Liberation Farm / David Crews

“Liberation Farm” for the Somali Bantu Community Association and Agrarian Trust
by David Crews

On the morning of October 24, 2020 I had the privilege to meet Muhidin Libah, of the Somali Bantu Community Association, at the site of what would become (in the following year) the new Bantu community farm. The Agrarian Trust has helped Muhidin and the Bantu Association find this new land in the foothills of Wales, Maine—what is also Abenaki ancestral land. Muhidin graciously spent a few hours with me that morning talking and walking the land, and the following poem comes from our time together. It is dedicated to the spirit and will of the Somali Bantu Community Association as well as the good work of Agrarian Trust.

David Crews
Apr, 2021

Liberation Farm

1

When I pulled onto the land 

that now is and will become the site for the new 
Somali Bantu community farm 

here, in Wales

Muhidin was feeding the goats

They were facing different directions like leaves 
piled near him

among scatterings of carrots, celery, lettuces 

There are no crops here yet—the rolling field 
of 107 acres 

that ends in a distant ridge colored by Maine’s 
autumn trees

will support over two hundred Somali farmers 
and their families

How Muhidin came to live here has the distance
of a story 

and sounds like the story of many in the Bantu 
community

—a refugee at the age of seven

he remembers walking two months on a road 
flooded with families in flight

through the desert

the only food that which they could carry

2

As we walk the land I wonder if Muhidin is aware
what bird species here are in decline

will he know how to handle black bears

He scoffs at the berry-filled scat—back where 
I am from, he tells me

the dogs would eat you if they could

and he does not laugh

The goats from inside their pen watch us walk by
the site where future greenhouses will be built

to grow vegetables Somali farmers know—

okra, a squash called katito, a type of kidney bean
called digir

and African eggplant, kurere

He says there are even some local businesses
who want their flint corn

then helps me spell galey

grown: four seeds, sown six feet apart, with
squash, beans, carrots nestled between

Haudenosaunee peoples tell stories of
Three Sisters

We are standing on ancestral lands 

of Algonquin tribes, those who have come to 
dialects of Abenaki—

Kennebec, Nanrantsouak, Arosaguntacook

Gunshots suddenly fire through neighboring 
woods, and without any hunter orange 

we turn and walk back toward the road

3

Muhidin was seven when General Howe visited 
his elementary class

under a tent in the desert, promised they would 
return to their homes soon

this, part of the UN taskforce movies speak of

But violence in and around his village in Middle 
Jubba raged and powerful tribes took over

Somalis, he tells me, live in Kenya and Ethiopia 
too

it was colonists who took land, drew borders

his country for as long as he remembers—
one of violence

Muhidin lived in a refugee camp for twenty years

4

One of the goats rises with big watchful eyes, 
puts front hooves on the fence

without looking Muhidin strokes the goat’s neck

Traditional Somali farming is farming by hand 
and back home, he says

they do not compost—the growing season

a full nine months 

after the monsoons come, when the river floods

and farm fields fill rich with nutrient

5

This land here in Wales 

now proves the third property this community 
has tried to purchase

lands for sale in the past suddenly no longer 
for them

There are possibilities here, Muhidin tells me

the land large enough to support not just
the farmers and their families 

but the hope to have excess food beyond crops
they donate locally

and a farmstand, a store here on site and perhaps
a catering business

A beige goat with dark ears picks up a carrot and
grinds it to meal

This time, he says, the local community in Wales
gave great support

and now, here, on this new land

they will get to celebrate Idd twice a year without 
permit

how unfamiliar these terms—rent, lease, property

Back home Somali land is not owned or sold

and when a traveler arrives at a new village
that person is actually given 

a plot—both to farm and raise a family

Muhidin tells me of traditional Somali dances

sometimes in trance, sometimes speaking 
tongues

negotiations with spirit

it is both departure and arrival—shraro, shrarow, 
borane

6

Muhidin tells me, he could be killed for returning 
to his village

having acquired too much education

he will always be a refugee

His work serving the Bantu association now comes 
upon fifteen years

the land here, he says, brings great joy to their
community

how an excitement these days travels among 
the group like whispers

how the idea of land, and their connection to it, is
so intimately planted into a presence

of mind and body

I marvel at the energy the earth brings

Before leaving, I thank Muhidin for his time, for 
meeting me

It was no problem—pleased to, he says

I’d be here for my goats

David Crews is a writer, editor, and wilderness advocate who currently resides in southern Vermont / ancestral lands of Mohican and Abenaki peoples. He cares for work that engages a reconnection to land and place, wilderness, preservation, nonviolence. He currently serves as managing editor for Wild Northeast.. Find David and more of his work at davidcrewspoetry.com

Somali Bantu Community Association (somalibantumaine.org) supports a minority ethnic group of Somalia, inhabiting the Shebelle and Jubba River valleys, and speaking two main languages in addition to Somali—Maay Maay and Zigua. Somali Bantus are ethnically and culturally different from the general Somali population, made up of the Cushitic Somali clan, and Arab and Italian minorities. Thus, there is a need for culturally relevant services specific to the needs of this community. The Somali Bantus are the descendants of many Bantu ethnic groups primarily from the Niger-Congo region of Africa.

Agrarian Trust (agrariantrust.org) supports land access for next generation farmers for sustainable food production, collective ecological stewardship, complex land succession, with accounting, estate planning, retirement planning and legal and technical assistance.