Nairobi - As a gun-toting Somali pirate, Barkhad Abdi was terrifying, earning an Oscar-nomination for his role in "Captain Phillips" with the chilling line to Tom Hanks: "I am the captain now."
They liked it in Somalia too: when Abdi returned to his birth nation for the first time in more than two decades, he was mobbed by fans who "wanted their photograph with me", he said.
But the image of Somalia as shown in such films of relentless war, famine and piracy is one the 29-year-old is determined to change.
"I didn't see a war, I didn't see a single gunshot the whole time I was there - and I didn't see a pirate either," Abdi told AFP in a green garden in the Kenyan capital, days after returning from Somalia earlier this month
"The Somalia I saw was a country that was in the process of being rebuilt. There is more there than war, drought, and hunger."
Before "Captain Phillips", Somalia was known to outsiders because of "Black Hawk Down", the 2001 blockbuster telling the story of the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, when American soldiers fought through the capital after two of their helicopters were shot down.
AFP
