Somali's received an undeserved reputation for helplessness from the terrible images of starvation broadcast worldwide during the great famine of 1992-93. In fact, famine was the result of rival clan militias fighting amongst themselves and wreaking havoc on the land and livestock that Somalis have traditionally, and proudly, used to feed themselves. Five years later, civil war continues throughout the country, forcing many Somalis to live in refugee camps run by CARE. But the Somali's legendary reputation as some of the world's most astute business people has enabled them to create thriving markets within the camp.

Many Somali women, for example, have joined a CARE program that encourages small business activities such as basket weaving or wood carving. Unsurprisingly, such activities have taken off; the brightly colored "CARE baskets" and amusingly carved wood canes, bowls and sculptures are everywhere in Hagadera, the CARE-run refugee camp I visited in June. All goods and services are available to the refugee or visitor alike -- for a price. And there's nothing Somalis like better than a good bout of bargaining. They are experts at it, and usually run rings around their hapless customers. (I should know, I was one of them.) However, I wasn't fully aware of how deeply imbedded the love of business was in the culture until I stepped through the small door of a typical refugee house and met one Muktar Maalim, better known to his friends and customers as, simply, "John."

Mucai, a CARE employee working in Hagadera camp, introduced us. Mucai (pronounced "mas-eye") is a young, stocky Kenyan who has worked nearly one year in the camps, organizing education and theater activities that teach refugees health and environmental messages. He is well known and well liked and as we walk through the camps he is constantly greeted or tapped on the arm by dozens of refugees and their children. Mucai directs me through the thorn tree gate of one compound, to the doorway of a small, plastic-lined hut. The contrast of moving from hot sunlight to dark interior temporarily blinds me, but when my eyes adjust I can see that I am surrounded by dozens of beautiful, tightly-woven baskets in wild variations of crimson, blue, purple and green. Sandwiched between the stacks is a plump woman with a soft face, and standing next to her is a young, thin boy with bright, darting eyes typical of most Somalis, and funny, comma shaped eyebrows that soar almost vertically across his forehead. He looks, in fact, much like a young Dr. Spock in "Star Trek."

"My name is Muktar Maalim but you can call me John. This is my mother Bunia," says the boy abruptly. He seems to know exactly why we're here and is almost impatient to get the frivolous introductions over with so that we can all get down to the real matter at hand: business. But I am struck by the incongruity of the name. "John? Why John? Is that your real name?"

Without batting an eyelash he explains that "John" is not in any way his real name. It is, merely, "easier for my customers to say." And obliging the customer, who are almost always the foreign relief workers and other official visitors to the camp, is the hallmark of a good businessman. Only "John" is not a man. He's a boy -- just 12 years old.

Like most children in the camp, John lives in a large, extended family; the remnants of sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and others who were not lost in the war. John himself is one of six boys and two girls (including his twin brother). His mother must also care for several nieces and nephews left "motherless," says John, by the fighting in Somalia. And then there is John's grandmother, who is blind. It is a large and relatively vulnerable group of people who, without the security, food, shelter and water provided by CARE and other humanitarian groups, would have to struggle to survive.

John does not want to talk about the war, however, or even his family. He wants to talk baskets. Immediately, he launches into a sales pitch so expert that I have to remind myself there is no way this refugee child could ever have seen an American late-night infomercial.

Grabbing a red and blue handled basket, he waves it in the air and stares soulfully at Mucai.

"Even if you say to us, make one thousand baskets we will not break the promise," John chants. "If you want one made specially it is no problem for my mother" -- he motions to Bunai who is sitting in passive, but, I imagine, not uninterested silence on the mat floor. "If we cannot give it to you now we can make it for you right away, in two days. Come back Saturday!"

Mucai and John haggle. A small basket is selected and a price of 100 Kenyan shillings (about $2 US) is named. This is probably 100 times the amount of money it cost to make the basket, but you'd never know that from John. Instead he places his small hand on his heart and says "This one I will sell for 80 shillings. Because you are a customer. If anyone who comes to us who is not a customer we would not give such a discount. But since you are bringing customers to us you get this discount."

The pitch is working. Even though I am aware that there are dozens of women's groups throughout the camps selling hundreds of baskets, I suddenly feel that clench of anxiety one always gets when a good salesman ratchets up the pressure. Eighty shillings! That is a good discount! Maybe I should buy two...

Mucai does order several baskets to be made for a co-worker. Then, the hitch: John calmly demands a deposit of 100 shillings.
"A deposit!" says Mucai. "For what?"

John speaks as if from the painful experience of a lifetime in sales. "I've seen many people who say they want a basket, but when the basket is made they are gone," he says sadly.

"But I live here!" Mucai is outraged and amused. "Where am I going to go to?" The refugee camps are surrounded by miles of empty, scorching desert terrain. It would be difficult indeed to leave by any means but air, and most relief workers stay in the camps for at least a year.

John's eyes shift heavenwards but his voice is adamant. "You could go on leave..."

A salient point indeed. Without further ado, we tally up the total and agree on a timetable for delivery. Mucai and I are still silently laughing as we hand over the deposit, but John accepts the money with silent aplomb and tucks it in his trouser pocket in a natural gesture that says: all in a day's work.

"It is an erroneous assumption that Somalia's economy collapsed following...the man-made devastation," of Somalia's civil war, says John Drysdale in his book "Whatever Happened to Somalia?". "Private consumption is alive and well and...recovery is swift."

Both within Somalia -- where traditional camel caravans still bring livestock to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf -- and outside the country in the refugee camps, business, both large and small, is flourishing. Despite the fact that there is currently no central government and that control for different regions of Somalia is split between warring factions, it is still possible to find most any type of merchandise in Mogadishu's famous Sakhara Market. Out in the countryside, regional markets are packed not just with locally grown food but with clothing imported from the Gulf and radios from China. And though much is available to the buyer with money (American dollars, British Pounds, Saudi Riyals are all welcome) the majority of Somalis still struggling to recover from war and drought are cut off from consumption -- which may explain the presence of the 100 skeletal women and children lying in Baidoa Hospital, just down the street from a booming village market.

"You can get anything you want in Somalia, at a price," says CARE's Mustaque Ahmed, who visited Baidoa this past June. "But even the incredible resilience of the informal economy is not going to protect the poorest people from drought, or from the ongoing violence."

The ironic tradition of plenty and poverty existing side by side in Somalia has both environmental and historical roots. Somalia, an arid land in the best of times, "is not a self-sufficient economy," notes Roland Marchal, of the Center of African Studies in Paris. "It's economy and society were dominated by the cycles of climate. Poverty and deprivation...were largely a consequence of the harsh environment. [It therefore] traded with the outside world to procure that part of its necessities which was not domestically produced."

Although the backbone of the Somali economy is, and has always been, the subsistence herding of cattle, sheep, goats and camels, Somalis have also been known for centuries as canny traders of livestock, agricultural goods (this is the Biblical land of Frankincense) and most significantly, slaves. The slave trade, which trafficked mostly in Africans from the continent's interior, grew from the demand of larger economies of the adjacent Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and Zanzibar. From the earliest recorded trading contacts with the outside world (Egypt during the reign of Mentuhotep III, 2019-2007BC) and later in the fourth century, Somali cities such as Mogadishu and Seylac functioned as warehouses and trading ports of call for slave ships bound for Egypt, Arabia and India. In the seventh century, turmoil in the Middle East made Somalia a haven for refugees who brought their expertise and far-flung trading contacts to the desert nation (and which may also explain the Somali's distinctive African-Arab looks). Later occupations by Portugal, Egypt and Turkey did not detract from the activities of Somalia's traders (during the 1870s around 4,000 slaves were being imported yearly to the city of Banaadir). It was not until the British took over much of Somalia's territory between 1884 and 1886 that the slave trade was officially discouraged.

The colonial era that followed put money and education into the hands of a growing strata of middlemen traders and brokers who helped place the building blocks of a truly commercial and international economy. This high-powered indigenous business class would later contribute the resources and social impetus that led to Somalia's independence movement. Even during the socialist regime of Somalia's longest-ruling President, Siad Barre (1969-1989), the traditional informal economy flourished. And though civil war in 1989 brought suffering to millions and led to the great famine of 1992-93, millions more were able to use their ingrained economic skills and their complex clan networks to survive. Even today in Somalia, as rival factions continue to clash over disputed territory, trade goods and remittances from family members working outside the country, entrusted to clan brokers, can be safely delivered across thousands of miles of hostile countryside.

The reason for the Somali's ability to survive economically under all but the most dire circumstances may be a direct result of the nation's traditional nomadic culture.

"The slow-witted do not survive the tension, nor the perils, that beset a nomad's life," notes Drysdale, who has lived and traveled in Somalia for decades. "What the eyes behold and the ears perceive demand instant interpretation: the weighing up of probabilities and the determination of the least dangerous course of action." Any opportunity not only to safeguard the family and clan but to increase their prosperity, therefore, is seized upon.

Our friend John is proof enough of the Somali instinct for self preservation. Technically, he and his family could survive on the rations given by relief agencies in the camp. But passive acceptance of a situation, without analyzing the options for furthering one's kin and oneself, is antithetical to the nomad. (Indeed a typically blunt Somali expression proclaims: "A passive warthog goes straight to hell"!) So, inside his tiny hut, John sells dozens of baskets made by the women in his mother's weaving group. The groups have all received initial loans from CARE to purchase reeds and dye. Each basket made must be sold at the price agreed upon by the group and the profits returned directly to the maker. However, in the classic Somali example of competition -- even within the group itself -- John and his mother have worked out a special arrangement. If he sells her baskets, he gets half of the proceeds. John has, therefore, a prime incentive to push mom's products, which he does with gusto.

"My mother is famous in Somalia," John assures us. "Her name is Bunai and every person says 'where is the basket of Bunai?' And you can see even UNHCR is coming here. There's not any good baskets except this place."

Not quite true, but a good display of a ruthless competitive instinct that is key to Somali self-sufficiency. John will use the 50 shillings he receives for the sale of his mother's baskets to buy cookies and sweets for his brothers and sisters, or food for the family if his mother's rations run short. Mostly, he likes the feeling of helping his family survive, and, I sense, stand on their own two feet.

Small enterprises like basket weaving are part of CARE's plan to help refugees do exactly that. It is, says Wayne Nightengale, Administrator for CARE's programs in Dadaab (the area where all Somali refugee camps are based), part of a movement to discourage the dependency on aid organizations people frequently adopt in refugee situations; as well as to prepare them to become self-sufficient when they do return home.

"When these camps first started during the famine of 1992, people here were in a desperate shape," says Nightengale. "There was no way they were able to take care of themselves. But Somalis are naturally independent and proud people and once the worst was over we didn't want to discourage those qualities."

Once aid organizations stabilized the masses of starving and sick people pouring over the border and brought the infant death rate down to its current negligible level of .02 percent of the population, CARE staff started thinking of ways to avoid "the refugee syndrome."

"From the first we knew the political situation in Somalia was complex and potentially intractable," says Zakaria Ahmed, CARE's Project Manager. "We knew these refugees might be in Kenya for a long while. Our challenge was to help them without hurting the survival skills they would need to retain for their eventual repatriation to Somalia."

It is a dilemma facing relief groups around the world, but it is particularly acute for Somalis, a people whose particularly strong trait of entrepreneurship often tempts them to exploit free resources doled out by the international community. CARE's answer was to slowly pull the plug on what Nightengale terms "spoon feeding."

"At the beginning, we use to tell refugees 'do A, B, C and D'," Nightengale says. "But two years ago we introduced the idea of community management, of refugees getting involved in the decisions that affect their lives."

Soon, groups of elders carefully picked to broadly represent Somalia's diverse and divisive clan system were partnering with CARE to make major decisions about food, shelter, security and other camp issues. Refugees were made to see that the food they received was their responsibility. If it was lost or stolen it would be their loss as well. The message got through.

"We use to need a police force to distribute food," Nightengale notes. "Now there's no need. People cooperate because they have a stake in the process."

Relief groups also began to draw upon the natural entrepreneurial talent of the refugees themselves. For example, instead of hiring outside electricians to come to the camps for minor repairs, CARE began drawing upon electricians among the Somali refugee population. Likewise, the baskets and wood products created by CARE's small enterprise groups are being shipped to distribution points in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, in hopes of fostering markets that Somalis can supply even after they leave the camps.

"We're preparing them for eventual repatriation," Nightengale says. "All our activities are geared to help refugees take responsibility for themselves. So that they can be self-reliant when they go back home."

Since the high point of the refugee crisis in 1992, the population in Kenya's refugee camps has dropped from nearly a million to the current level of approximately 200,000. And as levels of insecurity in Somalia have declined from all-out war to low-level conflict, UNHCR has made efforts to encourage the remaining refugees to go home. Within the next few years, it is conceivable that CARE's work in the camps will come to an end.

In the meantime, the camps are organized, efficient and offer a range of services including schools and credit programs. They are considered "showcase" refugee camps, if such a thing is possible, and are frequent stopping points for visiting dignitaries and United Nations diplomats. The most recent of these VIPs was Nane Annan, wife of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arrived a week before my visit and remarked how "overwhelmed" she was by the initiative of the Somali women's groups and the responsibility refugees took for their own welfare.

When she left, Mrs. Annan took with her a beautiful, intricately woven, turquoise and purple Somali basket.

"From the fair of Berbera, Arabia dawns her supplies of ghee [a kind of butter] and a great number of slaves, camels, horses, mules and assets; but the profit on these articles is much less than the sale of Indian goods, which is the return made to the inhabitants of Africa, for the whole produced of the country thus brought to Berbera. Many chiefs of the interior, and particularly the sovereign of Hanin, who lived twenty days West of Berbera, sent down caravans of their own to purchase with good and ivory the goods from India." -- Report of Valentia, a foreign trader, who traveled to the Somali city of Berbera in 1811 to attend the great annual trade fair which was renowned throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Notes from the field by Wendy Driscoll,
CARE East Africa Press Officer