Somalie : de guerre lasse Série-Collection : Contrechamp humanitaire

Pierre Arragon
1996 - 34 min - Betacam SP - France

Somaliland has known warfare from 1987 to 1993. Beginning like an ordinary coup d'État, the war became a civil war, a barbarous one before the helpless onlookers that were the humanitarian organisations, the military and the medias. In front of this uncontrollable fratricide, folly everyone fled.
June 1995. Halima is one of the refugees who has experienced the horror of the Kenyan camps. She is returned from exile and is trying to reconstruct a village on the ruins of her devastated country.
Following the great Somaliland tradition, it is in poetry that Halima speaks of things too powerful or too difficult to express in ordinary words. She tells of exile, hunger, thirst, rape.
Then she encourages her people not to be just satisfied with International Aid. They organise a movement of solidarity, the muezzin makes a collection, former policemen, the only unarmed men here, keep some sort of orders. A former student opens a school again. And the lovely Somali women want to show themselves at the market again.