The History of Nasib Bundo

TRAVEL  AND COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY

Monday, 24. - Today Nasib Bunda arrives with about fifty of his soldiers and one

he is troubled by people who kiss my hands and call me Basque; but this visit is the collapse

of my already thinned supplies.

Nasib Bunda is a man of about 56 years old, thin, with a little beard under his chin which must have long tinged with enna; speak slowly with good-natured. It comes in my tent and I give him a cup of coffee, and then roasted coffee with butter and sugar. It is not customary to talk about business right away, so I have to wait in the evening. We interrogate two of his men who say that the road is difficult, that between webi Juba and webi Shabeli for heavy rains there is a line of marshy ground that prevents the march to camels. I don't want to go back to Brava or go to Kismayo, at the cost of losing the camels I will pass.

Book: COMMERCIAL EXPLORATION IN AFRICA

Page: 279

Published: VOL 15. 1879

EXPEDITION UP THE JUBA RIVER THROUGH SOMALI-LAND EAST AFRICA.

At lenth we arrived at Fuleile, the village where the Sultan of the Gusha district (Nasibu Mpondo, as he is called), resides. He is tall, fine, powerfull man, and at once came off to visit me, expressing his delight at seeing the steamer. He begged me not to go to bardera, as he said the up-country Somalis were very bad, and would assuredly kill me.

BOOK NAME: The Geographical Journal

PUBLISHED: 1893

By Commander F. G. DUNDAS, R.N. 

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUBALAND

In March 1896 Nasib Pondo, headman of Gosha, acknowledged in writing his recognition of the jurisdiction of the British Government.

Book: Jubaland and the Northern Frontier District.

page: 25

Published: VOL.I. Januaby to June, 1898.

EXPEDITION UP THE JUB RIVER THROUGH SOMALILAND, EAST AFRICA

At length we arrived at Fuleile, the village where the Sultan of the Gusha district (Nasibu Mpondo, as he is called), resides. He is a tall, fine, powerful man, and at once came off to visit me, expressing his delight at seeing the steamer. He begged me not to go to Bardera, as he said the up-country Somalis were very bad, and would assuredly kill me. He said that he and all his people were the friends of the European. Throughout the whole Gusha district the Swahili language is spoken.

THE BATTLE OF ABUUR-REEB BETWEEN OGADEN AND SHAMBARA 

the Ogaden tried to expaned toward the gosha regien were the shambara tribe reside.

When the Sultan of Zanzibar Seyyid Barghash recognized Nassib Bunda as "Sultan of Gosha land" and supplied him with guns, he had several interests in mind. To be sure, he was primarily interested in expanding trade, and hoped that this new watoro community might generate exports of ivory and grain. He must have also been aware, however, that arming the Gosha would enable them to challenge the Ogaden Somalis, who were raiding coastal trading towns and demonstrating marked hostility to Zanzibar's authority along the coast. The opportunity to bog down the Ogaden Somalis with a new, well-armed and highly motivated adversary served the Sultan's interests well. 

For the Gosha, survival, not geopolitics or the expansion of commerce, was the immediate concern in their relations with the Ogaden. The series of battles fought against these pastoralists constitutes one of the most important traditions in Gosha oral history. The victory of the Gosha at the battle of "Abuur-no-reeb" which means leave us a seed over the Ogaden, remembered in great detail and recounted with relish, is an immeasurable source of pride for the Gosha, and reflects a deep-rooted animosity between the two groups that should not be overlooked today. In their long history of enslavement and inferior status in a Somali-dominated society, their victory over "the nomads" symbolizes a very brief period of Gosha independence.

The "war" against the Ogaden appears to have been a long series of often inconclusive skirmishes, raids, and kidnappings interrupted by periods of calm as well as by a few more serious and large-scale battles. In one sense, the Shambara were at a major disadvantage in that their villages were much more prone to raiding than the temporary encampments of the nomads. Few Gosha would risk encountering the numerically superior Ogaden in their own open bushland, and a counterattack on distant Afmadow would have been unthinkable. As a result, some of the Gosha settlements had to be "fortified" against surprise raids by the Ogaden.

The Shambara possessed a number of key advantages though. They owned superior weapons, both in their large stockade of shotguns and their bows and arrows, which were much more effective in forest skirmishes than the spears of the pastoralists. The forest was also familiar ground to the villagers, whereas it was essentially foreign land to the pastoralists. The wide and deep flood plain on the west bank provided a formidable protection of forest between the villages and the Ogaden, denying the latter any easy access to the riverine settlements. And, importantly, the Gosha had to have been highly motivated. Unlike their adversaries, for whom victory entailed only windfall profits from the sale of slaves, the Gosha were fighting for their very survival.

In addition to the skirmishes and kidnappings, there were three main battles.15 The first was fought near Nassib Bunda village, where Nassib and his commanders were said to have employed magic to ward off the Ogaden attack, resulting in a draw. The second battle was farther to the south, near Shungor Mafula. There the Ogaden and Shambara again fought to a draw in what is remembered as a long series of skirmishes. This battle is said to have led jointly by Nassib Bunda and Shungol Mafula, and it was this battle in which the Mushunguli supposedly failed to assist its neighbors.

The third and decisive battle was fought in the Mushunguli district, at what is today called Fagan or Shaykh Cambuulo. The battle of "Shaykh Cambuulo" or "Abuur-no-reeb" occurred sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s, shortly before the first colonial outposts were established. By then, a famous Islamic teacher and missionary, Shaykh Murjan, had arrived in the Jubba valley from Marka and was establishing a religious community, and jameeco (communal farm), in Mana Moofa, on the southern rim of the Mushunguli district. In addition to converting many of the Gosha to Islam, Murjan sought to end the fighting between the Gosha and Somalis, personifying the long struggle of Islam to overcome clan divisions in Somalia. His mission of peace was at first scorned by the Shambala, including the allegedly Muslim Nassib Bunda, who exiled him from Kalange to Mana Moofa. Eventually, however, Murjan prevailed, convincing the leaders of both the Ogaadeen and the Gosha to meet with him, where they prayed together and called for a truce. There, Murjan broke a rosary and allowed the prayer beads to fall scattered. One elder reenacted the famous scene: 

"If anyone starts a war they will become like these prayer beads fallen to the ground." Both akhyar agreed. "If one of you Ogaadeen gets lost in the Goshaland, I ask you Gosha to lead him out. And if a rear-gold is lost in the Ogaadeen area, you Ogaadeen lead him back to his house. From now on no more killing. If there is a killing, no more revenge, only the payment of money for the funeral."

Despite this holy truce, one of the Ogaadeen leaders, Shaykh Mohamed Yusuf (later to be known as Shaykh Cambulo) decided to make all of the Shambara his slaves. After seeking unsuccessfully the blessing of Shaykh Murjan in this endeavor,118 Mohamed Yusuf and the Ogaden prepared for war.

Accounts of the battle are filled with lore of Shambara magic pitted against Mohammed Yusuf's magic. Soldiers of the Gosha turned to bees and swarmed the Ogaden, or turned to termite hills to trick them, or became invisible. All accounts agree that the combination of Gosha weaponry -- guns, arrows, and spears -- outmatched the Ogaden. Outflanked, the pastoralists were routed, and the survivors forced to

plea for their lives:

Then the nomads said "you must spare at least one person's life,  abuur-no-reeb" ["reserve seed"]. The Gosha said "we don't keep bad seed. Our seed will come from Tumbo [the Shebelle area]."119

Even Shaykh Mohammed Yusuf lost his life. Valley lore has it (and is confirmed even by Ogaden Somalis) that his head was cut off and used as a measuring device for maize in subsequent trade with the Somalis. In this way he was given the posthumous nickname of "Shaykh Cambuulo"(cambuulo is a porridge made from maize meal).

The defeat of the Ogaadeen at Shaykh Cambuulo did not alter the balance of power in the region. The Gosha remained an isolated and vulnerable community eager to place themselves under the protection of the newly arrived colonial powers. The Ogaadeen remained the most feared power in the area and tied up the British with sporadic resistance to colonial rule for over a decade. But the Gosha had clearly made an impression on neighboring Somalia, many of whom feared to enter the forest. The Gosha fighting force also impressed the arriving colonial officials, who eventually saw to it that their arms were confiscated.

Peace between the Gosha and the Somalis is universally attributed in the valley to the intervention of Shaykh Murjan. The conversion of Islam by the Gosha and the initiation of peaceful relations with the Somalis are perceived as an inseparable process. Shaykh Marjane's accomplishments in the valley, though little known outside Jubaland, easily rival those of Nassib Bunda, whose memory among the Gosha is not nearly as revered. Still, Murjan cannot be credited with the imposition of peace between the two groups. Instead, it was the intervention of the British colonial administration, and its long period of "pacification" of the Ogaden Somalis, that removed the threat of war and raids.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps more than any other historical period, the final quarter of the nineteenth century holds important lessons for those who would plan or implement "development" of the contemporary lower Jubba valley. For a close examination of this era in the history of the water society reveals that, in many respects, the Shambara people enjoyed more political autonomy (as a group), more participatory power in local affairs (as individuals), and a much greater level of agricultural productivity and food security than they do today. To acknowledge this historical reality is not to glorify some abstracted, pristine peasant past untouched by European imperial designs; on the contrary, documentation of this era reinforces the thesis that the Gosha people were both a product of transformations in East African political economy and active participants in ongoing changes occurring in the social and economic structures of the Jubba region. But the historical record of the late nineteenth century in the lower Jubba does compel us to reconsider what constitutes "development" in the valley today. If political participation, freedom from exploitation and domination, surplus agricultural production, and high levels of food security are important indicators of "development," than "independent Gosha land" was in many respects more developed than it is today. And if this uncomfortable finding is true, then analyses of contemporary development in the region must reconsider the roots of rural poverty and powerlessness in the lower Jubba in such a way as to account for the deterioration of the community's political economy in the past one hundred years. Such a research agenda throws into question all technical and historical explanations of under development in the region, and brings history to the fore as the sole approach capable of shedding new light on the community's immiseration.