Grant.. Come in
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Menace,
We crossed the Red Sea in a WWII cargo plane, no seats and the windows were bullet holes. Remember, this was 1966. The airport was just what the British had left.
Hargeisa consisted of a few dozen stone buildings on a hill and a huge aqal encampment filling the valley below. The only water was a spring at the base of the hill, where women filled water containers with cups. We only stayed overnight, and then moved by police truck to Taleex.
Food was in short supply. The only available rice had come from India in a rat infested ship and was yellowish from urine and the feces mixed in with it. The police shot Grant's gazelle for meat. At one particularly bountiful meal I remember we each got a salad of two cherry tomatoes from plants growing around the well.
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I'm the front cowboy hat.
We crossed the Red Sea in a WWII cargo plane, no seats and the windows were bullet holes. Remember, this was 1966. The airport was just what the British had left.
Hargeisa consisted of a few dozen stone buildings on a hill and a huge aqal encampment filling the valley below. The only water was a spring at the base of the hill, where women filled water containers with cups. We only stayed overnight, and then moved by police truck to Taleex.
Food was in short supply. The only available rice had come from India in a rat infested ship and was yellowish from urine and the feces mixed in with it. The police shot Grant's gazelle for meat. At one particularly bountiful meal I remember we each got a salad of two cherry tomatoes from plants growing around the well.
I'm the front cowboy hat.
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Oh nooo Grant! No picture! Go to tinypic and download it then copy the bottom link and then paste here..sorry about that !
Grant! Please allow me to interview you or at least answer my question on a YouTube video. Your tales of your time in Somalia is a national treasure. Please leave a legacy. I'm in complete awe.
Grant! Please allow me to interview you or at least answer my question on a YouTube video. Your tales of your time in Somalia is a national treasure. Please leave a legacy. I'm in complete awe.
I'm having trouble posting photos. ????
Couple of questions regarding this pic :
Close inspection shows a guy carrying a cub, why?
Why are you guys all white ? ( I think there's one black guy )
Were any member of your peace corps racist towards the natives ?
Are you still in contact with people in this pic ?
Has anyone risen to high politics or high achievements?
When you were crossing the red sea where were you coming from ?
Cub or cup? Cups were in short supply.
There were two blacks, one was a lady. Most college graduates at that time were white, as was the vast majority of the population..
I don't think any of us were racist, but the Darood were certainly racist towards the Gosha in the Kismayu area.
About 40 of about 300 Volunteers, total, attended a reunion here in the Bay area in June. We stay in touch through an e-mail list.
Congressman Tom Petri was in my group. http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Tom_Petri. We also have several professors and authors.
We flew from New York to Rome, to Aden. Then the trip from Hargeisa to Mog was by trade truck.
There were two blacks, one was a lady. Most college graduates at that time were white, as was the vast majority of the population..
I don't think any of us were racist, but the Darood were certainly racist towards the Gosha in the Kismayu area.
About 40 of about 300 Volunteers, total, attended a reunion here in the Bay area in June. We stay in touch through an e-mail list.
Congressman Tom Petri was in my group. http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Tom_Petri. We also have several professors and authors.
We flew from New York to Rome, to Aden. Then the trip from Hargeisa to Mog was by trade truck.
Q
Queen Carawelo
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Damn Tom Petri is in his 70s. Grant are you as old as him? I always thought you were in your 40s.
Elaborate on how daroods were racist.
Elaborate on how daroods were racist.
White college girls in Somalia 
@ idman..Have respect and go get married, wakhtigii dhamaayee..
Grant!
Did you contemplate marrying a Somali girl while there?...
Why has Somalia left you a lasting impression or is it a matter of reliving your youth.
I am 72.
My second week or so in Jilib I made a round by bus of the area I could get to in the Lower Juba. My language skills were terrible to the extent I didn't even know Maay and Maxa were different languages. So I took my English-speaking landlord's son with me by bus to Jamaame and Kismayu and we stayed overnight with the Peace Corps couple that were then teaching in Kismayu. On my next visit the wife told me I must never bring my landlord's son to the house again, because he was Gosha and the son of the Mayor of Jilib. Their Darood landlord would not permit it. Beyond that I only know that the Gosha avoided the town.
The Italians governed the Lower Juba (which was larger than that Gobol today) from Jilib, I have always thought in part to avoid conflict with the Darood. I understand that the central government was the one that blew up all the colonial buildings in Jilib, when the administrative center for what became the Middle Jubba was moved to Bu'ale. I could be wrong about that, but Google Earth shows that my school, house, the DC's office and everything else is gone. It could look like somebody was angry or didn't want the locals to have the facilities.
Menace,
In 1966 afSomali did not yet have an official alphabet. There were no dictionaries worth the name and much of the historical information that was available has turned out to be mythical. What we did have was told with a northern twist because that was where the British were and they were the ones that wrote in English. The militarism of the Mad Mullah was emphasized, we were told to advance nationalism, and his Qadiri rival in the South, Shaykh Awes al Baraawe, was totally ignored. We got little to no southern history and had the distinct impression that all Somalis were the same and spoke the same lanaguage. This left me woefully unprepared for what I found in Jilib,
The first few months were pleasant, almost idylic. There was a large American presence in the Lower Jubba. Bechtel had just finished the asphalt road from Kismayu to Jilib and the first phase of the port in Kismayu. The Mennonites had a mission in Jamaame and the Peace Corps had a couple teaching in Kismayu and a lady at the government school in Jamaame. I did Peace Corps things like making a new blackboard for my classroom and planting a garden with peanuts and popcorn. Volunteers from the North came through with a riwayyad they were presenting and an administrator from Mog came through.
Then Bechtel and the other Volunteers left. I never established a relationship with the Mennonites, so I was essentially alone in the Lower Jubba. Once the rains started, time constraints and the muddy roads kept me locked in. I had one administrative visit during Hagai, and then nothing for a period of nine months, not even mail from home.
I had good friends in Jilib, but I was unable to communicate with them at any depth and I was in a constant state of linguistic and general confusion. I had English books to read, but no resource materials that would explain my local circumstances. I lasted a year, but by the time I got back to Mog my head was fried. I had stopped sleeping and was evacuated with what turned out to be simple depression. A total of half the Volunteers were in the same boat and left early. Others clumped together in the larger cities to survive. We just weren't prepared for the stresses of isolation in a strange land.
I had seen a lot, but didn't have the background or resources to understand what I had seen and a backlog of questions stayed with me through the years. I discovered somnet in 2005 and used the topics raised there to increase my understanding and fill in some of the gaps. It was something I needed to do.
I intended to retire in Somalia, to complete the second year of my two-year contract term, but that has not been possible. Perhaps, now that you have restored my contact with Jilib, it can still happen. Boon is now extinct in Jilib and there was an afMaay vocabulary list published in 2003!
In 1966 afSomali did not yet have an official alphabet. There were no dictionaries worth the name and much of the historical information that was available has turned out to be mythical. What we did have was told with a northern twist because that was where the British were and they were the ones that wrote in English. The militarism of the Mad Mullah was emphasized, we were told to advance nationalism, and his Qadiri rival in the South, Shaykh Awes al Baraawe, was totally ignored. We got little to no southern history and had the distinct impression that all Somalis were the same and spoke the same lanaguage. This left me woefully unprepared for what I found in Jilib,
The first few months were pleasant, almost idylic. There was a large American presence in the Lower Jubba. Bechtel had just finished the asphalt road from Kismayu to Jilib and the first phase of the port in Kismayu. The Mennonites had a mission in Jamaame and the Peace Corps had a couple teaching in Kismayu and a lady at the government school in Jamaame. I did Peace Corps things like making a new blackboard for my classroom and planting a garden with peanuts and popcorn. Volunteers from the North came through with a riwayyad they were presenting and an administrator from Mog came through.
Then Bechtel and the other Volunteers left. I never established a relationship with the Mennonites, so I was essentially alone in the Lower Jubba. Once the rains started, time constraints and the muddy roads kept me locked in. I had one administrative visit during Hagai, and then nothing for a period of nine months, not even mail from home.
I had good friends in Jilib, but I was unable to communicate with them at any depth and I was in a constant state of linguistic and general confusion. I had English books to read, but no resource materials that would explain my local circumstances. I lasted a year, but by the time I got back to Mog my head was fried. I had stopped sleeping and was evacuated with what turned out to be simple depression. A total of half the Volunteers were in the same boat and left early. Others clumped together in the larger cities to survive. We just weren't prepared for the stresses of isolation in a strange land.
I had seen a lot, but didn't have the background or resources to understand what I had seen and a backlog of questions stayed with me through the years. I discovered somnet in 2005 and used the topics raised there to increase my understanding and fill in some of the gaps. It was something I needed to do.
I intended to retire in Somalia, to complete the second year of my two-year contract term, but that has not been possible. Perhaps, now that you have restored my contact with Jilib, it can still happen. Boon is now extinct in Jilib and there was an afMaay vocabulary list published in 2003!
Menace, the man is taking the time and trouble to share his experiences and stories from when he was back home in the days with you and here you're talking like a typical troll. What official interview and national library are you talking about? Goormaad weriye noqotay ninyahow? lol
Exchange ideas and info with him and make use of it, as the rest of us reading this and his other stories indeed will. People like Grant who have worked in the country before we were even born are treasure so don't chase him away with your typical Menace talk after you invited him here.
Exchange ideas and info with him and make use of it, as the rest of us reading this and his other stories indeed will. People like Grant who have worked in the country before we were even born are treasure so don't chase him away with your typical Menace talk after you invited him here.
Menace, the man is taking the time and trouble to share his experiences and stories from when he was back home in the days with you and here you're talking like a typical troll. What official interview and national library are you talking about? Goormaad weriye noqotay ninyahow? lol
Exchange ideas and info with him and make use of it, as the rest of us reading this and his other stories indeed will. People like Grant who have worked in the country before we were even born are treasure so don't chase him away with your typical Menace talk after you invited him here.
There's a Somali saying " beentaada hore runtaada dambe bey curyaamisaa". I basically trolled so much that now that in dead serious I'm still considered a troll.
That been said I am a YouTube mogul. I own like 8 different YouTube channels that have gathered me about 3m viewers.
I am adamant that I interview Mr Grant because walahi I find his sheekos quite amazing.
somaliSpotter I urge you to apologize to me. You have insulted my integrity and my previous dignity.
I will when you in fact sit with the legend, Grant, interview him and post the video here. Deal? 
Simple or acute?
Q
Queen Carawelo
Guest
I'm not that old you bumwack. Leaf mi halone. I'm still waiting for my prince charming with a pot of Gold.
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