Adventures in Somali anthropology - article ; n°1 ; vol.19, pg 307-321

I.M. Lewis

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Annales d'Ethiopie - Année 2003 - Volume 19 - Numéro 1 - Pages 307-321
15 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: ANNALES_D-ETHIOPIE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 34
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Monsieur Ioan M. Lewis
Adventures in Somali anthropology
In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 19, année 2003. pp. 307-321.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Lewis Ioan M. Adventures in Somali anthropology. In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 19, année 2003. pp. 307-321.
doi : 10.3406/ethio.2003.1050
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ethio_0066-2127_2003_num_19_1_1050d'Ethiopie, 2003, vol. XIX '307-321. Annales
ADVENTURES IN SOMALI ANTHROPOLOGY
I. M. Lewis*
1. First Steps
I started fieldwork in Somalia/Somaliland in 1955 -almost fifty years ago-
having just published my first Somali book: Peoples of the Horn of Africa;
Somali, Afar and Saho (International African Institute, 1955). This was a library,
scissors-and-paste work, based on my Oxford B. Litt. thesis (1953) written as
part of my pre-fieldwork training in anthropology under the supervision of
Franz Steiner and Godfrey Lienhardt and strongly under the spell of the Oxford
Institute of Social Anthropology's director, E.E. Evans-Pritchard who super
vised my subsequent doctoral research. In the course of this work at Oxford, I
made my first real Somali contacts (including Abdi 'Telephone') and met B.W.
Andrzejewski and Muse Galal who was then his research assistant. After a long
quest for financial support (including trying unsuccessfully to enlist in the
Somaliland Scouts), I secured a grant from the British Colonial Social Science
Research Council to support my initial field research (1955-57). In accepting this
research scholarship, since no unattached foreign personnel were permitted to
work in British Somaliland, I was automatically affiliated to the Somaliland gov
ernment service (under the title 'the anthropologist'), and even found myself
appearing as the last and most junior entry on the official staff list.
Initially, I was very worried about this attachment, since I feared it would
curtail my freedom of action and impair my neutrality and independence.
However, fortunately for me, the truth proved to be very different, and without
compromise to my freedom of action, I was privileged to enjoy many benefits
from my relations with the dedicated and frequently unconventional expatriates
with whom I had dealings. The only occasion on which I actually received an
official instruction was during an extended field trip amongst the 'Ise which
included a visit to Djibouti. The Commissioner for Somali affairs sent me a
cable saying that I had left my wife (in Hargeisa) on her own for an unreason
ably long period, and should return as soon as possible. I was given to under
stand that on other occasions when some of the other senior officials thought
that I might be assigned a specific task, the Governor (Sir Theodore Pike), an
amiable Irishman who understood how anthropologists carried out their
research, protected my freedom of action -for which I was very grateful. I could
even send cables announcing my impending arrival and requesting rest-house
♦London School of Economics. 308
accommodation in District headquarters. As something of a novelty, I often
enjoyed generous hospitality from local officials and access to their knowledge
about Somali society.
I should explain that since I was studying the way of life of nomads, I had to
adopt an itinerant life-style myself. As a miniature one-person 'department' I
was equipped with a powerful Ford truck, with desert tyres, and my cara
vanserai consisted of a driver, four stalwart retired policemen (unarmed), a
cook, and myself. In addition to two tents and camping gear, we carried our own
fuel and water supplies, and sometimes we even had a few chickens to supply
fresh eggs. With this luxurious mobile anthropological workshop, I was able to
spend periods of up to four or five weeks at a time away from my home-base in
a house provided by the administration (where my wife lived when she was not
out on 'trek' with me). This enabled me to camp independently with the
nomads, both in their camel-camps and in temporary settlements in the pastures
where they roamed with sheep and goats. After over a year of concentrating on
the nomads mainly in the east of the Protectorate, I turned to study sedentary
and semi-nomadic farmers in the north-west where I established a base camp.
As it happened, I thus lived principally with a Darod clan (the Dulbahante)
nomads in the east, and with Isaaq cultivators near the Ethiopian border.
As can be imagined, roving as I did freely around Somaliland in and out of
grazing areas whose ownership was often disputed between clans, I owed my
relative personal security to the presence of the over-arching Protectorate
administration, light though its impact was. Nevertheless, on a number of occa
sions I experienced at first hand the powerful currents of chauvinist hostility
towards foreigners (especially non-Muslims) that is so firmly embedded in tra
ditional Somali culture. On occasions, in remote places, I was stoned and ver
bally abused by groups of children reacting to the unexpected presence of a 'for
eigner'. More frighteningly, while attending the pilgrimage of Sharif Yusuf al-
Qonain, a very excited ecstatic figure suddenly loomed up in front of me bran
dishing a huge sword. Luckily, this would be assailant was quickly restrained by
a more tolerant religious leader and local elder. I was still able to attend this ce
remony on three successive occasions, thus qualifying as the recipient of the
same quantity of religious blessing provided by a single visit to Mecca. Some
Somalis told me subsequently that the impressive size of my family could be
attributed to this source. On the other hand, on other occasions, I was received
with remarkable friendship at the weekly religious ceremonies which I regular
ly attended for some time at a local branch of the Qadiriya tariqa. Here I felt a
real wealth of what seemed to me sincere goodwill, and an atmosphere of peace
which contrasted quite starkly with the often combatant spirit evident in other
contexts.
In fact, I visited every District in the Protectorate to try to establish how gen
eral my findings from these regions were in relation to economic occupation
and, of course, spent considerable time also in towns. Half way through my
research I also made an extended trip through the Ogaden to Somalia (then 309
under UN mandate) and travelled extensively in the south, again visiting most
Districts south of Mijerteynia (now Puntland). I was very lucky to meet with a
friendly reception from a number of impressive Italian officials and their new
Somali counterparts who were just assuming authority at this time of transfer of
internal administration (1956).
In British Somaliland, most officials were tolerant of what some found to be
my bizarre activities, although a few initially regarded my research as a self-
indulgent, exploitative exercise of little benefit to Somalis. The Protectorate
Administration was strongly committed to Somali interests, and often at vari
ance with the Foreign Office which saw relations with Ethiopia as of greater
importance than Somali concerns. The Protectorate administration, it must be
understood, was a proud, elitist organisation (comprising in 1955 less than 200
senior officials of whom 25 were locally recruited Somali officers). The latter
were the only Somalis admitted at this time to the exclusive local Hargeisa Club,
a circumstance that caused the then Commissioner for Somali Affairs (who was
a member of the British Communist Party) to refuse to join. Despite some li
ngering racist attitudes, particularly after the Second World War, when Somalis
and British soldiers had served in the same units, the Administration became
strongly committed to Somali interests. This pro-Somali policy in the
Protectorate was fostered by making the promotion of expatriates dependent
on developing good relations with Somalis, and on progress in learning the
extremely difficult Somali language (However, when I was in the Protectorate
at this time I found only a handful of expatriate officials who could speak Somali
fluently). I was myself provided initially with a Government Interpreter, a fine
old gentleman on the verge of retirement, who worked with me for three
months and tried to help me develop the rudiments of Somali I had been taught
in London by my friend and teacher B.W. Andrzejewski. The interpreter soon
concluded that I was very stupid since, as he complained, I kept asking people
the same questions (which was my deliberate anthropological attempt to check
the validity of descriptions and interpretations). Thus we soon parted company,
and I was left to do what I could on my own which was, of course, a great spur
to increasing fluency.
Somali policy in Somaliland was often at variance with that of the Foreign
Office. This division between the policies of these two British government
departments was particularly clearly seen in relation to the vexed question of
rival Somali and Ethiopian claims to the Haud grazing areas on the edge of the
Ogaden. When in November 1954 Britain finally implemented the terms of the
Anglo-Ethiopian treaty of 1897 (contracted in defiance of prior Anglo-Somali
agreements (see Lewis, 2002, pp. 40