Celebrating our success
Beeyo Maal Cooperative has been on a journey to achieve sustainability and take back control of their livelihood from essential oil corporations.
Our journey so far
Three years ago, we embarked on a journey to take back our livelihood after many years of exploitation and abuse by some of the biggest essential oil corporations and middlemen. Many people doubted our action and told us we don’t stand a chance of challenging and stopping these giant corporations, but we knew that doing nothing was not an option. Our livelihood sank to the lowest level in our history, our trees were infected with bugs and dying at a great number because of overharvesting, and our forest and the species that live in it were disappearing.
An untenable situation
These large corporations took everything away from us, our dignity, our resources, and the worst of all; our confidence and ability to manage our lives. They used tactics to keep us impoverished and control our lives while they published fake stories about us to promote the products they made from our resins. They made billions, bribed our clan leaders, our elders and government officials who gave them so much power and monopoly to our resources. The more powerful they became the greater their exploitation and abuse on us. They divided our harvesting community and created clan wars.
Instead of using their funds for good and paying the harvesters a fair price for their resins and fair wage for the women sorters for their hard work they chose to oppress us and destroy our livelihood and environment. all the whilst they used us in their corporate communications, claiming that they built schools, paid us a fair wage, build us a hospital, improved maternal health, educated boys and girls and reduced FGM. They talked the talk, but did not walk the walk.
Fight for good – against destruction, lies and greed.
We couldn’t fight these corporations in our country as they had more powers than us in our homeland. They used the money they made from our resources to fight and oppress us. By oppressing us and keeping us impoverished, it gave them complete control over us, some would argue that this is tantamount to modern slavery. They took a huge amount of resins and let greed get the better of morality, integrity, and sustainability – Destroying communities, pushing individuals to mismanage the trees to a breaking point.
They hacked our trees and took branches to grow in greenhouses at non-harvesting locations. Our frankincense trees grow on rocky mountains and hills. Green houses are not the right places for them. This was part of their publicity stunts claiming to invest in the community and preservation by building tree nurseries, but the best tree nurseries are in the natural habitats of the trees. The real aim was to take cuttings in order to produce Frankincense wherever they wanted.
They broke our thousands of years old ‘xeer’ harvesting community rule and created chaos.
They did all of this to have complete power over us and an unleashed access to our resources. This caused over harvesting, over-taping of trees and deepened poverty.
They looted our resins in huge amounts and millions of dollars remain unpaid to this day. Harvesters, who are amongst the poorest in the Frankincense trade/ supply chain, are still waiting for their payments and cannot feed their children. Some harvesters in Puntland committed suicide after they lost their hard-earned money from the resins which to this day is unpaid despite numerous court cases.
Through unscrupulous intermediaries, they created qaad (kat) chewing camps and addiction, weaponised gangs, looted frankincense resins and trees.
Awareness is rising
Luckily the diaspora community heard our cries and stepped in. Vice News took interest in our stories, the Fuller Project, Guardian published our stories and made our voice heard.
Well-wishers from all over the world heard our stories and sent us supportive messages. This inspired us to gather our energy and establish the Beeyo Maal cooperative.
The resolve of our members, bolstered by this global support, will carry us toward achieving our goals.
Goal 1: Re-build our community by developing fair and sustainable practices in the trade of frankincense – We take control. Our resolve is undeterrable; There is nothing left to lose.
Goal 2: Take on and expose any organisation that uses their wealth, reputation and connection to exploit, misrepresent and damage working communities. If they do it to us, they’ll do it to others; Our heart is clean.
Goal 3: Be a key player in helping the global trade clean up their act. We’re open to work with organisations who have a positive attitude and integrity, who want to share/ join/ unite against greed – For the benefit of both workers, the supply chains and the end consumer of frankincense based products globally.