Word: somalilands
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During the past decade, while the winds of change whipped through the rest of Africa, the only thing blowing in French Somaliland was sand. An arid enclave of 72,000 African tribesmen, 8,000 Arabs and 600,000 goats, it voted in 1958 to remain a colony of France, apparently content with the several mil lion dollars a year that the French spend to help support it. Or so it seemed un til last month, when Charles de Gaulle passed through on the first leg of his round-the-world tour. Unexpectedly, he was greeted by riots and demonstrations whose...
...embarrassing start for a trip designed to shine up De Gaulle's image as an anti-imperialist, and heads imme diately rolled. The Governor of French Somaliland was fired, the vice president of the local government council was whisked off for "extended leave" in France, and hundreds of agitators were expelled to the neighboring Somali Re public. Still the riots continued, and last week a disturbed De Gaulle acknowl edged that something might be wrong...
...first there was Djibouti. Djibouti is the coastal capital of French Somaliland (pop. 100,000), a tiny toothmark of rocks, desert and hot wind located on the African side of the mouth of the Red Sea. Its only notable product is a wine concocted from the doom palm, its principal source of income a narrow-gauge railway from Ethiopia to Djibouti's excellent port. Offered its independence in 1958, French Somaliland turned it down, and is now the only French colony in Africa. Three-quarters of the voters in a national plebiscite elected to retain their ties with France...
...President of France was unfazed. Somaliland, he said, during a brief ceremony in the Governor's Palace, had chosen for itself the status of a French territory. "France respects this status and will continue to do so," he said. "I am a man who has lived much and has seen many varied situations. None of them astonish me, none will astonish me. Whatever happens, I will serve France. I am sure that you will serve her with...
...bleak stretch of sand dunes near the coast. In Laos, there are so few trained government elite-about 100 in all-that Cabinet making is essentially a game of musical chairs. Ethnic vivisection abounds nearly everywhere. The Somali peoples are split up among Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and French Somaliland; the Bas-Congo tribe is found in three nations, the Sawaba tribe in four. The reverse can be true as well: Laos, Nigeria and the Sudan, among others, are continuously rent by warring tribes that are unnaturally confined inside the same country...