AIS: How did you feel (laughing)?
Dahabshiil: Frightened and aghast! This was my first-ever encounter with military troops. Yes, I used to see members of the police regularly walking in the streets of the town. For military personnel, however, we saw them on rare occasions when they either bought items from the shop or we watched at a distance when they were uninformed. The latter filled me with a sense of personal pride and was s a source of generalized esteem for the larger community.
AIS: What happened then?
Dahabshiil: The station clerk took my full name and asked for a few personal details, and they inquired where I bought the sack of sugar and the price I had paid. They took me to the main store where I purchased the sugar, but we found it closed. We returned to the station and were told to come back at around 7:00 am the next morning. When I arrived the following day at the appointed hour and asked for my sack of sugar, I received neither an explanation nor a return of the item. That state of affairs continued for a week. Finally, I was taken to the local court for prosecution. I was asked again where I bought the sack. At that moment, I saw the merchant I bought the sack from. He was also brought to the station that morning. The police asked me to verify that he was the man who sold me the sugar, and I affirmed that point. Next, I was asked to state the price I paid for it, which I did. The police instructed me to come back the next day. When I arrived the next morning, the merchant was sentenced to three months detention for ostensible price inflation.
AIS: How did you feel at the moment? Were you afraid that you might also be punished?
Dahabshiil: I was certainly perplexed and intimidated by the proceedings. However, I was confident that I did not do anything wrong. In any case, I was told to take my sack with me and leave. While I was relieved and happy, I ran into one immediate and logistical difficulty: I could not find any means to remove the sack from the police station and bring it back to our shop. There were no trucks, no wheelbarrows, no donkey carts, no able men available for hire near the station. I tried to drag it by myself until almost the noon hour. After some difficulty, I was finally able to get a couple of men to help me to take the sack of sugar to the store that I managed. The store was on the east side of the town, while the police station was on the northwest. Consequently, there was some distance to be covered.
AIS: Was this episode your first encounter with the new military coup?
Dahabshiil: Yes, and I remember it vividly.
AIS: Up to that day, you have been primarily a low-level employee of another merchant. When did you begin to establish your own business?
Dahabshiil: As I was working in the store, an older man who was a close friend of my uncle approached me. His name was Ismail Haji Aden. It was a very quiet evening when he made a proposition to me to the effect that I fully manage his store. If I accepted, he promised to give me fifty percent of the profit. I immediately accepted embraced the offer, and then we walked together to his store. I knew Ismail because he was a distant relative. The store was in a strategic location in the midst of the commercial area. Later, I approached my uncle, the shop owner. I told him about the conversation and the subsequent offer. I assured him that I will find a young relative to take my place, but I needed his blessing for this new opportunity. He smiled, congratulated me, and then urged me to seize the moment. The next morning, I gathered my few belongings and moved to the new store.
AIS: How did the experience begin?
Dahabshiil: Ismail Haji Aden proved to be a marvelous human being. He immediately showed confidence in me by trusting me to handle a comparatively large sum of money.
AIS: Do you remember how much it was?
Dahabshiil: It was about ten thousand Somali shillings – an amount that I had not seen in lump sum before.
AIS: What did he intend to use it for?
Dahabshiil: Ismail instructed me to travel to Aden (Yemen) and buy
a variety of merchandise that could sell well back in Burao. This will be my second visit to Aden. During the first occasion, I spent about a month there. This time, I flew on a Yemeni commercial plane (Alyemda). When I arrived at Aden airport, I was issued an entrance visa. In those days, there was a close relationship between Southern Yemen and the northern region of the Somali Republic. Aden was a wealthy city where commercial transactions were thick. It was the Dubai of that time. I rented a room in a very modest hotel in the zone of the city where Somalis congregated. Once I settled down, I began to explore the city‘s commercial center where the wholesale stores were located. The main owners were Indians, Pakistanis, and Arabs. I bought a mixture of items that ranged from shoes to clothes that I deemed fittingly stylish and, therefore, would be in hot demand in Burao. This was my first and most concrete business project, and the year was early 1970. Among the items, I bought were Van Heusen shirts that are still available around the world. When I brought the merchandise to Burao, it sold swiftly. After that modicum of success, I bought shirts in bulk in a large shop in Xamar Wayne, part of Mogadishu’s trading block. Thus, for a while, my business travel coordinates were Aden and Mogadishu.
AIS: So, were you still in partnership with Ismail Haji Aden in Burao?
Dahabshiil: Yes! Moreover, our shop became the most popular establishment in the town and with numerous customers.
AIS: What were the sources of the success of the shop?
Dahabshiil: I developed an eye for attractive items that were at once useful and rare in the town. For instance, I brought in men’s watches such as the Seiko brand and leather shoes that would shine when rightly polished. I also introduced new and appealing cloth for both women and men among the rural populations. Furthermore, and to make the shop even more enticing, I decorated both the front and the inside of the shop with colorful electric bulbs that would get the attention of walkers by and potential customers. We prospered for almost half a dozen years.
AIS: You must have felt blessed as well as eager to sustain the success, right?
Dahabshiil: Precisely! However, this mood was punctured by the onset of the great drought that Somalis will name it dabadheer (long-tail). While everyone was engulfed immediately, it was particularly the pastoralists, regardless of the size of their flocks of livestock, who were devastated. The ramifications were soon felt in urban and trading centers such as Burao. Shops and coffee houses began to close one after another. In addition, the Siyad Barre military regime had already begun to centralize and tighten the national market, with the state taking control of most commercial activities. At the same time, across the Gulf of Aden, another statist regime came to power that clamped down on private enterprise. And then in Thousands upon thousands of cassette tapes and master reels were quickly removed from the soon-to-be targeted buildings. They were dispersed to neighboring countries like Djibouti and Ethiopia to the east, the Derg commandeered state power with its own militaristic strictness and nationalization rigidities. Thus, the whole region descended into a completely hostile mentality towards any private businesses and initiatives.
AIS: How did this order affect your own trading activities.
Dahabshiil: All of us were immediately subjected to new edicts that were external to our daily routines. For instance, teams of guulwadayaal (Victory Pioneers) were created and then sent out to dragoon everyone to undertake daily “community activities.” This played havoc with the routines of families’ personal rhythm as well as business life. More pointedly, the shop began to suffer as customers dwindled and transactions evaporated. The ultimate effect on me was to go into debt. With a high degree of anxiety, I decided to explore what was happening in the national capital in Mogadishu. When I arrived there, I saw that most activities were taken over by the state. Still, I felt that I could find a niche in the maintenance of small Japanese cars that were successfully infiltrating the personal car business. While the military state-controlled the supply of spare parts, I imagined I could insert myself at a lower level of the retail transactions. A few days later, I approached one of the senior administrators to give me a permit for importing modest quantities of spare parts for cars and small buses.
AIS: Does this mean you had some experience with motor vehicles?
Dahabshiil: Absolutely none (with a laugh)! I was just taking an adventurous gamble that might lead to something worthwhile. I was eager to take a chance.
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