"seasame sesame/sin sin" by Habibo
- poet
- Jun 4
- 1 min read
seasame seasame
how I like to be the same
the same as thee
the same as me
the same as you
the same as we
"I wrote about my spelling mistakes and longing for normality.
I tend to spell words incorrectly, looking at the word, I know it’s spelled wrong. I spend quite a long time trying to figure out the misspelled word, the letter that’s missing, and if the first letter is correct.
The hesho I’ve felt at my grown age being unable to spell, although English is my first language.
It just so happened I was trying to spell out sesame and sounded it out as sea-same. So I kept the name as sea-same as a double meaning Somali’s roots in the sea (fishermen), sesame being widely used in Somali cuisine such as sinsin, anjero, ambulo.
What gives me comfort is something my father told me (while I was learning to write Somali), Somalis write how they think there’s no incorrect spelling (it’s an oral language)."

