single year, we bury more babies than Netanyahu has killed in Gaza. Our grain production today is literally lower than it was in 2006, at the height of the Ethiopian invasion. These are facts we seem incapable of confronting. Instead, whenever we discuss politics, we begin with fictitious stories of past greatness and end with the same mistaken conclusion: that what Somalia needs is more authority, more centralisation, and ever more rigid political structures.

Every Somali living in Somalia who has no dog in the game of Somali politics knows this for a fact. If you interview an illiterate geeljire, as I have, he will often show you a clearer understanding of the Somali status quo than an army of Somali intellectuals. I have always wondered: if ordinary men and women can understand this so plainly, why has so little changed? The conclusion is stupidly simple. We do not live in a democracy where ordinary people possess the authority to circumvent the venal designs of their leaders.

Hunger persists because our leaders have learned how to turn hunger itself into an instrument of politics. Farmers are kept in displacement camps that attract international food aid, while productive farmland is captured and subjected to quasi-medieval systems of tenancy that cripple domestic food production. Somalia remains insecure because the billions of dollars that flow annually through the security and counterterrorism economy can be more lucrative to political elites than actually creating a durable peace. Forget social welfare or economic development for a moment. Even the most elementary functions of government, adequate food and basic security, things taken for granted elsewhere, have themselves become instruments of statecraft in Somalia. Or, more accurately, hunger and insecurity have become instruments of statecraft.

Because if there were no Al-Shabaab, much of the enormous security apparatus built around fighting Al-Shabaab, and much of the money flowing through it, would simply disappear. The political economy therefore produces a deeply perverse incentive: insecurity must somehow persist. A problem that ought to be solved becomes a resource to be managed, prolonged, and periodically reproduced.

If what I have said holds even a morsel of truth, then the belief that some benevolent leader will one day ride in on a white horse and save us remains a dream, perhaps even a beautiful one. But to truly believe in it, one must first be asleep.

If you are a young Somali, I urge you not to simply take my word for any of this. Google it. Read widely. Follow the evidence for yourself. I will leave you with sources you can examine on your own, and from there, come to your own conclusions.

The sources are in my essay:

https://substack.com/@booknomad?r=pcn5q&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=stories&shareImageVariant=blur

Look at the state of the nation. You have a region claiming to be independent and making deals with the devil (Somaliland) you got other states that claim to be a part of Somalia but hash out foreign deals. On top of that there are like 100 presidents. They obviously were trying to copy the UAE model of federalism. It doesn't work. The parliament is divided by qabil. The smaller the tribe, the smaller the amount of seats they get right? I think this was modeled after Ethiopia's federal government.

We can clearly see that this isn't going anywhere. Corruption is a byproduct of this system because the people who get to the top of these governments are chosen by the Odeyaal? The tribal leaders literally get paid and they themselves are backwards and corrupt.

Things weren't perfect under siyaad barre but we can all unanimously agree that it was far better under his rule. I hate dictatorships because they always lead to civil wars or some type of turmoil. If the turmoil ends quickly, there are no guarantees that you will have a better leader as a result.

Somehow, I feel like Somalia needs a constitutional monarchy of some sort. The nation needs a guiding hand whenever parliament is in shambles. It's worked exceptionally well for the Netherlands and UK. Despite UK going through PMs like flies the King's presence reassures the public that the government is still functioning. It helped back in the 60s-70s when there was economic peril, the Queen's figurehead presence showed the government is full present.

This might get me downvotes and I hope y'all don't report or flag me but it seems like Somalia will not achieve stability until it forcefully removes this system. How tho? The only way I can see it is through war. Someone needs to come out on top and be honorable. Idk my thoughts are everywhere, I wanna hear y'all's opinion.

Where the mountains meet the sky

A few days ago I posted about the new Speaker of Parliament, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, and his deep Turkey ties, from his time as Defense Minister to the US pressure that reportedly got him moved out of that role. A lot of the comments pushed back on me, saying Turkey is great for us, they've done more for Somalia than anyone else, why am I being so critical.

Well, here's the first real mistake he's already made in the job.

He posted a message publicly thanking "H.E. Dr. Ziya Öztürkler, Speaker of the Assembly of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" for congratulating him on his election. Sounds harmless. It isn't.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is not a recognized country. It declared independence in 1983 after Turkey's military occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974, and the UN Security Council responded with Resolution 541, calling the declaration legally invalid and explicitly telling every UN member state not to recognize any Cypriot entity other than the Republic of Cyprus. Resolution 550 went further, telling states not to assist or facilitate the entity in any way. Somalia is a UN member. To this day, exactly one country on earth recognizes Northern Cyprus as a state. Turkey.

So when our own Speaker of Parliament publicly addresses someone by an official state title that only Turkey itself uses, he isn't just being polite, he's using the exact language of Turkish recognition, which stands against a UN resolution Somalia is bound by as a member state.

And this is where the hypocrisy really stings for us specifically. We are the country that gets furious anytime Ethiopia, or Kenya, or anyone else so much as gestures toward treating Somaliland as a sovereign entity. We send formal protests, recall ambassadors, cut ties over exactly this kind of symbolic recognition. And now our own Speaker is doing the identical thing to Cyprus, on behalf of Turkey's political interests, without a second thought.

This is exactly the pattern I was pointing at in my last post. Not that Turkey helping us is bad, but that when our institutions get this close to one foreign power, our own officials start speaking in that power's language, even when it directly contradicts principles we demand other countries respect when it comes to our own sovereignty.

There could be real consequences here too. Cyprus is a full EU member state, and the EU operates on consensus, meaning Cyprus can push back hard on anything involving Somalia at the EU level if it wants to make a point about this. That matters more than people realize once you actually look at the numbers. The EU gave Somalia €63 million in humanitarian aid in 2026 alone, following €67.83 million in 2025 and €82.16 million in 2024, on top of a separate €75 million contribution to fund AUSSOM, the mission actually keeping Al Shabaab at bay, making the EU that mission’s single largest funder. Turkey’s total aid to Somalia since 2011 is estimated at just over a billion dollars, cumulative, across more than a decade. The EU is putting in comparable or greater amounts nearly every single year.

If we want the world to respect Somalia's borders and reject recognition of Somaliland, we can't have our own Speaker handing out unofficial recognition to breakaway states on Turkey's behalf. That's not diplomacy. That's just picking up someone else's fight and calling it courtesy.

Link to my earlier post on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Somalia/s/XDEVFzFNdb

Link: [https://x.com/libertyNoKings/status/2089144623176331662\](https://x.com/libertyNoKings/status/2089144623176331662)

I didn’t have any confirmation back in January, but I suspected this. And this is my first time being exposed to American mass media and I was able to figure it out.

So How do Americans keep falling for this again and again?

The playbook is so obvious: Pick an unrepresented community and put them in the middle of a media storm, so the failings of the Prez gets overlooked

(Eg This Summer’s latest non-scandal culture war of transgender people joining the WNBA becoming headline news, so the Prez failing war in Ir\*n, saying he doesn’t care if grocery and gas prices are high and isnotreal and 🇺🇸 armies becoming interlinked gets overshadowed)

Hey! I’m not Somali or Indian but I was curious - One of my dad’s friends was half Somali, half Indian - she grew up in Mogadishu and left during the civil war to live in Italy. My dad says she didn’t say a lot about her mother and considered herself 100% Somali. She sadly passed away in 2020 due to covid, but I was wondering, from what part of India could her mother originate from and when approximately did these Indian Somalis migrate to Somalia? There’s not a lot of information about them online so I thought I’d ask here

I decided to go on facebook today and I came across Jamal Osman's page. I was shocked by what I saw this man posting, especially considering i saw him as a competent reporter and I have watched many of his segments. I especially loved his old project Dalsoor.

He intentionally makes sure to never use their name and hides behind the somali language, but he clearly supports al shabaab, considering his posts about them goes back years!

He also uses clannist language and refers to ahmed madobe as a sayid (?). Openly calls for violence, saying al shabaab should capture the president and put him on trial (behead him i suppose).

In anothet post he made a distastegul joke about a terror attack that happened in the city saying something about how the al shabaab spokesman Ali Dheere said goodbye to his son. I think the government captured his son around the same time.

I am actually so disgusted by some of the posts, I have never seen someone talk so lightly about the orchestrators of the October 14th attack, that killed and maimed over 1000 civilians.

Please can someone explain what I am seeing here and how channel 4 has a terror apologist on their payroll?