Walking through the market at midday in Burao, Somaliland, as vendors wind down for the afternoon, an unexpected voice says to me “You alright bro” in a London accent. Surprised, I turned around and met Mohamed, or Moe as he preferred to be called, working on his family’s market stool.

 

Originally born not far from Burao, Moe had moved when he was still a baby to London with his mother and father. His grandmother on his father’s side had lived in London for many years along with his uncles. “I don’t remember anything from Burao before, my earliest memories of this place were from when I came just to visit as a kid”. Moe had grown up in a flat in Tower Hamlets, his earliest memories he told me where of pre school in the UK. He told me that he thought school was fun, Tower Hamlets is home to a large Somali population, and many of his schoolmates were Somali or of Somali origin. “Although we was all Somali, we spoke in English, I used Somali at home with my parents, but everyday life was English”. He laughed as he told me he misbehaved in school, he and his friends just wanted to have fun, we didn’t care too much about life then. “Sometimes after school and weekends, my dad would take me to the mosque. When I was a kid, I thought it was boring you know, but as I grew up and that I realised how important it is”. I asked him if he felt British when living in the UK “100% bro, it was my home for years, and there are some things I miss, Man Cadburys, that S**ts so good”.

 

As Moe grew older however, living in London changed. He finished school when he was 16, and had applied to go to college, but by that point, many of the kids he used to know had started toying in drugs and crime. “Everybody wanted money bare quick, some were like 15 when they started selling. I remember the courts at school you could get anything”. Moe largely stayed away from anything bad, and got into college to study electronics, but would hear things from friends he says, “They tell me someone they know had a shank (knife) pulled on them, or they actually got stabbed, these were kids I knew playing football in school, it’s all over selling drugs”. Shortly after starting college Moe got into a fight, he was out with a friend of his when someone came over shouting at him, Moe intervened and ended up in a fist fight. When he told his parents who noticed the scuffs on his face, he recounts how his father was ‘fuming’ and ‘couldn’t talk he was so angry’. Another incident occurred one evening when there was a stabbing around the back of the apartments that they lived in, he recalls hearing the shouting then sound of multiple people running before silence. He told me how London began to feel ‘unsafe’. I asked Moe what he thought about London these days. “You know man I grew up there, I still miss it every day, I miss my boys, but life is fast as and I began to not feel safe, the house we were in was small as well, my parents also say it was expensive.”. He goes onto say he wished he finished his college course but that it is not much use now.

 

They left London when Moe was 17. His dad had lost his job in a big layoff, and they were struggling financially with the increasing costs of living in the capital. One evening over dinner they sat Moe down and told him of their plans to move back to Burao, to which he initially protested, saying that ‘all his friends and life was here’. “Part of me wanted to go inside, I loved visiting and seeing my family there, it was always happy when we used to come”. Soon he was told to pack the things he wanted to bring in a large suitcase, he had to throw out a lot of stuff, sell his bike and other possessions that were too big to bring with him. The hardest aspect of moving was saying goodbye to his friends, some of them were also from Somaliland and could catch up with him when they go to visit family, but those who were British or from elsewhere he knew there was a good chance he wouldn’t see them again. “I try to stay in contact but when you’re so far its hard, if you aren’t seeing them daily then they soon drop off”. He boarded the flight to Addis Ababa with mixed emotion, excited but sad, as he tells me “Its mad because I was leaving home to go home”.

 

The first few months in Burao were long, Moe didn’t make friends that quick, and he told me “Going from somewhere like London to here is crazy, the world has like stopped”. He had cousins in Somaliland that he hung out with initially, but they were a bit younger than him. “I was glad the data was good because I could call friends at home, but it was lonely here. It’s like I went on holiday and never went back”. This began to change however when he made a few friends from the local mosque, soon they introduced him to more people, and within a few weeks he had a new friendship circle. Moe also began working with his father. His family had a series of market stools around the centre of Burao that he and his father took on. I met Moe at the stool he was manning that day selling local clothes such as macawiis (A garment resembling a sarong worn by men) and Khameez (a full body length garment also worn by men). Moe explains “I love working here, I am in the middle of the city and get to talk to people all day”. He also got back into playing football after he joined a small local team that practice just outside of the city.

 

I ask Moe, who today is 20, what it is like living in Somaliland now. “I love it, In the UK my life was so fast, but here its relaxing, I spend more time with my family, and everything is slower”. He goes onto talk about the safety, “I know it sounds crazy man, but its safer here in Somaliland than it is in London, nobody fights here, even a scrap would land you in big trouble. And there is no crime, I leave my stool all the time in the day, and nobody touches it. Its only good people here”. Moe likes his house now; he still lives with his parents, but his home is larger and sits next to his uncles and cousin’s house. “The food here too, it’s so fresh man. So easy to stay healthy”. I wanted to know if there were any negatives to the move, and the only aspect that he complained about was the money, “I didn’t have a job in London, but I know the money here is nothing there, even though we like to take the [US] dollar, we still haven’t got much”. Lastly, I asked Moe what he wanted for his future; his answer surprised me. “I want to go back to London, or somewhere in the UK, even just for 5 or 10 years, because I want a wife to stay here in Burao, or maybe Hargeisa. She will have a nice life because I can afford a nice home for her. Once I’ve earned enough, I will come back here too, Somaliland is my home now”.