Friday, March 27, 2009

Djibouti

Boo, Djibouti. Booooooo!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Somaliland, Part II

"A tourist? No, my friend, you are a soldier."
-Somaliland soldier to me, after I explained my trek. Best compliment I've ever received.

Looking at my map of Africa one day in Berbera, I noticed a city on the top of Somaliland identified as "Saylac.” The map showed a path to get there along the coast, so I grew curious about somehow making it there. It was located just south of Djibouti, and since I planned on going to Djibouti anyway I figured that I might as well give this “Saylac” place a couple days of my time as well.

Actually, there wasn’t a “road,” I was told after some inquiry, but more a path. That made sense, as with the exception of the one highway snaking through a few of the major cities in Somaliland, no real roads actually existed. If a 4X4 or a huge truck wanted to go anywhere else in Somaliland, it could take anywhere from twelve to forty hours. For a foreigner, it would be expensive as well. And it would be hard to make it through the security checkpoints.

This isn’t the way I wanted to travel, but I still wanted to get to Saylac somehow. Eventually - and I don’t quite remember how - I hit upon the idea of just walking there. Certainly more difficult than driving, but a hell of a lot more fun.

I literally had no idea how I could pull that off. But when I made the connection that what I knew as "Zayla" was actually "Saylac" (the "c" is silent is Somali and acts like a subtle "ah") and was also called "Zeila," I decided I absolutely had to go, regardless of any logistical questions that I had.(Note: Most would English spelling for the city are Sayla or Zeila. But I first heard of the city from Burton and he said Zayla. So for those sake of romanticism I've going to call it by his version in this post.) This is because Zayla was a port city that for hundreds of years was the center of power for this part of the world. It was an extremely important area that tangled frequently with other regional powers and was likely the jumping-off point for Islam in the continent of Africa. I was told that it even had the remains of the second mosque ever built, some thirteen hundred years old. While that in itself seems implausible, the history of the place was intriguing. Though the port has long since ceded its power to other cities, I was anxious to go for another reason; Ibn Battuta, possibly the most intense explorer ever – and a guy who makes Marco Polo look like Sarah Palin in terms of travel experience – had once visited Zayla. Furthermore, Richard Burton had used Zayla as his jumping-off point for his expedition to Harar.

The chance to go to a place where my two favorite explorers had both visited sealed the deal for me. One way or another, I decided, I was going to go there.

Before I start out I should warn you about a couple things. One is that this post is pretty long and I’m anxious to get south into Kenya. What this means is that I haven’t done much proof-reading on it. Please excuse the mistakes I’ve made and the somewhat jumbled writing style. And it doesn't read like any sort of epic adventure because it's not. Really, it's just a normal walk through a somewhat abnormal area. So it may get a bit tedious. But part of the reason I did the thing was to prove to a number of people that it's totally acceptable to do a trek like this in Somaliland and that extraordinary things WOULDN'T happen. While I enjoyed myself and I received a great deal of entertainment, I ultimately found that to be that case. Also, while it may be a bit monotonous in its current form, I still left out a lot of the village names and a good deal of other information that doesn't have a lot of use. But if you're traveling in this part of the world and have wandered over to this blog for whatever reason and want more details, toss me an email (peterpolga@gmail.com) and I'll respond as soon as I can.

Anyway, actually getting the trek together was an experience unto its own. Typically something like this would be hard enough, but those normal problems were compounded by the fact that nobody appears to have just wandered off like this here in a while. Initially I wanted to keep everything under the radar, reason being that the fewer people who knew about my trek the fewer could stop me. But as I began to make my rounds gathering support and gear I found that keeping something like this a secret in a country so small is a hell of a lot more difficult than I would have thought.

These are the issues I was dealing with: Getting a camel, guide, and guard. Getting proper permission for the security checkpoints I would run into. Rounding up food, water, and gear. Finding a proper map and figuring out an acceptable path. Extending my Somaliland visa for another month. And trying to do that while not running into a ministry or security officer who would stop me.

I won't bore you with the details, but this added up to nine days of running around to a total of six different ministries, three security buildings, the Somaliland Mine Action Center, and the Electoral Commission. This was exasperating in itself, but everything was compounded by the fact that all of the ministries appeared terrified that if something happened to me - which they all assured me would never be the case - they would be held accountable. This meant explaining every single detail I could to them and assuring them that I would bring however many guards they wanted. Plus, and this was the most frustrating, every office closes at noon for "lunch."

"Lunch" means that everyone goes to chew chat - I wrote about chat in my Ethiopia post - and then don’t come back to the office until the next day. This is an incredibly annoying aspect of Somaliland, and it has helped me to dislike chat on a personal level. Whereas in Ethiopia it seemed like a pleasant local custom, here it seems to have almost taken over many aspects of normal life. It's common for men with horribly stained, worn-down teeth to come up to me and demand money. When I ask what they want the money for, they answer "to chew." Now, this is kind of like a parade of strangers telling you on a Minneapolis street that they want money to support their marijuana habit. It gets really old really fast.

Not to delve too deeply or read too much into the chat-chewing habits, but it is part of a larger issue here that I find annoying. Chat is not cheap – one bunch will probably cost around $4, a lot of money here. It seems that whenever anyone gets that money, instead of saving it for a rainy day they always, ALWAYS spend it. That concept of living day-to-day is something that is well-suited for the nomadic lystyle upon which Somalis have traditionally lived, but in a culture that has moved towards democracy and capitalism this can lead to no good. The waste of time and money with chat is no good.

Of course there is another side of the story, and far from everyone in Somaliland chews, but for a country to have actually rearranged its schedule for the chat-chewers there has to be a pretty significant population that do. I've talked to a number of Somalilanders who have lived in the West for while and then come back here. They tell me it didn't use to be like this, but something in the last couple decades has changed all that. It annoys a lot of them, too.

Anyway, I was helped a great deal by my friend from Berbera, Abdulkaer Elmi. Without him, there's no way I could have pulled this off. He had contacts with just about everyone I needed to talk to and was responsible for putting me in contact with the guy I go the camel and guide from. He also pointed me towards another of his friends, Ahmed. Ahmed as well proved to be invaluable, meeting with me nearly every night to give advice, guide me toward relevant ministries, and translate for me when I was in talks to actually get my hands on the camel and a guide. Really, just an all-around solid guy who went so far out of his way to help me that I can't even understand it. It must be a Somali thing.

As I drew closer to my start date I picked up another traveler, a British guy a couple years older than me who lived in Yemen but was in Somaliland on vacation. His name was Peter as well, though I'll refer to him as Pete as a point of reference for my post here. Because of visa issues he only stayed on the trek until we got to the coast, but he was a real solid part of the walk and I'm really glad that we met up together. After he agreed to come with me we spent the last few days scrambling around getting last-minute supplies and trying to round up a guard to come with us.

The guard issue was becoming a real sticking point, as we had sworn to every ministry we went to that we would get one. Everyone assured that without a guard there was no way that we would make it past the checkpoints. This was particularly exasperating to me in that part of the reason I was doing this was to prove that the whole place was safe and I didn't want two guys with AK-47s trailing after me. But they were only $10 per day per guard so eventually I just resigned myself to having them along.

My arguments against a guard fell on deaf or uncaring ears anyway. I would usually start by asking them if the country was safe, to which I would always receive and enthusiastic endorsement of. If was safe, I would then ask, why did I need a guy with a large gun trailing after me to protect me from bandits?

The problem wasn't bandits, I would be told, but rather hyenas along the coast. Or it could be the guys suffering from PTSD from the civil war; a lot of them live in the bush and could give me trouble. Or security checkpoints that might try to get a little money out of me. Or maybe it was the bandits . . .

Nobody could make up their minds as to what the actual need for a guard was, but everyone was in agreement that we absolutely, positively, definitely needed one. Or two. That was a disagreement. As was what branch of the security services was going to give us the guards, especially as the SPU, the branch that typically provides guards to foreigners, refused to on the grounds that our estimate of twenty days was too long to loan a soldier.

The day we were to leave we had finally landed a meeting with the head of the security services for the country. I was a bit nervous walking into his office, as this was a guy who would either make sure we got the soldier or else could keep us forever in Hargesia. After a bit of back-and-forth, we told him that we wanted however many soldiers he thought we needed for a maximum of twenty days. He paused, mulling it over, and then leaned forward and said "No, it is too long. I cannot give you any soldiers."

That put Pete and I in the bizarre position of arguing FOR a guard, though that was only until we realized we had a way out of the whole thing. “Could the commander,” we asked as politely as possible, “write us a letter saying that we DIDN'T need a guard for us to show to and security people we would meet along the way?”

"Yes," he answered. And that was it. No soldiers, no weapons, just a letter saying our party of four - Pete, our guide Aden, our camel, and me.

I ducked a meeting I had somehow gotten with the Foreign Minister - I wasn't sure if it was a meeting with him or just another way to hold us up - and we scurried to load up our camel before anyone could stop us from leaving. The camel wasn't as big as I expected, but was still a good looking animal. Pete Christened her "Beast," and my name for her was "Zayla", in honor of our ultimate destination.

We loaded up in about thirty minutes and we off, leaving Hargesia and its bureaucracy for others to deal with.

Briefly referencing Burton again, he once said before setting out with John Speke to discover the source of the Nile that "one of the greatest times in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands." If there was a time in my life where that applied, it was here. But instead of feeling any huge joy, I felt more of a sense of relief. I was DONE getting ready for this damn thing, and I was actually walking! What was in front of me wasn't on my mind, but rather what I had already gone through to get to this point. My shoulders still had tension in them and that wouldn't really go away until we were a couple days into our trip.

Physically, the walk in front of me looked like this: Of the three legs I had divided the trip into, the first was from Hargesia to the coast, a village named Buloxaar. The next leg was up the coast to Lughaya. Finally, from there we would dive back into the interior and then make our way to the final destination of Zayla. Altogether, I was told, it would be a bit more than 500 kilometers. The camel ensured that I wouldn't have to carry much, and all I took on my back was a small bag with water for the day and some personal items. So the bag never weighted more than twenty pounds or so, and even this weight I cut back on as the trip progressed.

As was the custom here with nomads, our group would sleep until sunrise, grab some breakfast, and then head out around 7 or 7:30 AM. We walked until around noon and stop to eat. After lunch we took a brief nap during the worst of the midday sun and then set around three in the afternoon and walked until around eight. That schedule is in theory, at least. In reality, we occasionally spent half a day just resting or maybe got a late start and ended up walking a little ways into our lunch break or a couple hours past sunset.

Every village has a hut called a "dirgid," ("waab" on the coast) which is a hut that those passing by can sleep in for free. This is under the assumption that any meals purchased in the village will be from the hut owner. Beds are nonexistent though, so having your own sleeping material is a must.

That first day was thankfully uneventful. It was a simple walk to our midday stop and after a brief rest we took off for our first night's sleep in a village called Belliga Cas. We had been late starting off in the morning so our hike lasted well past sunset and we watched the full moon rise over the hill to our right side. As it was right over the horizon it was at least as large as the setting sun had been and this cast a terrific shadow of our little band. Trailing behind the camel, Zayla, its shadow reminded me of "Song for My Father" and I hummed that for the rest of the night.

We arrived in Beliga Cas, a village of around fifteen huts lining the road, around 10 PM and didn't even move our stuff into the dirgid, instead sleeping by the side of the road and taking off early the next morning. But we ran into our first problem after less than two hours of walking when our camel Zayla refused to go any further. We had, it turned out, over-loaded her. Well, more realistically, they just hadn't given me a camel the size I had asked for, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that it was clear Zayla wasn't going any further.

So I watched the stuff while Pete and Aden walked back to the previous village. Communication between Aden and Pete and I was difficult because while Pete spoke Arabic, neither of us spoke Somali and that was Aden's only language. But from what I gathered we were going to make camp there and Aden was going back to the village for a phone. So while I was waiting I began collecting a pile of firewood for the night, and during the course of my wandering took my shirt off and changed into shorts. I figured, stupidly, that I was by myself so I could show a little skin and work on my tan a bit.

But after less than a half hour I looked up to see a herd of around fifty camels being driven past our site by three nomads. Not wanting to be seen with so little clothing on in this conservative society, I ran back to put on proper clothes. Arriving back on at packs, I realized that our camel Zayla, even though her legs had been tied together and her neck tied to a tree, had gone missing.

It didn't take a genius to guess that she had decided to join the herd that was passing through. So I tossed on a shirt and, in front of the slightly befuddled-looking nomads, began looking through their herd for the camel whose legs were tied up back was still somehow walking. I found her after a brief search but then had the problem of getting her back to our packs. Camels, even a mid-size one like her, are impossible for someone without any experience to control. Zayla apparently realized this and took off galloping in another direction with me chasing after her, just barely matching her speed. Finally, one of the herders took pity on me and jogged over to help. He somehow collected her, brought her back to the bags, and tied her up while I watched in embarrassment.

After a while longer Pete and Aden made it back and I was told that we were heading back to Belliga Cas for a couple nights while a second, much more reliable, camel came our way. So we waited a couple hours until a truck came by and jumped on to ride back.

It's a pity that, of the places we had to spend extra time in, it was Belliga Cas we were stuck. There really wasn't a whole lot to do there and the surrounding desert was very boring. A good purchased there though was a Somali walking stick called a "xangol," also used to keep snakes away, build shelters with the thorn tree branches, and herd animals with. This xangol ended up being a real good buy and I grew extremely attached to it throughout the trek. Even now it feels strange walking without it.

The next day our new camel arrived. This was a large male, and definitely up to the task of carrying our supplies. But he was whiny, constantly moaning whenever he loaded him up or when he got the least bit tired.

“I don’t wanna!” I could almost hear him complain. “I don’t WANNA!!!”

And, in a twists that was eventually going to have an impact on me, he was horrified by engines. This doesn't sound so bad when that maybe two trucks a day attempted to navigate the difficult paths. But this camel's reaction was to start bucking and run away from the road, causing the bags to slip and sometimes adding a half hour delay while we re-tied them. Because of his size and his timidity, I christened him "Little John."

There were mountains in front of us, but I wasn't able to determine based on my map or on sight if they were simply large hills or actual mountains. I guessed the former, and initially this prioved correct and the incline was inconsequential.

But after midday that incline began to increase and I realized I had been wrong. We were climbing, and though it wasn't steep enough to make walking difficult, eventually the elevation we were reaching meant that a thick fog rolled in and visibility declined to around ten yards. In the middle of what I thought was going to be a pure desert walk, it was really enjoyable walking through the dark, covered in mist. Occasionally a nomadic fire would peak through the clouds or the bleating of a goat drifted our way, but other than that it was a very quiet and very mellow walk. This mountain pass was apparently a popular one for the nomads because we started to see numerous herders, mostly with goats or camels, wander by. White people, especially those without 4X4s, never came this way, so we always got a look of shock from those we passed.

We made camp in a village that could have been huge for all we could see but turned out the next morning to be only three or four huts. Though I was woken up numerous times during the night by conversations from nearby Somalis – who never seem to quiet down for those sleeping around them – and the herds wandering by, the night was pleasantly memorable because our camp site was close enough to the path so that I could see the herds as the came and disappeared through the clouds. At one point, around four in the morning, such a large herd went by that I sat up to count the animals. I reached 460 goats and 62 camels by the time the last of them were swallowed up in the fog.

Our midday rest the next day was at an equally enjoyable site, at the bottom of the mountains near the first water springs and first gardens we had seen so far. A local gave us some veggies and Pete and I dined on those and talked to a local jewel hunter from Hargesia who was spending time looking around this area of the mountains. I nicknamed the stop "Gemstone Springs" in honor of both him and the algae-green springs we filled our water containers from. The weather that day continued its streak of perfection, and that made the walk extremely pleasing.

In fact, with the exception of a couple days after Buloxaar, the weather turned out to be almost ideal for the entire trip. Temperatures in the Somaliland winter tend to hover 80 degrees with mostly cloudless days. Likewise, the actual walking was easy enough because the terrain was typically flat, though loose sand in many areas turned out to be incredibly annoying to deal with. Dry riverbeds were typically a little harder to walk in because they represented large rocks to trip over in the dark, but it was at least easier to navigate. The land showed no signs of moisture until we got past Lughaya and any vegetation was typically limited to the low-lying thorn trees, whose two-inch long spikes would occasionally pierce through our shoes and into our feet.

Other than those thorns, the country here is ideal for trekkers - as it is a nomadic culture, the infrastructure is already largely in place. Every half day there is either a village or even just a couple huts for the traveler to rest in. They sell food, limited to pasta or sometimes rice, for a dollar a plate at lunch and dinner and a sort of Somali pancake for breakfast. Fresh water came in barrels from Hargesia and was free to the travelers wandering by to fill our containers, but often the water came to us via used jerry cans so it had the annoying taste of oil with it. The only other drink you would typically find is "Somali Tea," a quick addiction. It is black tea loaded with cloves, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, sugar, and milk, and they serve it everywhere in Somaliland. It taste just fantastic and you can buy an entire thermos for only 30 cents.

That night, after a long walk, we made it to another set of springs in a village called Seley. The crowd that gathered around us was typical. In every village between half a dozen and thirty people would surround us to look at the crazy white people, often the first to ever step food in their village. At first this custom was amusing to me, but as the days wore on I began to tire of it and by the end of the trip I wanted to jump up and scream “Stop looking at me! If you’re just going to stare at me, at least help un-tie the bags!”

Anyway, we spent the night here and the next morning as well - besides letting our camel, Little John, rest up, these springs had been described as "hot springs" to us and I was anxious to relax in them a bit.

Unfortunately, my mind had gotten ahead of reality, as the springs were far from relaxing. Set against a gorgeous rock backdrop, the springs were actually very muddy affairs and contained only slightly warmed water that had an obnoxious sulfuric tinge to it that worked hell to my various scrapes. To add to that, I had only just begun washing my clothes in one of the springs when I received a strong push from the back and turned around to look straight into the thirsty face of a large male camel less than a foot away. He was flanked by another half dozen camels who were all staring intently at me as if to say “What on Earth are YOU doing here?”

This was surprising, as camels are typically timid and almost never will approach and touch a stranger. But the message was clear - if I didn't leave the hole they were going to kick me out. So I scrambled up the rocks and had to wait until the entire herd of about 20 camels had had their turn to drink. Bummer.

Our continuation towards the coast that night ran into a brief hurdle after we got lost for couple hours after sunset, but eventually we made it to Buloxaar, an old city on the ocean which had been the British administrative center back in the day. It was the largest village we had been to thus far with one hundred fifty people. This meant that there was a shop in the village where I could get cookies and soda. But more importantly, this marked the end of the first leg of my trip and I was finally back at the coast.

Pete had visa issues needed to get back to Yemen, so he decided that he would leave the trek here for Berbera and catch a boat back to Aden. In the meantime, though, we spent a few days wandering around the port city and taking in the sites. The “sites” were primarily limited to the old British buildings along the beach. These lay in ruins, half covered in sand and already swallowed up by vegetation along the beach after less than forty years. They were fun to wander in, and Pete and I had a good time exploring the old school house where Peace Corp teachers had given instruction in until they were tossed out of the country by Somali dictator Siad Barre a few decades back.

The beach itself was a site of perfection and, because the village of Buloxaar was a few kilometers from the water, I assumed that isolation was a given. So my first morning there I took down the beach and decided that some skinny-dipping was in order. Unfortunately, the mayor had sent one of his minions to make sure I was safe and after a half hour he came upon me. He wanted me to come out to talk to him, but he didn't speak English and it was difficult to try to explain that I was naked and I wanted him to go away. Finally, after what I thought was an unnecessary amount of gesturing, he wandered a distance away so I could collect my shorts and go tell him that, yes, I was safe and, no, I wasn't planning on being in any danger so would he PLEASE leave.

He did, but I was spooked at someone else wandering along so I left my shorts on and spent some time on the beach just taking in the vibes. It was so relaxing, actually, that I fell asleep for a while and had to contend with a wicked sunburn for the rest of the trip. The beach, though, was worth it.

A couple days later Pete caught a truck that was going to Berbera so he could make it to Yemen. From here on, our trek was limited to Aden, Little John, and me. We set off north the same morning Pete left, starting our second leg in an uncomfortable heat that made me nervous even before we started off.

Whereas the temperature had previously been rather mellow, today was a first-class lesson in walking through hell. I hadn't expected the heat and packed only two liters of water for the half day walk to the next village. But by 8:30 AM my thermometer read 85 degrees and had climbed past 105 degrees by noon. Soon after that, it was 110. It was at this point that the name "Morning Star" popped into my head, and I decided that this was the perfect name for the are that we were walking through.

Desert travelers always caution you against rationing your water so by eleven o’clock that morning my drinking water was finished after only four hours of walking. I gave a couple shots at retrieving the spare water I had somewhere in a bag lashed to Little John, but Aden refused to stop due to the amount of time it would take to un-tie and re-tie everything. At first I was okay, with this, but if I would have realized that our next stop wasn't until 2:30 PM, I would have put up a hell of a lot more of an argument. Aden, ever the plodder, kept up his pace while I began to fall behind.

That day I received a picture-perfect education in dehydration. Three and a half hours of walking without water truthfully doesn't seem like a long time, but you'd be surprised how quickly you dry out here in the sun. The word “parched” doesn’t do it justice. My thoughts wandered back to travel writer John Hemingway's "No Man's Land," an account he wrote in the mid-80's on some of his more colorful experiences in East Africa. The particular chapter I thought back to was on a trek he made along with four porters in the brutally hot Kedong Valley of Kenya. Hemingway, no novice to the perils of East Africa, made what should have been a fatal mistake in his planning for what he guessed to be a three day trek.

The average person on a desert trek requires a minimum of a gallon of water per day, with two gallons per day being a much safer bet. But a gallon of water weighs ten pounds, and with three days of trekking and five men total, that equaled 150 lbs of weight, or a full 30 lbs per man, even at the bare minimum 1 gallon per day. For reasons he doesn't make clear in the book, Hemingway set out with less than a gallon per man for the entire trek. It was only at the end of day one, when it was too late to turn back, that he realized his folly.

His second day was spend almost entirely without water and he quickly developed symptoms of dehydration walking through the desert towards what he increasingly assumed would be his death. As the day wore on and the temperature rose further, he soon started showing signs of severe dehydration. Sitting down for a rest meant hell because it is 20 to 30 degrees hotter within a foot of the ground than above that level, so he kept packing on, farther into a desert wasteland that logically offered no chance of respite.

"Stopping is suicide," he wrote, "going is worse . . . My mind reels under blame and hopelessness, knowing that I should have been firmer [with the water rations], and thinking how ridiculous it will be to perish from lack of water after only two days. I am insane and so is Africa."

That last line is the line that I repeat over and over; "I am insane and so is Africa." It's not meant in an ironic or amusing way, just as a statement of fact. It seems impossible to dry out so quickly, but really, hiking through the desert gives you a hard lesson in the human body and its limits. Stopping for a rest may bring temporary relief, but its impossible to hide from the sun and the heat never dissipates - stopping only ensure that you lose that much more moisture from your body before you get to your ultimate destination.

I am insane and so is Africa. It doesn't matter how much you read about thirst; actual thirst is a thousand times worse. All of the information about the signs of dehydration, proper clothing, and orientation fly right out the window when it finally happens. You can't adequately describe dehydration because it's largely a mental problem besides being a physical one. Seeing the heat radiate from the ground is only worse by feeling it . . . seeing the distance to be walked is worse only by actually walking it . . . seeing your skin clam up and turn those unnatural colors is worse only by feeling the pinch of your skin and realizing it doesn't have the moisture to change back to its normal self. (Disconcertedly, it instead stays in the shape you pinched it to.)

Feeling the sense of inferiority is an experience unto its own - you can't control anything except for the movement of your legs. Everything else that normally seems so mundane - the turning of a faucet to get tap water - is far beyond your reach. The desert is the one sure sign that humans cannot conquer all - we can't beat it back. We might strip away mountains, re-route or damn rivers, and build tremendous skyscrapers, but we can't conquer the desert.

I am insane and so is Africa. It's -300 degrees in Minnesota right now; people are happily complaining about frozen radiators and frostbite, clearing icicles from theirs roofs, and sledding down hills filled with wonderful snow.

Am I exaggerating? Well, in a manner of speaking. This was roughly my train of thought while walking, but that's not to say that I wasn't perhaps going a little overboard at the time. Even though logic told me this was simply too stupid a way to pass out, I found myself thinking that this was an absurd moment of my life and there was nothing and nobody to help me if I collapsed. And then I thought "Wow, what happens if I collapse?" Yes, if there has been a time in my trip thus far where my mind was nearing hysterics, it was now.

Hemingway, who seemed to have a knack for getting out of these situations, eventually made it to a road that had been built in the months between when he made his fly-over and when he actually made his trek. That road saved his life.

And let me tell you, I've never been so happy to see signs of humanity when the village finally came into view in the distance. If I would have had the energy I would have done a little jig the rest of the way.

But instead I stumbled into the village and couldn't even be polite asking for water ("biyo"); I just held out my nalgene and signaled that I was thirsty. At this point I was showing signs of moderate to severe dehydration and, I think, suffering from heat stroke as well. My stomach had been wretching up acid, my skin was clammy, and I had been walking through dizziness. Another 45 minutes to an hour and I really think I could have been in trouble.

As soon as I got the water I ripped open my oral rehydration salts, tossed them in the water, and then guzzled it without stopping for air. Ditto with two more liters. Then I went into the guest hut and passed out.

Luckily Aden had some family in this village and was fine with sticking around a while, so we spent the rest of the day there. Later, when I was awake and able to stand up again, I bought a goat for $35 and feasted with some of the village elders. As I was the purchaser, I had the honor of eating what I only figured out later was the liver (gross). Still, I also got as much of the boiled meat as I wanted and it was different than the food I had been getting used to, so I was pleased. And after the rest and the food I moved back up from the 10% physical capacity I had been feeling to around 50% physical capacity.

The next day I moved to 90% and was feeling good when we set off. By noon we reached our expected village which consisted of only four huts. The two of us had the typical pasta for lunch with a few glasses of Somali tea and then began preparations to go on.

Up until this point, there had been few moments of excitement on this trek. I was well aware that anything "exciting" out here was probably bad news and I had been hoping to keep it that way. But by a quirk of unfortunate timing the only truck of the day happened to pass through the village at the exact time that we were loading the bags onto the camel, Little John.

As I mentioned, Little John is absolutely, one hundred percent terrified of motor vehicles. This occasion proved to be no exception. He leapt to his feet and started bucking, sending the half-tied bags flying and scattering those loading him. I was the strongest guy there and I didn't want him bashing one of the huts down, so I jumped in and grabbed the rope to bring him under control. Another guy came forward to help me and we held him in place until he could chill out a little.

Unfortunately, Mr. Truck had caught a fleeting glance of me and decided to back up for another look. The two of us who had been holding him weren't expecting this and had loosened our stances a bit, and this was enough for Little John. He gave a tremendous buck and that sent me on a collision course with the dirt. I had a brief glance of the other guy being launched airborne and then I nailed the ground and rolled into a piled of firewood.

When I came to a few seconds later Little John had mellowed and a small circle of people had formed around me with concern. I felt really stupid, lying there, until one of them came forward, help me to my feet, and gave me a big thumbs-up, flexed his muscles, pointed at me, and then gave me another thumbs-up. The others, realizing that I was okay, wandered away to finish their tea after giving me what I think was their sympathy.

Besides a sizable gash in my head I had also torn up my right knee and gotten a foot-long tear in my left calf. More than any physical injury was the mental one - this is the exact sort of stupid move that I always seem to make; now, the first white guy to visit this village just got tossed by a camel. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I shouldn't have been concerned though, because people in both that village and the ones later on didn't think it was funny. It was just normal concern and, depending on how enthusiastic Aden was about re-telling the story, an impressed look and a high-five. Apparently, the fact that I was able to get Little John under control in the first place was notable, as was the fact that I was up and walking within a couple minutes of the toss. So in time I wore my battle wounds with pride.

The few days of walking were time for me time to heal from my tumble and pick off the multiple layers of dead skin from the Buloxaar sun burn. In short time we made it to the port city of Lughaya. This marked the end of my second leg of the trip and a day and a half of rest to let myself heal up and prepare for the last leg into the interior and eventually to Zayla.

Lughaya can actually be described as a small town instead of a village, with a population of three hundred people. To me, it was a metropolis where they not only had soda, snacks, and fruit, but electricity for three hours a day as well. The ocean surf was too rough to swim in safely so I spent my time wandering down the beach visiting some of the small fishing communities that Aden and I had missed on our way in.

Leaving Lughaya represented a change in trekking style from what I was used to. Instead of villages well-spaced every half day there was just a giant empty space for the next few days. Not only that, but I had been warned before leaving Hargesia that this area represented a serious hyena threat. I knew Aden wanted to take me into the interior but I wasn't sure where and even with a translator it was difficult to lay out exactly what his plans were. Still, he seemed confident so I decided to leave my fate in his hands.

Traveling northwest from the coast, the two of us now moved into prime grazing territory. Added to the camels and goats we had seen since the beginning of the trip were sheep, mule, and even the occasional cow herd. The green landscape meant that nomads from all over Somaliland, Djibouti, and Ethiopia had come with their livestock. For me, besides a change in scenery, this meant the addition of milk to my diet. So I decided to make a little experiment with my eating habits.

The three types of milk in that region came from camel, goat, and cow. Cow milk was scarce, whereas goat milk was not. But goat milk had an unfamiliar and unwelcome taste to me so that was my least favorite. Camel milk was supposed to be the healthiest but almost as scarce as cow milk. And in Africa it's typical to let the milk sit for a day in the sun so it develops a sour, lumpy quality to it that takes some getting used to. Added to that was the tendency of some here to store milk in the same used jerry cans as water, so you never knew when your bitter, lumpy goat milk might also taste like it came from a pump at the local Super America.

Still, for years I had read about nomads around Africa who lived their entire lives only on milk or on milk and blood. I was curious if this was a quality that these nomads had adapted to over generations or if a foreigner with a frame like mine and eating habits to go with it and do the same thing. Ergo, I resolved to go 48 hours drinking only milk and see if I could keep the same walking pace as before.

Aden came through for me in good form. It turns out that his insistence that we travel back into the interior was because he had family in the area. Not only did that mean that we had a hut to sleep in or next to every night, but we also had unlimited milk from their herds for me to drink for those two days. And honestly, I felt absolutely great consuming only that milk. I never felt a single hunger pain the entire time I was on the milk-only diet and had no energy cravings. The camel milk in particular really refreshed me and made me want to get a camel for Minnesota so I can have fresh milk every day.

By this point though, even with the fun milk diet and the increasing greenery along the way, my mood was beginning to flag. Physically, I was starting to feel worn-down from the two-plus weeks of walking and from various infections received as a result of my camel toss and other random scrapes. Mentally I was in a small funk because I had reached what roughly could be described as the halfway point of my trip in Africa and for some reason this was having an effect on me, not to mention the fact that I was nearly done with this trek.

Little things began to annoy me - the small hole in my sleeping mat, the guy in a village who would just stared at me without blinking for an hour straight, the gasoline-tasting water, the fact that Somalis didn't seem to have a "Volume Control" button when it was nighttime and I was trying to sleep . . . all of these are minor consequences to be expected when traveling, especially while traveling into the middle of nowhere. But I was tired of dealing with them and my internal reaction started to grow testier.

One night, only two days out from Zayla, we ran into a dry riverbed that was blocking our path. Previously, we had usually passed through anywhere between two and six of these in any given day with no problem, but this one had really carved out a place for itself and was around five meters deep. There was no way that Little John could make it down, and after an hour of walking up and down the side in search or a way across the packs on Little John began to slip and we decided to make camp right there. Though there were numerous nomad camps in the area, the closest village was a day’s walk away and we both realized that our chances of making it across the river in the dark were around nil. So we figured this was as good of a spot as any to hang out.

Aden went off to a distant light in order to secure some dinner for us while I set up what was needed for the night. He returned with a large container of cow's milk which was a real treat - it was my first cow milk of the trip, and after nearly two straight days of the camel milk and odd-tasting goat milk, this was as good as any other dinner. It had been a long day of walking and the cool night that was wafting in combined with the "food" was a pleasant reminder as to why I had decided to do this trek in the first place. My various cuts and scrapes faded in importance and I was overcome with a feeling of real happiness.

Edward Abbey writes in “Desert Solitaire” - a book which makes even more sense now - about the difference between loneliness and simply being alone. There are times in every trip where I feel loneliness, and this trip has been no exception. Never on this trek though. This was a trek to feel alone, not to feel loneliness.

That night, falling asleep beside that dry riverbed, I felt more alone than in years. There wasn't a soul in the world save Aden who had a clue as to where I was and it felt great. From a guy back home whose hands are glued to a keyboard and a phone is all too often in use, taking an hour just to watch shooting stars was pretty fantastic.

I fell asleep happy.

Taking away the forty minute break for lunch the next day, we walked for thirteen hours to our first real village to speak of since Lughaya. Thirteen hours was a bit beyond my limit and when we finally came to Ceel Cashado my feet felt like they would explode. During the day I had aggravated an old ankle injury and had been walking differently as a result, so my calves ached a good deal as well. But it was worth it because I spent the night at the police station and they rolled out, wonder of wonders, a fish-net bed for me to sleep on.

What under normal circumstances would have seemed like a misery was on this trek a god-send. This was the first bed I had slept in since leaving Hargesia, and my sleep was as comfortable as any I can remember. I never woke up during the night and spent the next morning resting in my bed while Aden went off to chew chat from the tip I had already given him.

Ceel Cashado was my last stop before Zayla, and the day's hike was done with the knowledge that I was nearing my ultimate goal. If I had been expecting to feel any sort of exultation over this fact during my walk, I instead spent the day in a sort of sullen daze. Physically I hadn't really recovered from the day before, but it was also because my heart really wasn't in the walk anymore and I just wanted to be in Zayla. These last twenty-five kilometers seemed irrelevant - I just wanted the thing to be over with.

But twenty-five kilometers goes by quickly and the lights of Zayla came into view just after sunset. I wasn't at all sure what to expect from the city as I had neglected to pay attention to any contemporary accounts of Zayla, but census people back in Hargesia had told me the population was around four hundred and that made it the largest town I had seen since leaving the capital. The port had long-since silted up and the population had been steadily decreasing since 1900, but it was still a transit point for goods from Djibouti and cities with fifteen hundred years of history don't just disappear that easily.

I was surprised, to say the least. I had been expecting something of a charming, quiet fishing village with historical ruins all around it. The ruins were certainly there, but I also found a city with shops and cafes that contained more than the spaghetti and Somali tea I had gotten used to. Two large communication towers rose above everything, and the hum of vehicles coming and going never ended through the nights I spent there.

Still, despite its history, tourism is negligible. The math teacher, who took to being my guide for the city, told me that a tourist may come along every month or two. This is understandable given the difficulty in reaching Zayla, but I think that its place in history should ensure more than half a dozen tourists a year. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Zayla contains what locals claim to be second mosque ever built, so as soon as I woke up the next morning I wandered over to the site. What I saw was one of the most depressing historical sites of my life.

The mosque, largely in ruins, was not at all the place of veneration I would have expected. The only part of it that was still standing was the first direction, which faced towards Palestine. The second section, which had faced towards Medina, had long since disintegrated and joined the rest of the mosque in a heap of rubble on the ground. Trash partially covered the rubble and it was clear that no care was being done to ensure that what was left of the mosque was kept up. A stray soccer ball from the kids playing yards away would have been more than enough to knock down the only section of the wall still standing. Even without that soccer ball it was clear that it would fall down within a couple years if nobody stepped in to help it. And given the few tourists who made it up this way, it was clear nobody would care to make any investment into this historical site.

The rest of the city was like that, as well. Other history was left to decay, joining the silted port in helping to send Zayla into irrelevancy. On top of that, the city was large enough not to have the "dirgid" for me to stay at and instead I bedded at the local police station. Sleeping so close to the prisoners, in their miserable cell, was not among my favorite memories on the trek.

But Zayla was still Zayla, and there WAS a lot of history there as long as you had someone to show it to you. When the tide was in the beaches were fun to walk along and maybe even swim in if got deep enough. Having regular electricity was also a treat, if only for the knowledge that it was there if I inexplicably needed it.

The morning of my third day in Zayla I snagged a ride on the back of a government truck going to the border about thirty kilometers away and made what turned out to be an incredibly ironic statement in my journal after getting punched out of Somaliland - "No issues exiting!!! On to Djibouti!"

My excitement was quickly stamped out after I suffered what I'll describe as an immigration catastrophe trying to enter the country. While avoiding any lasting consequences, I was nonetheless physically shoved out of the Djibouti immigration building and back into the no-man's-land between the immigration buildings. Luckily my old savior Abdulkaer was only a phone call away and he happened to be talking with the head of Immigration when I called, so I was allowed back into Somaliland and took a horribly uncomfortable eighteen hour ride back to Hargesia on what is, and I type this without a grin, the worst road I've ever driven on. If you want to call it a road. Whatever the name, it was eighteen hours of dust and sand, bumping, scraping, and occasionally breaking down. And it was mostly during the night, which meant that my sleep was . . . sporadic.

My mood, hardly positive to begin with, turned even more sour when I realized that my IPOD had gone missing. And, I realized later, some money to go with it. As it was a shared taxi, I'm pretty sure it was one of the shifty guys in back who had grabbed my stuff, but I couldn't be certain.

Arriving back in Hargesia, the 4X4 dropped me off at the hotel of my benefactor, Abdulkaer. While he was still in his Berbera Maan-Soor hotel, I was going to stay here for a while to recover. I tossed my bags out of the car, but before I could begin making my way inside to check in the manager came out and said "No, go to your room first and clean up."

The message was clear - I was a mess and the other guests would be freaked out by me. The Mann-Soor is pretty much THE hotel of Somaliland, and the manager was doing the understandable thing of being nice to me while still ensuring I didn't track sixteen pounds of sand into the hotel with me.

Almost without pausing I grabbed the key and trudged to my place across the compound. Opening the door, I threw my stuff on the floor and took and minute to look in the mirror. Only then did I appreciate just why the manager had told me to come here first.

My hair, not having been cut in three months and filled with dust and dirt from three weeks trekking and an eighteen hour ride with windows open, had turned into a giant, gritty, white-man fro. My clothes were all brown from sand, and my arms and face were brown and slightly peeling from sunburns. I was still carrying my xangol, the Somali walking stick, and I wore an expression that I can only describe as exhausted, frustrated, and angry all-in-one. My eyes had a distant expression to them that I couldn't shake no matter how hard I tried. Had I been looking in on myself, I would have laughed.

A real bed, and a shower, and a choice of food were all blessed gifts to me. Thorn scratches, infections from my camel toss, the Buloxaar sunburn, and my ankle injury had all combined to put in a position of frustration and I was loathe to walk much for the next couple days. I ate a whole lot in an attempt to get back some of the twenty pounds I had lost while in the bush and generally just enjoyed the feeling of a cushion beneath me.

When I eventually did go out, I was impressed by the attention I got from people at the ministries, the Maan-Sor, passing policemen, and even some of the regular citizens as I wandered around Hargesia over the next few days. Word appeared to have gotten around about me and I was a minor celebrity. Every time I went out on the street I would be stopped by people asking if I was “The Camel Guy.”

I was flattered, but in reality nomads do this sort of thing all time here without anyone blinking. I hiked a little more than 500 kilometers; a good distance, but one that hardly stacks up against what many of those same herders I passed had been walking. The only reason I got any attention was because I was a white guy from America who did it.

With everything that happened, I want to go back soon and do another hike or a number of hikes through different parts of the country. People along the way were so kind and the walk was so enjoyable that leaving was difficult and coming back is almost a given for me.

I don’t have much more of a summation besides that, except to say I’m really happy that I made that trek. Any difficulties along the way were relatively minor and my enjoyment of walking so much through a country as isolated as Somaliland was immense.

Cheers to a great walk.