Chapter 1. “Carrying the History of the Prophets”
Chapter 2. “Kenya Is Regarded by the Somali as an El Dorado”
Chapter 3. “The Goodness of the Past Is Gone”
Chapter 4. “The Fattened She-Camel Has Been Snatched by the Hyena”
Chapter 5. “If We Were Brothers, We Would Have Met Long Ago”
Chapter 6. “Their People Came Here to Seek Asylum”
Chapter 7. “People Will One Day Say Our Children Aren’t Kenyan”
Conclusion. “We Are Not Migrants; We Are Living in Our Ancestral Land”
Maps
I.1. Colonial Northeast Africa
I.2. Postcolonial Northeast Africa
1.1. Some sites of Somali residence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
3.1. The vision of Greater Somalia (at its most expansive)
3.2. The Northern Frontier District of Kenya
6.1. Postcolonial Kenya
6.2. UNHCR estimates of Somali refugees in Northeast Africa (2012)
Preface and Acknowledgments
THIS WORK DRAWS UPON MULTIPLE archives. Between 2008 and 2014, I carried out research at the British National Archives (TNA) in London, the Kenya National Archives (KNA) in Nairobi, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford. From all of these places, I collected a wide variety of colonial and postcolonial government documents. In addition, I have made use of non-archival written records, such as newspaper articles, traveler accounts, settler memoirs, and NGO reports. Between September 2010 and September 2011—shortly before the Kenyan invasion of Somalia—I also conducted over one hundred formal interviews in linguistically and culturally diverse sites in the Central and Rift Valley regions of Kenya and the Somalia/Kenya borderlands.
The staff at the Kenya National Archives greatly facilitated my research. Special thanks are due to Richard Ambani, who has generously supported many researchers and scholars over his years working at the KNA. My fieldwork would have been impossible without the help of multiple research assistants in different locations and at different stages of the project. Hassan Kochore and Hassan Ibrahim Hassan aided me during the initial, exploratory stages. Abdi Billow Ibrahim and Ibrahim Abdikarim were indispensable during the main phase of my fieldwork. Together, we conducted interviews during which we collected poetry, genealogies, oral “traditions,” and life histories in Swahili, English, Somali, and occasionally Borana. Many of the poems recounted to me had not previously been put down in writing, to the best of my knowledge. I also had many informal conversations with Kenyan and Somali acquaintances and friends. These conversations informed my thinking in significant ways and left silent traces on my analyses that are difficult to cite or acknowledge directly.
I am deeply indebted to the many people who generously shared aspects of their lives with me, including very painful memories of warfare and state repression. I hope that I have done justice to their history. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the many people in Kenya who extended their hospitality to me and provided me with assistance during my research. They are too numerous to name, but special thanks are due to Hassan Ibrahim Hassan, Fatuma Ibrahim Ali, Ahmed Maalin Abdalle, Abdi Ahmed Ali, Amina Kinsi, Abdi Billow Ibrahim, and Mohamed Ibrahim.
While I interviewed a diverse sample of people, it goes without saying that I cannot tell all possible stories. John Jackson has suggested that rather than thinking in terms of mastery over the “other,” of a complete archive, or of progressively accumulating knowledge, scholars should think in terms of “thin descriptions”—of multiple, sometimes incommensurable, narratives.1 Not all of the people I interviewed would agree with my analyses. Nor, for that matter, did Kenyans always agree on a single interpretation of historical events. Some of my interlocutors would reflect upon the past differently today than at the time of our interviews. “Memories” were never unmediated recollections, and present concerns figured heavily in people’s explanations of the past. While conducting interviews, I endeavored to collect a wide diversity of narratives and to remain attentive to marginal and heterodox voices. However, structures of power often constrained who could speak and be spoken to. One cannot smooth over the power dynamics involved in any kind of fieldwork. My race, comparative privilege, blind spots, ideological concerns, cultural misunderstandings, and missteps no doubt shaped the fieldwork experience in ways that were often invisible to me. My work is not a definitive or an objective version of Kenyan Somali history, nor is it a historical or ethnographic project intended to exhaust our understanding of “Somali society.” However, my hope is that it will serve as a contribution to the field.
Many people too numerous to name helped me navigate and think through the complexities of the research and writing process. I am deeply thankful to Sean Hanretta, Richard Roberts, and Timothy Parsons for their mentorship. During my time at Stanford University, Siphiwe Ndlovu, Erin Pettigrew, Michelle Bourbonniere, and Donni Wang, among others, provided me with invaluable advice and read through early drafts of my manuscript. At the University of Pennsylvania, I benefited from help and intellectual inspiration provided by Lee Cassanelli, Cheikh Babou, Fred Dickinson, Tsitsi Jaji, Mauro Guillén, Amel Mili, Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Rasul Miller, and Jeremy Aaron Dell, among others. Writing workshops with Alden Young, Amber Reed, Grace Sanders, Oliver Rollins, Clemmie L. Harris, and Dominick Rolle helped me to improve early drafts of my work. My undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford and Penn also deserve special thanks for their wonderful intellectual engagement. In addition, I am indebted to Abdul Adan, Wendell Hassan Marsh, Hassan Kochore, Natasha Shivji, Salah Abdi Sheikh, Mohamed Abdullahi, and Amil Shivji for many productive and invaluable conversations. Attending conferences and workshops with Tabea Scharrer, Neil Carrier, Mark Bradbury, Egle Cesnulyte, Alex Otieno, and Francesca Declich also shaped my thinking.
Writing
