It is so dire a state that already a father loses a child in a split of a second as the latter cries for a sip of water to whet the need of extreme thirst and perhaps dehydration.
Yet, the father returns with the million-dollar commodity only to see that the child is gone.
Indeed, so dire is the drought situation grip that is slowly but surely and definitely translating its grasp and clasp into famine, displacing tens of thousands and impoverishing even more as the minutes tick by.
To paint the pictures more clearly, we herein testify that for the first time in the known history of this country, bales of pasture in the name of foreign grass was shipped into the country from, ironically and sarcastically, from the areas of the settlements of the northern Sahara deserts.
These bales have reportedly been brought to feed camels in the farms of a local livestock breeder in Burao, ironically again, the home of our own Aroori pasturelands.
Whereas we may hail the farmer for taking steps to save his animals as he personally puts it, the truth of the matter is what shame the whole scenario has brought forth as concerns our progressive nature as Somalilanders.
Just as the shame of importing simple commodities like eggs and chicken meat which could have easily been produced within.
In other words, with all the vast lands we have and the readily accessible highwater tables abundant in the country, have the whole of the nation been unable to plant Napier grass or the Bulrush or a hybrid of both e.g. Bana grass?
How come that with all the available and abundant resources we go for pastures meant for zero grazing animals in the northern Arabian peninsulas at the heart of the vast deserts and haul them all along back to our country?.
What has got into us that we have stooped so low and only sit down, arms and legs crossed while always detached, morose and grumbling?
Today its drought tomorrow its floods and the cycles of cries and wails go round and round!
Where is our Guurti, our MPs, our cabinet members our so called intellectuals, our foresight or hopes?
If we have reached a situation of importing bales of pasture from the most improbable places on earth is it not doom for us?
Or if we look at it from another angle, is it tribalism and clannism and its associated ilk that has made us refrain from planting our own grasses in our own country?
When one looks at the clip showing the bales of the grass imported from the UAE, one would be forgiven to assume that it is being taken to an ecological Zone 6 or Zone 7 world!
Take note that deserts like the Sahara fall under Zone 5 environmental systemic ecology. But nay, it is Somaliland!
It is with heavy heart that this column has been able to fathom this. We happen to be the first to have warned about the impending drought three years ago and again later in the second half of last year.
This column braced for the prioritization of water resources policies as early as 2006 and continued all along.
Seriously speaking, we again call upon our people from the pastoralists in the rural areas to the highest echelons of the eminent ones for a complete round about and fully change our ways of farming if we are to go places in the future.
