Our guest host this week is Alison Smith.

In Hour One

Somalia/Dadaab

 It is the largest refugee camp in the world and the site of a looming humanitarian disaster. Dadaab is a 50 kilometre,  wide piece of northeastern Kenya, a hot and dry swath of ramshackle huts, tents and barbed wire fences. 

It was established in 1991 as a haven for refugees from Somalia's civil war. It was meant to house 90,000 people. Twenty years later there are over 300,000 living there, most of them Somalis fleeing violence, drought and what the UN is now calling a famine in Somalia.

Abdi Hassan and Halima Abdille both grew up in Dadaab. When they were young children their families fled the Somalian civil war. In 2008 Abdi and Halima won scholarships to Canadian universities and are making new lives for themselves in Canada. They both still have family living in Dadaab. Debi Goodwin is a documentary producer and former CBC journalist who chronicled Abdi and Halima's stories, and nine other refugees, in her book Citizens of Nowhere.

In Hour Two

Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary

Gloria Grow is the founder of Fauna Sanctuary, the only chimp sanctuary in Canada. She says it's a cross between a mental institution, a maximum security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks home, a daycare center and a New York deli during lunchtime rush.

It is also an extraordinary respite and retirement haven for chimpanzees rescued from research labs, and zoos and even a circus.

The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is a compelling new book by Andrew Westoll,  who himself spent months there as a volunteer caregiver. Andrew joined Alison Smith in our Toronto studio.

In Hour Three

 We explore the world of Emily Dickinson and the people who love her. Earlier this year Michael Enright hosted a special hour in celebration of a great American Poet.

Her work was original, eccentric, pre-occupied with nature, with beauty, with death, and with the life of the soul. Emily Dickinson herself was an enigma. The Sunday Edition's special hour on the Belle of Amherst. 

 

Hour One

Somalia/Dadaab

It is the largest refugee camp in the world and the site of a looming humanitarian disaster. Dadaab is a 50 kilometre, wide piece of northeastern Kenya, a hot and dry swath of
ramshackle huts, tents and barbed wire fences.  
 
It was established in 1991 as a haven for refugees from Somalia's civil war. It was meant to house 90,000 people. Twenty years later there are over 300,000 living there, most of them Somalis fleeing violence, drought and what the UN is now calling a famine in Somalia.

Hundreds of starving, desperate people continue to pour into Dadaab every day and its population could soon reach half a million. Three generations of refugees have grown in Dadaab.  The Danish Refugee Council has called it the "city that shouldn't exist".

The problem is so massive, the images so heartbreaking that many of us want to just turn away. Sadly that is what has often happened to the citizens of Dadaab. They have got our attention now, but for much of the last twenty years, Dadaab has been the place that the world forgot.  

Guest host Alison Smith is joined by three people who know Dadaab very well. Abdi Hassan and Halima Abdille both grew up in Dadaab. When they were young children their families fled the Somalian civil war. In 2008 Abdi and Halima won scholarships to Canadian universities and are making new lives for themselves in Canada. They both still have family living in Dadaab.

Debi Goodwin is a documentary producer and former CBC journalist who chronicled Abdi and Halima's stories, and nine other refugees, in her book "Citizens of Nowhere".

 

Somalia Essay

Hassan Ghedi Santur is a Somali-Canadian writer and journalist. His family left Somalia just before the civil war broke out, when he was 13. Every year since he has watched his country struggle through war, drought, starvation and political instability. And he has wondered what the last 21 years have done to the Somalia of his memory. In June, he went back to Somalia for the first time to find out.  

 Hour Two

Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary

Running a rescue centre for traumatized great apes takes guts. And tenacity. And empathy.  All of which Gloria Grow has in bucket-loads. She is the founder of Fauna Sanctuary, the only chimp sanctuary in Canada. It is, she says, a cross between a mental institution, a maximum security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks home, a daycare center and a New York deli during lunchtime rush.

It is also an extraordinary respite and retirement haven for chimpanzees rescued from research labs, and zoos and even a circus.

The sanctuary, which Grow and her veterinary husband opened in 1997, sits on their 240 acre hobby farm near Chambly, Quebec.  At first glance it looks like a playground in lockdown... surrounded by chainlink and electrified fencing. Its vivid cast of characters all bear the psychic and physical scars of years of experimentation and human cruelty.

They are the subject of a compelling new book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, by Andrew Westoll,  who himself spent months there as a volunteer caregiver. Andrew joined Alison Smith in our Toronto studio.

Kumbaya Repeat

If you were sitting around a campfire or at the cottage or summer camp in the 1950s or 60s, chances are you sang it and knew it by heart. It was standard repertoire right up there with Michael Row The Boat Ashore.

Kumbaya began, legend has it, as an African American Spiritual first sung by former slaves living on the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Come By Ya...Come By Here oh Lord.  The first know recordings were on wax cylinders made in the 1920s by the American Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon.

Then it became an anthem of the folk explosion of the 1950s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Pete Seegar, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Weavers...they all sang it...often with the audience singing right along with them in heartfelt unison.

But a funny thing happened on the way from the campfires and protest meetings to the present day. Kumbaya went from being an innocent joyful plea for justice to a term of derision.

Urban dictionary.com defines Kumbaya Liberals as knee jerk thinkers of the far left who tend to A)  believe force is never an answer and B) talk about problems rather than doing something about them. It is a charge that most often comes from the political right though in response to President Barack Obama's drubbing last November's mid-term elections, the filmmaker Michael Moore said " you don't respond with Kumbaya." 

 What happened?

Glenn Hinson is associate professor of folklore and anthropology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He has studied the history of kumbaya. He spoke to Michael Enright earlier this year.