“That banana republic?” asks Mogadishu shopkeeper and pirate, Hufan Samatar, with a chuckle, “who would want to move there?” He takes a slow drag of his cigarette. “What more do I need to say? America is a failed state. The government has been shut down for almost two weeks. Here in Somalia, we haven’t had a government shutdown in almost fourteen months,” he explains, referring to the end of a two-year military coup, the second since the mid-2000s.
“Sure, I pirate every now and then on the weekends,” he explains, running his hand over a looted television set, “but I sell my wares and I make a steady income. You Americans should try coming over here and telling 800,000 people that they need to work for free while the people at the top get paid, and we’ll devise a punishment much worse than forcing them to sweat over those ‘treadmill’ torture devices at—What’s that you say? ‘Health club’? They’re paying for that!?”
“Besides—“ he says, as he snorts a heavily-trafficked Somalian narcotic off the butt of his rifle, “people don’t feel safe over there. Their ‘representatives’ won’t even talk to each other, they’re twerking all over the place, and—“, he starts, as gunshots from outside cause a pair of women near the window to duck in fear, “there are more meth users in that country than there are people over here. Seriously, fifteen-million of them. No, no, I have seen enough of your America, and I think that I am quite content where I am. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read the latest announcement from Prime Minister Shirdon. Some of us actually have governments capable of passing laws.”
