Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Muhammad Ramadan
My talk is about rediscovering the pearls,
the lost pearls,
- when I say the lost pearls,
you might think that I am talking about oceanography or sea creatures,
but I am talking about The National Library.
In Mogadishu, when the civil war started,
many institutions have been basically destroyed.
Many of them have been national universities,
schools, hospitals, along with The National Library.
The National Library was actually more like the Library of Congress,
where all the archives, the national archives, were held,
where the history, the culture,
the research, all of that was stored.
But unfortunately, all those documents have been lost.
Chabel, one of the biggest hotels in Mogadishu
- this is before and after the civil war,
so you can see much of that destruction.
The library will also help many children
who are wandering on the streets today,
because they have nothing else to do.
This is The National Library today,
after the civil war.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find
even pictures of the library before the civil war
because we couldn't -
none could be found.
There is a saying -
a gentleman called Dennis Conner has said:
"If you can visualize it, you can actualize it."
I am planning, hopefully envisioning,
to have a modern library in Mogadishu.
(Applause)
These are some of our own traditional things
that have been -
their history and how they were made have been lost,
so we are trying to recover
the cultural and the historical aspects of the Somalis as well.
This is the city of Mogadishu.
Some of you know that Mogadishu
has close to two million people,
and about 50,000 students
who do not have access to books,
aside from their school or home,
if they do have any books at home.
The library will also have a mobile library.
We will have a bus that will go to schools around Mogadishu,
where you know -
(Applause)
since Mogadishu is a big city,
not everybody has to come to The National Library,
so we will deliver and serve them, the kids and those young people,
where they are.
We will also establish a culture of learning and reading,
so we will have a campaign "Somalia reads"
because our Somalis traditions are [part of an] oral society.
We want the young children and the adults
to learn to read more,
so they will come back to the library more often
to get books and read to the children.
There has been many young people
who have been child soldiers for different groups,
whether it's Al-Shabaab, or the warlords [of the ARPCT] before them,
and so on and on and on,
so we really want those young people to have a place,
have different things to do,
such as computers, surfing the Internet, learning through that.
We are also talking about having an innovation center,
where authors like Abd Al-Latif can come and read,
where young artists like Mahmoud can come and showcase their work,
where basically producers can show their films.
There has been many, many people, elderly people,
who have died and died with a lot of history,
and nobody has ever recorded it.
And that is something that can not be recovered.
(Applause)
We want those elderly people
to come see the library
and teach young children through storytelling,
[teach] their culture, their history, what they know, and their experiences.
Our history and books have been lost.
Some of them are in libraries around the world, university libraries,
and some might have been lost forever.
We will have collection centers in many countries around the diaspora,
especially those countries that have large numbers of Somalis.
This is part of the process of rebuilding Mogadishu.
I have decided to come back to Mogadishu,
but I wanted to come back doing something
because I am one of those people who really believes
that you have to do what you can.
(Applause)
I'm here to stay,
and I hope to see you at the library.
(Applause)