Blogs in September 2020

Desert Children 8th September 2020

Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie was born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia. She told her story – enduring female circumcision at five years old; running away through the desert; being discovered...

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Sharkman Six 8th September 2020

When Lieutenant Gavin Kelly’s recon platoon swims ashore a Mogadishu beach under the glare of hundreds of news camera lights, it is an appropriately surreal beginning to Operation Restore Hope. This modern war is vastly different from the battles...

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Sardines 8th September 2020

Farah’s landmark Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorshiptrilogy is comprised by the novels Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. In this volume, the second of the three, a woman loses her job as editor of...

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From Somalia with Love 8th September 2020

My name is Safia Dirie. My family has always been my mum, Hoyo, and my two older brothers, Ahmed and Abdullahi. I don’t really remember Somalia – I’m an East London girl, through and through. But now Abo, my...

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Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival 8th September 2020

This powerful memoir portrays the life-altering transformation of a feisty nomad girl who undergoes genital excision. Crippled with rheumatism as a result of the cutting, Fadumo Korn, who once freely roamed the deserts of her native Somalia, is sent...

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