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 … - Sada Mire

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 believe that our practical cultural heritage helped us survive the war, even though we were city dwellers. When the war broke out in Somalia, we had to flee. We found ourselves in the desert with nothing. Only through our innate skills did we know how to find water sources, how to make tools from materials found in the field, how to build a house from acacia trees and where to find healing herbs.

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