Etobicoke native Hodan Nalayeh recently spent a week in Wales, UK participating in Storytelling Somalia – a United Nations-sponsored lab for emerging writers and change-makers in the Somali diaspora.
As host of Citytv’s Integration: Building a New Cultural Identity – a weekly, half-hour program that showcases the Somali-Canadian experience through stories that “empower, enlighten and inspire” – Nalayeh was one of about 30 Somali journalists, photographers, playwrights, painters and poets from around the world invited to participate in the all-expenses-paid, five-day retreat from Sept. 15 to 19, courtesy of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), The Institute of Narrative Growth and Radical Middle Way.
“What they wanted was for us was to share our ideas on how to tell the Somali story better,” Nalayeh said, noting that the media often conveys the Somali community in a negative light.
“It was phenomenal, because the energy was just so positive in moving forward in the direction of rebuilding the country from the outside. We may not live inside Somalia anymore, but we can still make changes from the outside.”
For Nalayeh, who grew up in Jamestown after immigrating to Canada from Somalia with her family at age six in 1984, Storytelling Somalia served as an opportunity to reconnect with her roots – “to learn to tell our story starting with ourselves, discovering our own heritage and our own ancestors and things like that.”
“So many Somali people have lost that, because we’ve been scattered all over the world as refugees,” she lamented. “We have lost our language in one generation.”
With that in mind, Nalayeh said one of the highlights of the retreat – which was designed to “uplift the role of diaspora communities in global conversations” – was getting to meet some of the ancestors of first Somali immigrants to the United Kingdom, the merchant seamen who settled in the port city of Cardiff in the 19th century.
“The retreat was at this really remote place about two hours from Cardiff – Buckland Hall in Powys, Wales. It was out in the middle of nowhere, with no internet, but they picked that location because it was close to the oldest Somali immigrants in the UK,” she said of getting to meet with some of the ancestors of those seamen during a visit to the Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff.
“The visit to the museum was very impactful for me. I want young Somalis to learn about their culture and history,” she added. “When young people develop self-esteem about who they are, it prevents many issues in society, including radicalization.”
Another big perk of the Storytelling Somali retreat for Nalayeh was getting the opportunity to network with other talented Somali storytellers from all corners of the globe – and recruit a few of them to tell their stories on her show, which returns to Citytv for its second season early next year.
“It was perfect timing, because I’m looking to expand (Integration TV) globally now, so I was able to find correspondents that are now going to help the show from all different cities in countries all over the world,” she said.
“Somalis are spread all over the world, so we’ve been looking at how to expand and network with each other to bring more change. A lot of the people I met (at Storytelling Somalia) wanted to learn TV skills and to report their own stories, so there’s a lot of opportunity for that now.”
Nalayeh hopes that when Integration TV returns to the airwaves Saturday mornings in March, her new correspondents will help keep Somali culture alive and thriving for the younger generation.
“If you don’t share your stories, your culture goes extinct – and that’s what happening to a lot of Somali culture,” she said. “Our young people don’t know our culture, because we’re not sharing our story, we’re not talking about the language, the history, the community. So that’s what Storytelling Somalia was all about: shaping the story, so we can continue the legacy of our ancestors.”
For more information about Integration: Building a New Cultural Identity, go to www.integrationtv.com, follow @IntegrationTV on Twitter or visit the Integration TV page on Facebook.
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