The New-Model Nomad

One of my earliest childhood memories is of swimming in a small gully near my grandmother’s home in Yaaq Bari Wayne, a dusty collection of tin-roofed adobe buildings huddled together in the plains of southern Somalia’s Bay region. After the Gu rains, the gully became a deep triangular cleft cut into the ground, filled with muddy water. Children gathered like ants to spilled sugar, jumping off ledges and diving into its murky depths with screams and whoops of excitement.