Somaliland Talents For Sale
Born and raised in Wadada Godka near Wajaale Mohamed Farah of Britain and born and raised in Borama Somaliland Ayaanle Suleymaan of Djibouti both made another history in the Track and Field Championships in Russia. As a former track and field and middle distance runner, I’m so proud of to witness the two young talented athletes in the international stage from a Somali origin who brought victories for their adopted countries. As Mohamed Farah is a crowned icon in the Track and Field already, the raising star Ayaanle Suleyman is also on the right track and hopefully will challenge in the 1500m as well in the future. I always believed that Track and Field victories does not belong to Ethiopians and Kenyans athletes alone as many of us assumed but investing in our youth could also produce a similar talents if not even better. The truth is here, as Mohamed Farah and Ayaanle Suleyman are few miles apart by their birth places but united again by their unique talent in a world away distance.
Somaliland born Ayaanle Suleyman made another history in the Track and Field Championships in Russia
In 2004, I remember consulted with friends and asked, why don’t we create an atmosphere where we can attract our back home youth into Track and Field and compete against Kenyans and Ethiopians in the international level.As a former runner in Track and Field, I always believed that there were untested runners in the region and I did not even had to contemplate about that as Abdi Bileh, Ahmed Saleh, Roble Jama and Abdilahi Sharmake were still fresh in my memory. With that commitment, we organized the first road races at Borama and Gabiley in Somaliland hoping to expand through the region though we only managed to organize at Borama in 2005 and about three years later expanded to Gabiley.
Ayaanle Suleyman was one of the many talented runners emmerged from those try out and still shows his international success in the world stage. The rest of the youth are no longer active in athletics in Somaliland and the reasons are we could not continue doing so since the consecutive elections in Somaliland created a scenerio of politicizing of any organized events out there. Another legit reason is that both the present and former governments have not allocated funds for the youth development other than a few minor soccer matches once in a while. Therefore, the lack of the government involvement caused the disappointment of the young athletes that we managed and supported at least for year 6 years. Again, the wider community started to compete organizing a copy cat races rather coming together and achieving a common goal for the better of our future generation.
Therefore, it’s regrettable but well founded cause for our youth to present their talent to other countries to advance to risk their lives in the deep sea get better lives.Mo Farah showed the world mainly the self proclaimed kings of Track and Field that they should not take for granted. We have to just wait though what Mo Farah will do and how he would utilize his God gifted talent. Will he take the same route as Gebre Selassie of Ethiopia and help out his fellow somalilander athletes or would he just dance away with and forget it all about? Some responsibilities also bears on Ayaanle Suleyman as well as he is the product of the dust road races of Borama and Gabiley few years back and because we know that without those, Ayaanle Suleyman would not be in Russia today to look forward for a brighter future. Make no mistake though, I”m so fascinated about their winning since they made our dreams come true mainly for those of us who tried and believed that one day one of us would take the lead and show the rest of the world that we can do as well. If Mohamed Farah and Ayaanle Suleyman made us all proud, then I guess we can get together one more time and give a chance another wave of our gifted youth in Somaliland, Djibouti or where ever we can reach. Let us go back to our initiative dreams and do the good job one more time.
kaid askar
torunistolive01@hotmail.com