Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Coming home

As I hinted at in my previous post I've decided to take off from Africa and head on back to America. I could stick around until May and travel somewhere other than Somaliland but I'm a bit burned out right now and the thought of dealing with any more headaches here doesn't do my soul well.

Being back in Ethiopia is doing me some good. They've got good beer here, much better food, actual trees, fewer regulations on what I do, and I feel a hell of a lot less of a gulf between the locals and me. Harar has some of the friendliest people I've come across in my travels and it's difficult to wander for more than a half hour without being invited into someone's house. History has written unkind works about the hospitality of the Hararis but I have almost nothing but glowing things to say about them. Staying there for a few days really helped calm me down from the red blotches that I was constantly seeing from my time in Somaliland.

There's still a chance I might head back to Somaliland in the future but at this point it looks pretty improbable. there's nothing to suggest that I'll have it any easier in a year or longer if I come back. My travel bug hasn't necessarily disappeared but for now my love of being in Africa is diminished enough that, at the very least, I'm not already planning my next trip here. I think I'll write one last post on this blog in a few days when I've determined what my next move is.

--

Speaking of terrorism, an on a final note on this post, I read yesterday in the Star Tribune that Suleman Ahmed, Leader of the SSC militia in eastern Somaliland, is being questioned by Federal authorities in his home of Columbus, Ohio. (Columbus has the biggest Somali population in America next to Minneapolis.) All I can say is: it's about damn time. It's the SSC that is responsible for a number of high-profile political assassinations in Somaliland, armed attacks against government institutions, and a general lock-down of a large swath of territory that is suffering from drought and desperately needs the aid that the SSC is, whether inadvertently or not, not allowing in.

It's his group that is mostly responsible for me not being able to get into the regions I was trying to get to and it's very possible - though I don't think I'll ever know for sure - that it's the SSC who threatened me when I was trying to make my way into the east a month ago.

If you read the article his words betray his guilt and only show he has learned buzz words for the American media, such as blaming his recent arrest on "African politics." He tries to act like a moderate being blamed for the extremist actions of others in America when in fact he is among the very worst people we have in our country. And finally, he doesn't raise money for "families in the SSC region" as he claims, he raises it to fund his militia. Period.

The SSC is not designated a terrorist organization by the United States but it sure should be.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Going Nowhere

This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.
- Sloop John B, The Beach Boys


As my time goes on over here I'm coming to the realization that this is becoming one of the most boring travel blogs ever written.

Since my disastrous experience in the east I've had little of note happen here. I've wandered passed the Hargeisa city limits to camp a couple nights out in the desert but besides that have been holed up in the city center, trying in vain to get permission to visit the countryside. My problem lies with the Intelligence Chief, a guy who put what appears to be a permanent hold on my travel. I've gotten unofficial word over the last three weeks that he is willing to lift it and walk me through any other security hurdles I'm looking at, but any attempts to actually meet with him to do so have met with failure.

In fact, this "failure" thing looks to be turning into a habit. I'll have meetings set, promises made, and permission granted for what I want to do only for everything to fall through at the last minute. I've made so many plans and seen them fall apart so often that I'm starting to feel like Charlie Brown to Somaliland's Lucy. And really, there are only so many more times I can take a swing at that football before I call it a day.

I've been considering that recently, given the obstacles I'm looking at. Threats against me mean that I can't go east, red tape means I can't go west, and even if I was allowed to leave Hargeisa it would take a minimum of a week and a half to gear up and set out for what would be a three week trek to try to find a suitable project site. As of right now, it doesn't look like I'll have the time barring a miracle.

Yes, it's safe to say that the last couple months here are certainly doing well to cure my Africa Bug. If it looks as though things continue this way I may be seeing my friends and family back home sooner than I thought. I've accomplished absolutely zilch in my time in Somaliland and after two months my patience is wearing mighty thin. Right now the thought of spending a few quiet nights wandering the BWCA or on the Rum River in Minnesota sounds quite a bit more appealing than another dusty week here with nothing to show for it.

Granted, I’m in a pretty foul mood right now so I’m sure I sound more bitter than I would normally be, but I’ve had quite a few expectations for Somaliland which have sizzled. I’m fed up with the flies, the noise, and the food, not to mention the constant frustration of knowing that I'm going nowhere. I don't want to come home early having succeeded in nothing I originally set out for but in the end that's what I just might do.

On the other hand, you guys just got a snowstorm so you're not exactly sitting pretty either. Anyone heard how South America is doing right about now?

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Burao

When Peace Corp volunteers return from South America they come back revolutionaries. When Peace Corp volunteers return from Asia they come back philosophers. And when Peace Corp volunteers return from Africa they come back chain-smoking alcoholics.
-Peace Corp Africa joke.



My planned trek ended up failing to materialize. In fact, the whole thing turned into a fiasco on par at least with any other travel disaster I've experienced. For the moment I'm not terribly amused with the thought of writing down all of the details. I've tried a few times over the last two days but I just get too angry, much too riled up, to write anything that's close to coherent. It's probably best I leave some until I get home anyway. So I'll leave some of the more colorful details out until I'm able to laugh about them, sometime perhaps many months (years?) down the road.

The jist of everything is that a guy I knew from last time from one of the lesser ministries who I hired as my fixer didn't actually fix anything. This is a particularly big deal because I ended up stranded in Burao for nine days, a city in which, according to a UN-sponsored poll recently, al Shabab still has a 40% approval rating and where I had no reliable contacts. Even when I was ordered back to Hargeisa it took me another three days to actually leave the city for a number of reasons. The two or three days I planned on staying I Burao were acceptable and relatively safe; the nine I was there for were not.

I was offered what I will describe as an "unfriendly" welcome by the regional authorities when I stopped in the port of Berbera on my way back to Hargeisa and by the time I got back to Hargeisa I finally realized just exactly how much trouble I was in. Half the authorities seemed to think I was C.I.A. and the other half just thought I was a complete idiot for going to Burao without "official" permission, something my fixer had told me he had already gotten me.

I'm still trying to work my way from out of this mess and at times over the last week I've been close to calling it a day here and coming home. If nothing else my stay in Burao impressed upon me just how impossible it would be to work on my educational project for any amount of time in the eastern half of Somaliland.

This is a real shame because even in Burao itself I saw terrific potential in a former vocational center build by the Germans in the 1950s. Though gutted by Siad Barre's forces in 1988 - bullet pock marks still clear on many of the walls - the foundation of the twenty buildings are still solid and would have a perfect start to a new vocational center.

For now though, with the growing instability along the border and west until Berbera, I can't do anything there. And for the moment, unless I choose to leave the country, I'm stuck in Hargeisa until the Intelligence chief comes back and gives me permission to leave. That means I can't even check out any potential project sites in the western regions until he gets back to Hargeisa from his current trip to Djibouti.

I still want to trek as well and I've come up with an alternate, though less exciting, route. I figure with everything I need to get going within about two weeks in order to give myself enough of a cushion to get back to Minnesota. The only other places I want to go in the Horn will take enough trouble to get to that by the time I actually trek them the temperatures would be much too high as the summer draws closer. Likewise, Yemen continues to have riots and nobody can tell me what South Sudan is like post-election, so I don't want to force a trip to either or those countries.

I'm down to only one region that I'm interested in working in for the school project, and that's the western coast, the areas I walked last time. I've stumbled directly into a number of walls on the school front in my time here but I still have good hope for something there; if not, I'll probably be forced to call it a day on that front, much to my annoyance.

Still, I'm holding out hope that I'll be able to salvage my time. It's be a shame to come home early having accomplished nothing. I'm working through different channels both on trekking and on the schools and the gears appear, on some level at least, to be turning. It's impossible to read the tea leaves at the moment but I'll probably know within a week.

Finally, there's a good read through the link below on a new dairy farm outside of Hargeisa that a wonderful friend of mine here, Ahmed, has been helping to set up since I met him two years ago. It is almost ready to start production and would be the first milk production plant in all of Somalia. In such a dry region it really is a coup to have a dairy farm with one hundred Holstein cows. It's a great read, written by a BBC correspondent recently on assignment in Somaliland. The article can be found here.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Walls

You are very fat now!
-Everyone


It took three days in Hargeisa before I was ready for a break. Overwhelmed with the chaos in the city center I decided to travel to the port city of Berbera. On the Gulf of Aden, Berbera has a great hotel just to the east of the city limits where a friend of mine from last time, Brit Steve Atkinson, runs his dive shop out of.

Two years ago it was Steve and his wife Gill who initially encouraged me when I first thought of trekking here. The hotel owner, Abdulkader Elmi, was instrumental in helping me through any red tape that I found in my preparations. Thus, I was anxious to get to Berbera to see them again.

The city itself is nothing special to me. A little poorer, perhaps, and a little less conservative than Hargeisa. Woman are more apt to engage me in conversation here and people just seem a bit more relaxed than the capital. But there are more flies and I get just as much attention wandering the streets so I can’t actually call the city “relaxing” in itself.

Two years ago the police tried to give me a 9 pm curfew, something that annoyed the hell out of me and ensured I would stay out long past that hour if only to bug them. This time they didn't even catch wind that I was in town until the day I left so my only contact with them was a stern warning that I should check in the next time I stayed there. (Yeah, sure.)

The staff at Abdulkader’s hotel, the Maan-Soor, all remembered me as the guy who walked from Hargeisa to Zayla, something that made my chest swell with pride. I was quickly deflated, however, when the the guards and then the manager both separately exclaimed "w'Allah, Mr. Peter! You are very fat now!"

To be fair, yes, I have gained a lot of weight. From a ten year low of 183 lbs just a year and a half ago I was up to 247lbs upon arriving in Africa last month. And the guards and manager were only repeating a theme I have heard at least a dozen times since arriving here. Those who remember me all call me fat. Not big or a heavy or healthy, but fat. I still haven't figured out if this statement is positive, negative or neutral, but it's hard not to get offended at least a little after hearing it so much.

Somali bluntness aside, it was a real pleasure seeing Steve again and to wander the Berbera beaches once again. My third day there I was with another traveler, a splendid fellow from the UK whose name was Phillip. We noticed the pod of dolphins Steve had mentioned sometimes wandered up to him during dives just a little ways off the coast and quickly dove into the Gulf together to try to get a bit closer.

I was surprised when they not only failed to flee but actually swam up to us, spending some ten minutes playing around and frequently wandering within a couple yards of where we were floating before veering off.

Those were a spectacular ten minutes. Part of the time I just floated there as they swam around me. The other part I'd swim towards them and one or two would sit still in the water until I got within a yard or two. Then they would wander off, only to be replaced by another a few yards further on.

I'm PADI certified so Steve took Phillip and me out diving the next day along a nearby reef and, while it was stupendous to explore the reed and spend that hour underwater, it compared little to spending that time with the dolphins the day before.

Back in Hargeisa after five days on the coast I tried to jump into the school project I mentioned a couple posts back. My enthusiasm was quickly stamped out though when I hit up against two brick walls.

I have always wanted to work in a mountainous region called the Sanaag which lies on the Puntland border. I liked this region because it is extremely difficult to get to so the aid agencies operate there less and because it is the least-developed region of Somaliland. Unfortunately, upon in arrival in Hargeisa I was informed that minor clashes had broken out nearby between the Somaliland Security forces on one side and Puntland Security Forces, Somalia’s Taliban group Al Shabab, and the regional militia called SSC (Sool, Sanaag, Cayn) on the other side. That there were clashes was less surprising than the fact that Puntland had decided to ally themselves, however temporarily, with al Shabab, a group well-known for its atrocities in the south.[EDIT: It appears that the al Shabab-Puntland connection was false. Puntland's support seems to be aligning only with the SSC.]

I had also wanted to trek the Sanaag but the presence of al Shabab in this conflict put my hopes for any contact at all with the Sanaag in serious doubt. Then just a few days ago I arrived at one of the ministries and was told “Today, the war begins.” And while it is far from an all-out war, the two sides appear to be getting ready for a possible one if the clashes which have left some 50 dead continue to happen. This would be limited, as it has been in the past, to the eastern regions. Consequently any hope I have in even setting foot in the Sanaag without a well-armed private militia are close to nil.

The second brick wall I hit was slightly more predictably in that the ministries do not see the need to put an emphasis on girls’ education. I was even lectured the other day by a rather high-ranking official on cultural awareness after I had broached the subject.

I’d like to say I’m struggling with the morality of the situation but I’m really not. Girls education seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. I’ll hold off for now the promise from my first post to spell the tangible benefits that a region and country receive from educating its girls, but I’ll summarize everything by saying again that really it’s just the right thing to do.

To say that cultural norms have to be respected is absolutely an appropriate comment to make, but I’m not trying to do something that is out of the norm here. 36% of the students in primary schools here are girls and as far as I’m concerned there is nothing wrong with trying to drive that percentage up.

Furthermore, even the phrase “cultural norms” is misleading. Every society and culture is constantly in motion (and to assume that the forward motion is always towards a liberal or progressive direction is foolish).

Thirty years ago woman were wearing mini-skirts in Tehran, now they can be stoned for doing so. Woman were being educated in Afghanistan decades ago. This was limited under the Soviets, banned under the Taliban, allowed post-war in free Afghanistan, and now is being disallowed under regional leaders. In America there’s always something being branded a “social war” and things that were unheard of even a few decades ago are the norm right now.

Beliefs are always in flux, and the maddrassas being built by conservative (and sometimes radical) forces funded by Saudi money all over the Islamic world do not take into account cultural sensitivity during their teachings.

My hope is for something considerably smaller and less abrasive (and neither progressive nor regressive) than what would be branded any attempt to “change” beliefs here. I want things, if nothing else, to simply stay the way they are here. Educate boys and girls but try to even up the disparity between the two genders.

Right now, people here tell me it’s getting more conservative. The easiest gauge is simply looking at how woman dress. It is the older women, not the younger, who dress more liberally and show off their face. The younger generation are the ones who fully cover their face.

But the largely aesthetic covering (or not) of one’s face is less important to me than whether a woman has the ability to start up her own business, built a hut, tend crops or animals, and act as her own independent person throughout her life. I want the exact same thing for men as well; I think everyone should be educated as much as possible.

This is not a radical concept.

Even if I can make a very tiny dent in that still-too-large population of people who don’t have that option I’ll be incredibly pleased. If I fail, well, then at least I tried.

Obviously my original plans were dead on arrival and, while I find that incredibly frustrating, I purposely hadn’t made any concrete plans while back in America for the very reason that I wanted to talk to people here first. If working in the western or central parts of Somaliland then primary education is already at surprisingly high levels; I wouldn't be needed.

The vocational side of my plans, however, still is relevant. Almost everyone I talk to says that vocational centers are needed nearly everywhere. People graduate from primary or secondary school quite often here and then have no avenues open to them afterwards in which to make money. Vocational training would help solve that issue.

I’m leaving tomorrow for the city of Burao. It’s from here my new starting point for trekking has been moved. Burao deals in livestock from the surrounding nomad regions but supposedly it also has a tremendous population of refugees who have fled the fighting from south Somalia as well as a sizable population of Internally Displaced Persons (otherwise known as IDPs, a distinction from being refugees that really only matters to the UN High Commission for Refugees, an organization that for the most part only help those who have fled across international borders). Many of these people have been here for two decades, which begs the question; after how long, exactly, is one considered just part of the regular population after having fled their home?

I have a meeting with the regional governor and I hope to make inquiries as to the state of education and training amongst the refugees, particularly orphan refugees. While Somaliland understandably doesn’t want to make their refugee populations permanent by opening up schools and other institutions – as refugees are a huge drain on what are very limited state resources - there might be possibilities with setting something worthwhile up.

I’m tutoring a pair of members from the Somaliland Parliament who happen to be from the Togdeer region, in which Burao lies, as well. I’ve recently talked to one about educating the orphan population that lies within the massive refugee camps and he was extremely receptive. If I decide to take this avenue he has said he will help me along.

There are also educational/vocational possibilities I’m looking at the coast towards the Djibouti border, the region I trekked last time. Between the cities of Zayla and Lughaya for instance – more than 150 kilometers by foot – there is not a single primary school.

Any decisions won’t be made for another month or two though. My trek, if it goes through (and nothing is for sure here) will be totally off the grid and will hopefully take around a month so I won’t be able to work much during that time.

Tomorrow morning I drive out of Hargeisa and will take the Somaliland highway to Berbera and then spend a night in what is supposed to be a beautiful mountain town called Sheek. Then it’s on to Burao for two nights where I’ll be getting a guide, buying a camel, and finally starting out on a semi-circle through the mountains that will eventually lead me back to Berbera.

Obviously that time I won’t have an internet connection, but if you ever feel the need to facebook or email me with any goings-on I would really appreciate it. Whether it be personal news or national, it’s always great to hear from people back home.

(Funny story I just remembered; last time I was on trek here I heard that Congress had passed the stimulus bill from a local nomad. Somalis are always hungry for news and have a particular love of politics, including those in the USA. This Somali, a hundred kilometers from the nearest television and who had never even seen a white guy before me, told me both that the bill had passed and what Republican Senators had voted with the Democrats to do so. Even for Somaliland I found this pretty weird.)

Anyway, if there’s any awesome news happening let me know. Also, if you have any thoughts on what I mentioned above it would be great to hear from you. This is uncharted territory for me and many of you are much more experienced or have considerably more insight than I. If it sounds like I’m approaching something from the wrong angle or like I’m just being a jackass in general, I’d love to hear from you.

If not, well, I’ll talk to you in a couple months when I get back, eh?

Be well and stay warm.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The Wild West With a Smile

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need . . . {flips glasses} . . . roads.
-Back to the Future



When I first entered Somaliland I had the intention of staying five days. I left six and a half weeks later feeling a genuine appreciation about the region and its people. Traveling back into Ethiopia I took along a promise that someday I would be back.

Two years later, I’m here.

What is only very technically the country of Somalia is shaped like a 7. At the top lies Somaliland, an internationally-recognized autonomous region that is unrecognized as an independent nation. Its borders were originally drawn by their British in their almost comically-disastrous colonial tendencies from the mid-1800s. When given independence in 1960 it voted just days later to join the south and from then onward the country was simply part of Somalia.

Quickly disenfranchised from the majority south, however, Somaliland eventually launched a civil war to regain their independence. Despite being outgunned and outmanned by the Soviet-financed south led by dictator Siad Barre, Somaliland managed to keep fighting even after its cities had been leveled to the ground, many of their water sources poisoned, and its herds slaughtered by the thousands.

When Barre was killed in 1991 Somaliland won its freedom by default simply because there was no government left in the south to fight. Though left to its own devices for the last two decades and with extremely limited international support or investment, Somaliland has developed into a perfect example of just what is RIGHT with Africa.

The elections here are free and safe, a new president just having been sworn in this summer. It is moderate and friendly to the west, its citizens are safe and its security forces helpful and friendly. The region has taken surprisingly little notice to the storm of violence and protests hurtling their way across North Africa and the Middle East, evidently content with the small but clearly stable democracy that it has created. Money changers sit on the streets with giant piles of Somaliland Shillings stacked in front of them, not even considering the possibility of being robbed. And its people are absolutely the friendliest I have ever encountered.

There are some sticking points, of course. To the east Somaliland has developed over the years a sticky relationship with its Somali neighbor Puntland, a semi-autonomous region that claims part of Somaliland’s territory. Upon arriving in Somaliland, in fact, I was informed that border skirmishes had once again developed, immediately casting my hopeful treks and the school building plans into disarray and doubt.

Adding the tension, there are rumors that Puntland has teamed up for the moment with the Somali version of the Taliban, al Shabab, in this fight.

Fighting in the east aside, Somaliland is under Sharia Law and though it is a moderate form it still takes some getting used to remembering just what exactly I can and cannot do (e.g. whiskey . . . no). Westerners like me are usually forgiven for minor transgressions of course so I have little need to be worried about getting in trouble unless I open an underground distillery. But in the case of a German man a few months ago, he did something so stupid it’s hard to even fathom.

I have to preface this incident by saying that I get nervous even talking to a woman here because of the strict moral code with which Somalis in general have towards member of the opposite sex interacting. This German man, an expat who lived in Hargeisa and was married to a Somaliland woman, was caught making pornographic films with his wife and some of her friends. He was lucky to have only gotten four years in prison but westerners here – of which there are few – for the most part wish he had gotten a heavier punishment because of the uncomfortable position that he has put us in.

With so few westerners here that is a terrible impression to give this overwhelmingly conservative region. For a group of people usually so friendly and forgiving, this move was way over the line for Somalilanders. Everyone knows about it, and to make matters worse for me both times I have come here the locals have for some reason thought me to be a German. What before was only a vague insult is now an actual liability and I get the occasional Somalilander marching up to me and shouting defiantly that Germans are scum and I should go leave the country. Yesterday I had a rock thrown at me by a particularly cranky woman (though in fairness it also could have been because she just thought I was really ugly or something).

Despite the apologies to my by all the other locals who witness such incidents, these reactions have left a sour taste in my mouth in a country that otherwise has treated me better than any other I have been to.

I view all of this with a grain of salt though. I think of Somaliland – and I mean it when I say this – as safer than even the USA. As anywhere, danger lies less in where one travels than in how one travels. I am determined to travel well and be safe. In truth, my real challenges lie not in safety here but infrastructure.

After having been throttled in the civil war Somaliland was left with no infrastructure. The international help that would normally have arrived never did because of Somaliland’s curious diplomatic state, so it has been left to its own devices to rebuild. While government and aid have provided good water, business has provided decent mobile phone service, and the authorities have made inroads in education, many essential projects have been ignored if only because of absolute lack of funds from which to address them.

There is, for instance, only one tarmac road in the entire country. It is a huge, winding beast that starts in the northwest in the mountain city of Borama. It travels to the capital Hargeisa, then to the port of Berbera, onward through the livestock town of Burao, into troubled Las Anood, and then into Puntland and all the way to Mogadishu. It is up this road that incredible numbers of refugees fleeing the anarchy in the south have fled.

Other than that road I am left to 4X4s to see the country or finding a desert truck to hop atop with the locals. While perhaps a fun mode of travel for backpackers, the road system here has to be dramatically improved before and real positive change can be brought about here.

They can start that change with the city of Wachale, my entry point into Somaliland and a place in the running for Ugliest City Possible. You wouldn’t believe me if I went into detail but I’ll summarize everything by saying that the actual border is demarcated by – and this is true – a smoldering trash field. To say Wachale could be Satan’s weekend retreat would be a compliment and I never spend more time there than I absolutely have to.

If Wachale is disgusting then the rest of Somaliland’s towns might be described as just plain ugly. To get a decent picture of Hargeisa – really the entire region of Somaliland, picture Edina. Well-care for lawns, sparkling houses, perfect traffic patterns, and cliché suburban restaurants. Now that the opposite of that and you have what I see here.

Except for the pretty mountains that wind through the country the landscape that I’ve seen is mostly yellow sand with thorn trees poking up through the ground. Often one might wander into a dry river bed, but beyond that you shouldn’t expect more than the occasional hill. Unless distant from the highway or other main paths here, villages and towns are covered in litter, the plastic bags often stuck to the surrounding thorn bushes almost as kind of a discouraging Christmas tree. Buildings and structures falling down from age or war are left as they are, similar to rusting hulks that once were cars, trucks and army tanks and dot the roads and paths.

When it comes to Hargeisa I have always maintained that it acts considerably more like a frontier town or border city than the capital that it is. More than any other city, Hargeisa offers pandemonium and an overwhelming assault on the senses. The roads – bumpy dirt tracks created with no sense of planning – are filled with mini-busses and 4X4s who have little sense of driver etiquette. It is common, in the narrow lanes, for a driver to see a friend on the side of the road and stop the car in the road for a chat, seemingly oblivious to the line of increasingly irate drivers behind him who lean on their horns and yell curses.

The sidewalks are lined with hawkers and khat sellers, constantly shouting out to friends and pedestrians, all of whom shout back even if the car is right next to them. And I want to impress upon you the volume of hollering that is done here so you don’t think I’m just making some general observation. Somalis are – and I suppose this can be argued, but definitely not against my experiences - the loudest people on earth.

I do not say this lightly. They are naturally gossipy and are extremely prone to arguments, often joining a discussion that has nothing to do with them and then loudly proclaiming their viewpoint to anyone that will listen. I have been kept up to ungodly hours both in the rural and urban areas by the impassioned arguments of the locals as they beat up some inane subject long into the night. Upon questioning the next day, they deny there was any argument and simply say they were having a normal discussion, something my bloodshot eyes clearly show is false.

A nearly complete lack of white people here combined with Somali curiosity means that every few steps someone shouts "Wah-ria!" ("Hey!") at the tall white guy passing by, so if walking around for the entire day I am forced to exchange greetings and pleasantries with up to a couple hundred people. This practice alone exhausts and sometimes overwhelms me. I try not to dally long because sometimes a crowd gathers around me and I am roped into answering the same trio of questions (“What is your name? What is your nationality? What is your job?”) in a mind-numbing Sisyphean punishment until some passing elder takes pity on me and yells and everyone to leave me alone, waving his cane at the gawkers.

Mixed with all this on the streets and sidewalks are donkey-driven carts, goats, the occasional sheep, and the even less-often camel who wander the streets at will, threading their way through the crush of pedestrians and poking their heads into anything that appears as though it might possible have once been edible.

Finally, on the outside of this chaos, are the legit stores and restaurants who offer imported goods, most of which comes from the Arabian Peninsula and Asia. The stores are clean and well-kept, the restaurants are not. Most every building is one story, though some buildings are two and in the city center a small group of buildings may rise five or six high.

Flies are everywhere here and are really the most aggravating part of Somaliland. I took a repellent of 99.8% deet to help deal with them but even this is only partially effective. Somalilanders appear to have at least slightly less hatred towards them but despite my best efforts to ignore the obnoxious buzzing horrors they drive me absolutely batty. The one saving grace is that Somalilanders often burn incense, mostly frankincense and myrrh, to dissuade them. It is a lovely, calming smell. In a true contrast to the annoying flies, the incense here is among my very favorite sensations.

In short, the country is controlled chaos. It’s the Wild West with a smile. The place takes some getting used to but once that happens it feels wonderful.

This dusty region, an isolated pocket in Somalia, should make me feel lonely. Sometimes I do. But much more often this feeling evaporates because I feel so welcomed and liked by the local people. Walking down the streets can be exhausting after answering all the greetings and it can be nerve-wracking to be stared at by so many people so consistently. But many of the locals and the returned diaspora are quick to invite me to tea and I’ve found it easier to make friends – genuine friends, friends who will call me up to chat as though we’ve been acquaintances for years even after having talked to me for maybe five minutes – than any other time in my life. These people have a hospitality I have encountered nowhere else, a resilience to match, and a belief in the future that makes me proud to be here.

-----------------
Before I sign off, I want to write one final note.

Three days ago I lost two people from my life back in Minnesota. One was a relative, one a friend who I knew through my work in politics. Expressing any sort of feelings about those who have passed is difficult and, in the form of a side note on a blog post, probably trite. Maybe I shouldn’t write anything at all. But I wanted to say that both were good people – really, truly good people – who always treated me well and who will be missed by many. That is all I’ll say about them here. To those who knew them better than I . . . really, to those who knew them at all . . . I wish you the best in working through the thoughts and emotions you will be dealing with in the coming days, weeks, and beyond.

Sometimes, words will not suffice.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Back to Africa

One of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood... A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope, -the three sister graces of our moral being.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton



I always find it a thrill to come back to a country I haven't seen in some years.

Two years back Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was my sanctuary after having fled Cairo, a city I view with extreme distaste and whose charm and allure has changed little since rioters began burning down half the city in recent days. Consequently I immediately fell in love with Addis, a city with tasty food, good beer, beautiful women, friendly inhabitants, and tree-lined boulevards. Sure, the smog was still pretty bad, the touts (Swahili, meaning "tick" . . . usually teenage boys trying to rip off tourists) insufferable, and the tap water sometimes a disconcerting color of red. But after Cairo it was a God-send.

Later on Addis was my stop after leaving Somaliland, a infinitely better experience than Cairo but still a place where I had lost twenty-five pounds in a month and a half. Addis, with its cheap food, was a brief stop for me to gain back a few pounds before continuing onward into the southern deserts.

This time, I viewed the city through the lens of someone just having left America. While it is wonderful to be back I realized quickly that I had neglected to steal myself for the this-is-Africa, inshallah, chaotic lifestyle that had seemed so natural by the end of my last trip to the continent. Africa is Africa and no matter how much I like somewhere here it is still wildly different from the comparitvely calm lifestyle in the US. My first day, dodging careening cars, avoiding the prostitutes and hearing "ferengi!" - a rather insulting term for "foreigner" - screamed at me by children everywhere, served as something of a shock to my system.

Fortunately it took only that first day to turn my mind around about the place. I remembered oddly specific directions around the city ( “ . . . turn right at the second Oil Libya . . .) and wandered to some of my old restaurants. I relaxed and read, chatted with other backpackers, got a little sunburned, and made some friends amongst the locals. I dove right into drinking tapwater but surprisingly got few results, my body evidently keeping any immunities it needed from the last time around. The food was likewise easy on me and that alone tempted me to stay a bit longer, but I was anxious to get to Somaliland.

I've made little secret in recent months over my hopes for this trip, one that will hopefully combine both business and pleasure. The recent riots have ensured my planned trip to Yemen is a no-go and a decision by the Somaliland Liason Office's in Addis to only grant me a single-entry visa has also nixed my Kenya plans; consequently my tentative schedule says that the next three months will be in Somaliland, the autonomoius enclave of northern Somalia.

For my hopeful treks everything is still up in the air for the moment. The Sanaag Region, a mountainous hard-to-reach area which lies on the Puntland border and has been my dream to explore for two years, is high on my list. Same with the lower-Awdal on the other side of the country. Maybe, if the gods will it, I'll end up heading back to my old stomping grounds from my previous Somaliland trek as well.

But my main purpose here this time around isn't the trekking. Instead, I'm going to be trying to navigate the ministries in an attempt to get permission for a small non-profit that I'm hoping to start up this summer.

I hope you'll bear with me here for a moment while I delve into a brief story that relates to this.

Last time, going from village to village in some areas that even the the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the central government failed to penetrate, I would run across the occasional and inexplicable English speaker. Regardless of whether it was a child or an elder, I always made it a point to ask out of shear curiosity what, if anything, they wanted in their village. To a person, everyone said a school.

For the first couple weeks it was a mere side-note to what I was doing and I thought little of it. Towards the end of the trek, however, still well into the interior and far from any roads or paths, I came to a small village whose name now escapes me but whose faces I’ll remember for a long while.

The village had around seventy to eighty people. The poverty and malnourishment was telling, yet the village lived because it housed the only water well for miles around. Even though I know little of grazing needs it was clear on my walk in that the soil was of poor quality and the entire area was suffering the consequences of over-grazing.

One of the men there spoke some English. He was very proud, he told me, to show the first white man he had ever seen around the village.

Clearly there was little to actually see. The goat and camel pens, the dirgid (sleeping area for passing nomads), and the various huts. The well, of course, which he saved to the near end.

Finally, he announced, we would see the school. He led me towards a small enclosure about 15X15 feet. It was supported on two sides with large pieces of corrugated tin and a third side with unrooted thorn bush. On top lay more thorn bush to shield the kids from the sun. The students, who looked as young as four and as old as fourteen, were drawing in the dirt for lack of paper and were being taught by a man holding up a torn piece of cardboard.

Looking at the only school I saw for seventy miles in each direction, next to a man so proud of it, I felt positively devastated. Angry, really.

I was angry that anyone who wanted education received one of such unbelievably poor caliber. I was angry that there was no support from anyone outside the village in what they were trying to accomplish. I was angry at myself for thinking so negatively about the place. But most of all I was angry because I knew it wasn’t enough, that these efforts would fall short of helping the village or its inhabitants in any tangible way.

Still, for the benefit of my guide I tried to look impressed and so I asked him what subject the children were learning.

“Here, there is one subject," he answered. "Math.”

I looked at the dirt. It was simple addition.

When I asked if there was any sort of vocational teaching he answered passively, saying the village had been made of a collection of refugees two decades before and any skills their home villages had once had were lost in transit. Math, he implied, was really the best and only thing they could teach. There was no resources for any further teaching. They would have liked a real school or even some teaching material I was told, but no help had come from the outside. He didn't expect any in the future, either.

These kids - the village - were trying. They all wanted to learn and were proud of this pitiful step forward, a step that ultimately would do the children no good and not change their future one iota. The land could not support their population growth without some sort of change. Proper grazing patterns, animal husbandry, frankincense collection, and any other of the possible avenues for making their lives better were simply not known and not being taught. The best that they could do was figure out their livestock numbers.

Despite their best efforts their children would not be educated. They would not have better lives.

This was not a case where an opportunity was there and passed up; this was a case where no opportunity existed . . . and one never would.

I left the village that day and continued on my trek. But that experience has stayed with me, always nagging me, always reminding me of a job that needs to be started. Because those villages are all over Somaliland and Somalia. Parents who want their children to learn and succeed, who want their children to have better lives than they had. One-room schools missing two sides held together by twine, without pencils or paper or proper teachers. Boys and girls whose future holds a way of life ever-squeezed by unsustainable population growth with no other option than to keep walking the increasingly over-herded countryside.

That was the seed that was planted in my mind two years ago. Since then I have thought more and more about education in Somaliland. There is a model of school creation and sustainability made famous by Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools) that I would like to turn into a pilot project in rural Somaliland. This model incorporates working with – and not over – local elders and officials in the building and teaching process, a vocational center for post-primary graduates that teaches local practices, the taking-over of the school by the locals as the graduates are able to start earning money, and the extremely important point of an equal participation rate between the genders within four years of the school opening

There are a number of similarities between the regions of tribal Pakistan and Afghanistan that his NGO works in and rural Somaliland. Among those similarities are populations that are under threat of becoming radicalized due to outside forces (in Somaliland’s case these forces are al Shabab from southern Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen, and madrassas being funded by conservative Muslim factions from Saudi Arabia), a rural population that is not being reached by the government or NGOs, and a marginalized female population whose collective and individual futures can be drastically improved with education. That last point is one that is the most important to me though I’ll get into reasoning in a later post.

So, in tying up this long post, I’m in Somaliland to see if I can get permission for a pilot project that incorporates much of the Mortenson model of school creation. I’ve never before delved in to the non-profit world and am quite nervous at the prospect, but a number of my friends and family have been helping and encouraging me in recent months with the initial planning stages. This has given me a huge boost in confidence and I owe everyone who I have talked with a good deal.

Still, I've approached this trip with more trepidation than any other I've taken before and that is in large part due to this potential pilot project. Truthfully, I was initially hesitant to even write anything about it because as I look at the potential hurdles ahead (unwilling officials, lack of enthusiasm from the villages, a bad education model, access to my region of choice not being granted) I'm nervous that what I've been thinking about for so long will be extremely difficult to accomplish. Time will tell, I suppose.

The ministries were extremely responsive the last time I was in Somaliland so I have great hope that they will help me along the way. Likewise Somaliland itself if filled with amazingly friendly and helpful people, some of whom I've kept in touch with these last two years and I'm sure will be able to offer advice.

One way or another it’s all going to be an adventure and those are fun, so I’ve decided not to fret too terribly much.

Cheers to Minnesota, though truthfully it is very wonderful to be back to Africa once again.

Quick Note

Everything below this post was written on my Cairo to Cape Town trip from 2008 to 2009.