Unreported World

26 November 2012

4/8: The Head Chef of Mogadishu, Fri 23 Nov, 7:30pm, C4

Reporter Aidan Hartley and director John Conroy travel to Mogadishu to meet the remarkable British Somali man who has mortgaged his life in London and left his family behind to set up a chain of restaurants in one of the most dangerous cities on earth. Cooking is his contribution to the peace process in this war-torn country.

Ahmed Jama fled Somalia when he was a boy and settled in Britain. He trained as a chef and set up a successful restaurant in West London before returning to Somalia. But Ahmed’s success running restaurants has made him a target of jihadi organisation Al Shabaab.  One of his restaurants has been hit by a double-suicide attack, leaving 20 dead.  Ahmed is determined to carry on. The stakes could not be higher: his business, his marriage, even his survival.  

After 21 years of civil war a new government in Somalia is hoping for peace, but still battling Al Shabaab, a militant army loyal to Al Qaeda. The new government has no power, depending for its survival on a 17,000-strong African Union army that has pushed back Al Shabaab insurgents since last year. But the militants are still able to stage guerrilla attacks, bombings and assassinations.

There’s no gunfire in Mogadishu on the day the Unreported World team meet Ahmed at his beachfront café - cooking for a clientele which includes other Somalis returning home from exile in the UK. But just a few days beforehand, two suicide bombers had blown themselves up in his city centre restaurant, called the Village. The attackers shot customers and then exploded their bombs, murdering 20 people. Al Shabaab gloated over the deaths – and has promised to strike again.

Ahmed takes the team to see his bombed cafe. It’s a gruesome sight. Where one of the bombers detonated himself, fragments of his body and blood have been blasted all over the walls and ceiling, together with the remains of several other people. But Ahmed tells Hartley that he’s staying put: “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to rebuild it again and show them I can encourage my fellow countrymen.”

Ahmed hasn’t only risked his life to be here – he’s also invested all his profits from his London restaurant and mortgaged his family’s future to support the country’s development. At another of Ahmed’s restaurants he shows Hartley how he’s been trying to support the peace process by feeding scores of clan elders who have been given the task of appointing the new government’s politicians.

For Ahmed, reopening his bombed café has become an obsession. Every day his doors are closed he is haemorrhaging profits.  And he has another reason to reopen quickly. One hundred workers are depending on him for a job, in a city where very few people earn any kind of wage. The bombing has killed five of Ahmed’s employees – but his surviving staff reported for work the very next day.

As the day of the café’s reopening approaches, reports come in of the beheading of a local journalist and suicide bombers attempt to assassinate the new president. Ahmed has a nervous wait to see if his business has a future. Will his customers stay away, or will they risk their lives to have a coffee?

Ahmed has a death threat hanging over him – but he passionately wants this to work.  It’s clear how much his success means to other British returnees, like Mogadishu’s mayor, who has come back from his life in Islington, London. Through his restaurants Ahmed has given the confidence to ordinary Somalis to dare to think and act more freely. Ahmed is making a great sacrifice. The stakes are so high he might end up bankrupt or a dead man. But it may only be brave individuals like Ahmed - ordinary dreamers – who have the power to rebuild Somalia.