There's something quite heartening, even inspiring, about a bunch of rag-tag unemployed Somali fishermen playing Robin Hood And His Merry Men off the east coast of Africa.
It didn't happen without cause.
First, these fishermen had to watch impotently while the Americans and Ethiopians destroyed their (working) government because it worshipped the wrong god.
Then, enormous foreign factory boats illegally scooped up most of their fish.
Finally - irony of ironies - other foreigners dumped nuclear waste on their beaches and in their waters, thus poisoning whatever was still crawling or swimming.
One has to ask, therefore, if it isn't entirely logical that these same unemployed fishermen then look around for other work so they can feed their families, and notice all those big, fat foreign ships cruising past their villages like ancient Spanish galleons piled high with the treasure of the first world? And setting up a toll system just like the fabled outlaws of Sherwood Forest, to hold some of those big, fat, foreign galleons until appropriate ransom is paid?
It's called stealing from the rich to give to the poor and has a fairly honourable provenance.
And isn't there a certain poetic justice in the Sheriff of Nottingham threatening and sniping and huffing and puffing because the outlaws of Somalia just aren't playing by his rules and he doesn't have the faintest idea how to handle such outrageous behaviour?
(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)
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