Sweet Potato Mash

Ayeeyo (grandma) Ebla used to plant them. She was my great grandmother and she was a nomad, a transplanted nomad. Put her anywhere and she would thrive, a true survivor. I never met her but I have a lot of respect for her. How can you not respect someone who was born a nomad, raised a nomad, yet quickly adapts to settled life and takes up gardening as if her life never depended on it?

Whenever mother cooked food for us, she would tell us a story and open a window into her childhood. She told us how ayeeyo Ebla dug holes in the sandy soil of Wardhigley (district in Mogadishu) while she and her little brother stayed two steps behind and placed small sweet potatoes in the holes. Ayeeyo planted sweet potatoes, beans, watermelons, tomatoes, and corn, enough for her family as well as some of her neighbours. Land was plentiful those days and most everyone planted a little something.

We have also taken up gardening, continuing ayeeyo Ebla’s tradition. We haven’t seen many Somalis growing food in the diaspora and that is quite unfortunate. Ayeeyo Ebla had every excuse any of us could ever come up with. She fled from the dervishes and trekked on foot for nine months from the hinterland of Eyl to the outskirts of Mogadishu, a journey of more than 1,000 kilometres. There were a few hurdles along the way, including the routine self-delivery of a baby girl, my grandmother, ayeeyo Isnino Egal Hirsi. The first thing the newborn saw was the acacia tree that she was born under, one among many, as unremarkable as the day she was born.

Ayeeyo Ebla boiled her sweet potatoes, and that was supper. It was a welcome respite from the almost nightly appointment with ambulo (boiled adzuki beans). Other nights, she would boil baby watermelons which mother remembers as sweet, sweet, and sweet.

The stories about ayeeyo Ebla weren’t just about the hardships she went through. The ones that I liked best were those that described her fun-loving spirit. She loved to sing and dance and a single tap on a haan drum would perk up her ears and alter the rhythm of her heartbeat. In the countryside, unmarried nomadic women would venture out after dark carrying the haan drum. A few taps would draw the young men like a moth is drawn to a flame. Song, poetry, dance, showmanship, and courtship (shukaansi). That is how women were courted.

In Mogadishu, she was reunited with her husband Egal, whom she hasn’t seen for many years after they were separated by the conflict. Married, she still responded to the call of the drum, to the rhythm of life. How do you repress that which is not under the control of the will? How do you retire fun?

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