MINNEAPOLIS, June 10 -- People with no assurance of ever returning home follow politics more closely than those who've never left. Hassan, a Somali living in the Minneapolis neighborhood called the West Bank -- of the Mississippi River -- asked bitterly why the United Nations sent Ahmedou Ould Abdallah and now "the Tanzanian" Augustine Mahiga, as envoy to his homeland. "Who not a Somali?" Hassan asked Inner City Press on June 10. "Are we not good enough?"
Hassan works at Safari Express, an East African take out restaurant, in the Midtown Global Market in south Minneapolis. Over a plate of chicken suqqar, he recounted to Inner City Press how the civil war in his country makes it impossible to return. Some, he said, return only to fight, usually for Al Shaabab, "The Youth."
Outside in the Chicago and Lake neighborhood, women in veils walk in front of liquor stores and half abandoned buildings. The Ugbaad Cafe is closed and boarded up, across the street from one of Minneapolis' Peavy Parks. Two blocks further south, traversed on one of Minneapolis' bikes to rent and share, nurses are picketing Children's Hospital.
"Is that a rental bike?" a Somali calls out to Inner City Press. Yes it is. From 11th and Marquette out to 30th and Lake is less than 20 minutes. The same to the West Bank and Riverside.
It is June in Minneapolis and aging rock bands play for free. There is a statue for Mary Tyler Moore. Make it, Mary Tyler Moore in Mogadishu. "Don't go there," Hassan advises Inner City Press. "They kidnap you for money."
In fact, Inner City Press traveled with the UN Security Council and Ould Abdallah to Djibouti in 2008. Ministers of the Transitional Federal Government, some from Minnesota, stayed in the expensive Kempinsky Hotel and assigned themselves positions.
Now they control four square blocks in Mogadishu. The view of them from Riverside, from Minneapolis Somalis, is less than positive. "We need our country back," Hassan said over chicken. Then he smiled and went back behind the counter.
