Perspectives

Perspectives from Somalia

To get a better perspective of what type of relationship exists between the frankincense trees and local Somalians, part of this project investigated into this through e-mail interview questions with two contacts. The two contacts we interviewed are friends of Ismael Imports; Dr. Elmi, a practitioner in Somalia now leading research into the ecology of frankincense trees with what spare time and resources he has, and Alhan Muhammed Jamac, a local woman who buys and sorts frankincense, and whose family is involved with the trade. To each we e-mailed eleven questions that we thought may give a better perspective of how the frankincense tree is viewed locally. Below our the questions we asked and the responses we recieved.

The Questions:

1. What kind of work do you do with the Frankincense trees?

2. How many members of your family depend of frankincense trees for their work?

3. How many trees do they own?

4. How long has your family been working with frankincense?

5. Could you describe the process by which you harvest the gums?

6. What are the best and worst parts of working with frankincense?

7. In your opinion, do you think the Frankincense trees are being
over-harvested?

8. If they are being over-harvested, is this affecting the trees general health,
reproduction, and production of gums?

9. How would you describe the roots of the maydi and beeyo trees?

10. Are their any stories about where the frankincense tree came from? How are
they important in your community?

11. What do you use frankincense for? Do you know of other uses around the
world?

Responses

From Dr. Elmi:

I'm very sorry to tell you that my knowledge in frankincense is very limited despite being a native of a country where the plant grow. Therefore I cannot be of much help to answer your questions out of mind. Some kind of basic research is needed to answer your questions.

At the moment I'm very busy to do the basic research in response to your demands of the frankincense. It will need to assign someone to ask the question on site and interview the owners and see the plants on the ground, which grow thousands of kilometers away from where I live (i.e. on the most eastern side of the country and in adjacent Puntland, NE

Somalia

). I believe answers to some of your basic questions can be found from literatures available in libraries of your country, specifically those universities involved in arid-land studies.

Anyway if I get spare time I will do my best to get answers to some of the questions but not in a short time. It would be months if someone is not paid to do the research, which would be difficult without your facilitation financially. I think Ismael may elaborate my concern furthermore to you, since he has been to the country and knows well the current situation.

Hope I have not discouraged you and I'm still willing to assist you if you come out with concrete research plan useful to everyone.

Elmi

*As you can see, there is little information about frankincense even in Somalia. Various sourcese were obtained from our university and others that concentrate more on arid-land studies like Dr. Elmi said, but there was still limited information. Now that we know the extent of information available on the Frankincense trees the next step in this type of project would be to do exactly what Dr. Elmi is saying and try gain funding to go research the unknowns ourselves.*

From Alhan Jamac:

mahdi told me all about you and the study that you doing on frankincense. I will give some of the information that you have asked me for. I am not an expert on the subject myself but I will give what I can for now and the rest I will let know in later days.

1. I give the advance money to the owners of the farms including my family members. In order for them to start the harvest season. After the harvest season is over I buy it from them. Then I start cleaning and separating the different grades.

2. Most of our tribe depend on the frankincense on their income.

3. It is very difficult to give you numbers on the ownership of the trees. They use what they call (ardaa) meaning sections of trees. Some own one ardaa others own more than ardaa.

4. I think our family has owned frankincense about four generations.

5. The two types of the frankincense go through different process.

maydi
in mid august the workers start doing small holes to the stem of the trees. the tree produces a white gum like liquid through the holes. after two months they go back and remove the skin from the liquid gum. They do this process three times and they let dry. One the drying time is over they start collecting it from the tree. This process takes about nine months.

mohor/beeyo
in July the workers start making the holes to the trees like the maydi. They let dry for about two months and then they collect from the trees. this process takes about three months max.

That is all I can answer today. I will send the rest tomorrow.

bye
alhan

Because Alhan works with frankincense as part of her and her families' income she was able to give a better perspective into what life is like working with frankincense. The information on the differences in harvesting techniques between the two trees is interesting. Such detailed instructions were not found during research. If many people in Somalia's income depends on frankincense, like Alhan's does, than these trees need to be protected. We never heard back from Alhan on the rest of the questions.