Interview : Khadra and Fatima's Somalia

They are Somalians and came to Lille to tell their fears to the citizens of the world. For them, the Assembly is a tribune, a megaphone, an opening to convince people. Their country is threatened by an attack of the coalition forces currently fighting in Afghanistan alongside the United States. Somalia is crossing one of the darkest periods among of its history: drought in the north, floods in the south, and desperate inhabitants, worn out by the civil war and a disastrous international isolation. What energy and what determination did the young and beautiful Khadra have to deploy to leave her nomadic brothers' desert, to cross the country under very difficult conditions, and to take for the first time of her life a plane to Lille, a land of the West barely glimpsed on television, over there, at home?…
What flame drives Fatima, her tutor, who went back to her country in 1994 after having lived and brought up her children in the United States? Fatima says that Somalia is not the way it is described by Americans who, according to her, generate fear among the population.
So she fights, as an activist, for her dignity to be heard. In Somalia, Khadra is a trainer. She is learning to become socially responsible in the desert, to understand her government's choices, to respect natural resources as much as others. What ha struck her in the rich world? The immensity of the constructions, the capacity of people to gather their ideas on a simple piece of paper (workshop memories…), the clean streets and the street lighting once the evening has fallen… These two women's message of peace is a major lesson against all forms of oppression. Two women who are definite asset to one of the poorest nations of the world.