The Charlatan (TC): You’d been thinking about going to Africa for a long time but said you finally made the trip after hearing about the Somali Affair. Can you describe how you felt when you heard about this?
Gary Geddes (GG): I was appalled to hear Canadian soldiers beat a man to death and lured him in the military compound by leaving the gates open. Then I started to do some research about Somali history and became intrigued and was surprised this was a nation of “poets.” I felt ashamed to be a Canadian at this point.
TC: How, if at all, did you see the Somali Affair as a reflection of flaws in Canada?
GG: You don’t have to go far to find racism in Canada. All visible minorities have incidents in their lives where they are treated as second class citizens. For example, natives are demoralized, their lands taken, and they were stuffed into reserves and residential schools. The Canadian education system does not teach this history. For example, Sikhs in 1914, Jews in holocaust during the war, many were killed as a result of being turned away. There is a lot of systemic racism in Canada.
TC: Can you describe a scene in your book which you feel captures the issues people are facing in Somalia?
GG: Somalia was a motive to go to Africa but wasn’t a major experience in the book. If you shift the question to Uganda . . . men were abducting, torturing and mutilating people. Thousands of children were also trained to be killers [with] hundreds of thousands displaced.
TC: Poetry is seen as a healing art in Somalia. Can you elaborate on this?
GG: It is a healing art everywhere; it functions as art because we are all wounded at some level. It is a primary process language . . . it touches people.
TC: While you were there you attended a four-hour “poetry extravaganza.” How did this differ from how you have typically experienced poetry?
GG: There is a much broader cross-section of society that shows up to these readings in Somalia . . . in Canada, it’s not seen as an essential feature of the nation . . . we are failing by not placing greater value on the arts. More people should know that these things are not only healing but a lot of fun!
TC: What does Drink the Bitter Root mean?
GG: It is a custom, a grassroots justice custom called Mato Oput. For example, if someone kills your son in northern Uganda, you don’t seek revenge. Revenge is an endless cycle. Interest is not in revenge but in restoring the balance. The two parties will get together and drink a mixture of maize and the bitter root from a special tree. They drink that bitter root together as an attempt to restore balance to the community.
Then the cow is eaten in a huge feast.
TC: How to do you think this book is relevant to the current famine?
GG: The book while its not explanatory in the way that a historian or political scientist might explain Somalia but it will remind people to pay far more attention to the whole picture before we make generalizations . . . Colonialism is a big factor to cause the problems in Africa now . . . Canadian mining countries are still aiding this. As well as the systemic racism that is still in Canadian culture.