This Photographer Has Made it His Life’s Mission to Document the Beauty and Resilience of Somalia

It is a Thursday afternoon at Lido Beach in Mogadishu, and a group of young boys are playing football on the white sands while fishermen sort out their boats, women vendors sell drinks and snacks, and the air is filled with laughter and joyful conversation as city residents run or stroll along the beach against the beautiful backdrop of a sparkling Indian ocean.

Mamadou Omar trains his camera on the scene to capture these simple moments of everyday life in Mogadishu. He will post them on his Twitter and Instagram accounts along with the rest of his work as part of a mission to challenge an entrenched visual narrative about Mogadishu.

His caption from this scene on the beach will read, ‘Mogadishu is safer and more peaceful than it has ever been.”

“And as you can see for yourself, it’s amazing,” he said.

Somalia is considered one of the world’s most dangerous places, a country that the world associates with conflict, displacement, poverty, and extreme weather caused by global warming. However, to Omar, the country is, first and foremost, home. So, he has made it his life’s work and mission to show the world a different side of Somalia.

“I want the world to see my home for what it is, not just what they hear in the mainstream media,” he says. “I want them to see the stunning beauty and the incredible resilience of the Somali people.”

His Twitter and Instagram pages (@mamaduomar) are filled with breathtaking pictures of sunsets and sunrises, markets brimming with produce, fishing nets protruding with bounty from the sea, and children playing soccer and on swings, among others.

Often, images of Somali people feature distress and an unspoken urgency to survive terror, disease, and droughts. They are often fleeing or in distress. But through Omar’s lens, many ordinary moments show life beyond breaking news.

“Somalia can hurt, but it also carries hopes and dreams. It sparks ideas and inspires change. Home comes with celebrations, milestones, and tears of joy. The people in my images are also running, but theirs are not away from anything. It is towards a future filled with a great sense of optimism,” he says.

A computer science graduate who first picked up the camera in 2010, Omar considers himself an East African. He was born in Ethiopia and attended primary school in Kenya before his family moved back to Mogadishu. While he still frequents both countries, it is Somalia that has his heart.

His love for his home is evident, as he turned to YouTube to learn photography and put his computer science degree on hold to pursue storytelling.

“Somalia means a lot to me; it may be difficult for a lot of people to understand, but I guess the strangeness of living here is what makes life exciting and adventurous. Think of it this way: imagine you are hiking and exhausted, but the more you climb up, the more exciting it gets, so you keep going,” he says. “The stranger things happen, and the more you survive them, the luckier you feel. It makes you realise that you have reasons to live for.”

“If anything is meant to happen to me, it will happen anytime, so why do I have to live in fear? Let me go and do something that adds meaning to my life,” he adds.

Omar’s pictures of Mogadishu are not the typical images of a city broken down by terror attacks. Mogadishu resembles many capital cities, with high-rise buildings and new infrastructure. The city has beautiful mosques and monuments. In the afternoon, people hang out at Nibbles Cafe, Cadiyo Caano, or Beydan, a coffee shop he calls “our version of Starbucks”.

“Life goes on; even when there is insecurity, life remains beautiful and adventurous. We still dream, and we still have adventures,” he says.

And therein lies the power of his photography. Beyond showing a contemporary and exciting side of Somalia, his work is also a revelation about himself and his life’s choices.

He chooses freedom over and over again.

Freedom, he explains, is exploring and documenting the magic and beauty of home instead of being weighed down by the dynamics of living in a city where you cannot go into some areas without at least three security checks by soldiers and sniffer dogs. Freedom is knowing firsthand how fragile life can be in Somalia and choosing to move around like you would in the safest country in the world.

“Freedom is celebrating home instead of fearing it. So, I pick up my camera daily with one mission in mind: to show the beauty of Somalia and the resilience of Somali people,” he explained.

Story Credit: Lerato Mogoatlhe