Women Academics From Somalia

"My parents tried to provide me and my siblings with a normal childhood, but we had to study in a school for orphans because other schools discriminated against us."

"It's hard being an only child when you need all the help you can get. I'm constantly aware that I need to be in many places at once. Of course, when I started studying archaeology, I had no idea that I would be like that."

"Yes, but we didn't have a chance to study them erly. We just recorded them and secured them. I don't excavate because there's not even a museum in Somaliland where these objects could be stored and properly studied."

"Paintings in the Dhambalin cave . They are 5 thousand years old. It is a real mosaic of colours. They depict dancing people, a man hunting with a dog and a herd of domestic animals. This is the only site in Somalia with drawings of sheep. They are painted with decorations, which suggests ritual meaning."

"A man came to my office in Hargeisa [capital of Somaliland]. He took me to a place a few kilometers from his village. The paintings appeared before me suddenly, on a rock shaped like an old TV. It was unbelievable."

"A Somali woman in trousers, boots and with men is a strange sight for them. And a woman leading a team of men is something absolutely unacceptable. Some are happy to see it, but they wouldn't want their daughters to do it."

"The most dangerous thing in the desert is bad roads, and snakes are often found near monuments. I had a few unpleasant experiences with them. For example, in Dhambalin, I lay on my stomach to take pictures of the lower part of a panel with paintings. Suddenly I heard a hiss. There was a snake under a large rock next to my head. Terrified, I slowly started to move away on my stomach, and the equally scared snake disappeared between the rocks. Another time I almost peed on a rattlesnake well hidden in the sand. Since then, I have not gone out to the bush or the desert in the dark to urinate."

"In 2007, I was in the Sanaag region, where the largest archaeological robberies in the country were taking place. They were ordered by a wealthy Somali living in one of the oil countries of the Persian Gulf. He came and tried to intimidate me. But the local elders sided with me. We managed to stop him. He had connections with a French organization posing as a non-profit institution to protect Somaliland's heritage. In reality, these people were looting antiquities."

"First of all, I make sure I have a good driver-mechanic. That's the most important thing in the desert. I always have simple archaeological equipment ready for research in the trunk: recording equipment, chargers."

"I try not to travel with armed people - I don't like weapons after my war experience. But many of the people who work with me are former soldiers who used to drive tanks. They are walking GPSs. They cope very well both on the road and with people."

"When you are not a member of the United Nations, you cannot sign many legal acts, such as the World Heritage Convention. Funds that are available to other countries are unobtainable for us. In addition, we do not have a law on the protection of national heritage that would allow us to secure sites."

"Cultural heritage is a basic human right and need, like water, food, health and safety. In times of conflict, culture helps people not to lose their humanity. And in times of poverty, archaeological and cultural wealth can help create jobs, for example in tourism."

"My professors also said that I should be a model, and not think about a PhD. It always irritated me. There are more important things in life than beauty. I had other plans, I wanted to get an education and help people. I became an archaeologist to study the history of Africa before colonialism and the slave trade. But many of my friends thought I was stupid because I rejected the opportunity to earn a lot of money."

"She didn't have much to say. Since I left Somalia, I've been in control of my own life. I was raised by my mother and grandmother. They were very beautiful and hard-working. They were also always in favor of women's emancipation. My mother was with me on my first trip in 2007. She didn't know anything about archaeology, but she was very helpful."

"I believe that our practical cultural heritage helped us survive the war, even though we were city dwellers. When the war broke out in Somalia, we had to flee. We found ourselves in the desert with nothing. Only through our innate skills did we know how to find water sources, how to make tools from materials found in the field, how to build a house from acacia trees and where to find healing herbs."

"It was an incredible feeling just to stand in front of the paintings. Then I lay down to take photos and heard a snake breathing in my ear. My assistant told me he was thinking how he would cut off my arm, leg, or wherever to stop the poison if it attacked. I believe he would have done it. I didn’t tell my mother."

"These are among the best prehistoric paintings in the world."

"Yet Somaliland is a country whose history is totally hidden. With wars, droughts and piracy in Somalia, hardly anyone has researched the archaeology until now. But it's absolutely full of extraordinarily well-preserved rock art."

"Sometimes the cattle are represented as necks or horns, a pictorial shorthand that was evidently sufficient to convey meaning."

"Yet despite boasting a stable, grass-roots democracy, the country has"

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"Beautiful Somali buildings are rising up in a former war zone. It gives me hope."

"I first learned to construct nomadic huts with my grandmother in the summer holidays – spent, whether I liked or not, living in Dayniile, near Mogadishu."

"Being a Mogadishu girl, living in a comfortable villa, I hated it at first so my father sent, as a surprise, a tiny battery-run TV, which transformed our evenings at the nomadic camp."

"We never planned to live like that, later, as it happened, we became refugees and ended up internally displaced in what would have otherwise seemed like barren landscapes."

"It is eminently uplifting to construct your home as a way of dealing with loss."