By Rooble Mohamed
Hargeysa, Somaliland
Imagine you and some of your friends decided to organize a group of volunteers to do some social work for your community. Then the next thing you know you are in Jail with no proper trial, you are sentenced to death for treason.
“A Note on My Teacher’s Group” is not a romantic novel, an exotic story or a self-help book, it is a story of a painful truth that points out a horrible past and a chaotic aftermath. It is a story of injustice, torture, horror and dictatorship. It is actually more of a documentary than just a book.
Jama Musse Jama, the author of the book, spent some of his precious time to collect information about this incident and put it together in this book. It is an issue that deserved to be documented and presented to the world so that we all know what exactly happened those days, and the misuse of power by those who were supposed to protect civilians from injustice is exposed.
Somaliland’s struggle did not start based on minor issues, it was a revolution against injustice and dictatorship. The book will take you through one case, which is only one case of hundreds of similar or worse cases in the history of Somaliland. It is a case of a group of Somalilanders who organized themselves to do some social work. Their mission was to carry out what the government did not do – clean the streets, help the hospital with some volunteering work, etc. The government of Somalia at the time, led by the Dictator Siyaad Barre, did not hesitate to arrest them and all the other intellectuals, fabricating the story accusing them of treason and sentencing them to life in prison and death.
Reading the book will tell you the nightmares that Somalilanders went through during the 1970s and 1980s – something I personally witnessed, lived and grew up with it.
The first time I read this book was a few years ago, the second time was when I was on a plane flying from Garowe to Hargeisa in 2008, and this is the third time. I never get tired of reading this book.
The first part of the book is the story, how things happened and what exactly happened. The second part is about the supporting documents from the Somalia courts and how the case was presented, including the papers and case presentations with the signatures of the judges and jury.
This book reminds me of my past, helps me to live in the present and gives me light to the future.
