Sada Mire Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

These are among the best prehistoric paintings in the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.