rainy days & land cruisers

amazing what rain can do for your mood. it's so uplifting. nothing beats the smell of the wet earth or that insistent pounding on the roof. rain in somalia! in this semi-arid, semi-desert, drier than bone land!! how cool!! soaking up the warm rain made my day, letting it, in a sense, cleanse the cobwebs that sometimes gather.

almost one month in somalia now and i’m just beginning to feel homesick. what i wouldn’t do for a bite of kenchic (really good chicken) or a malt (let’s not talk about mojitos or choc cake)!! ahhh!! and to be able to go to bed at 6am instead of waking up at 6am on a friday night/sato morning, how wonderful that would be!! i felt so sorry for myself the other friday when i realized that it was 11pm and i was very seriously contemplating going to bed for lack of anything better to do (also as the electric cuts at midnight, not much choice really). by the way, the food here is amazingly diverse, it's absolutely unbelievable. the choices vary from goat & potatoes with spaghetti to goat & potatoes with rice to goat & potatoes with bread to goat & potatoes with chapattis…for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. if you’re extremely lucky, there’s boiled or raw cabbage, canned beans, tuna and burnt chips (of the french fries variety). i challenge anyone to try to be vegetarian in this country and live to tell the tale!!

but there are perks for sure. like the stars for example. the milky way shines bright every night, that’s how dark it is. the sky is so full that even to find the most famous and brightest constellations is difficult (not that i’m an astronomist by any stretch of the imagination). and for some reason, the stars feel really close, as if they really are just an arm’s length away…maybe it’s because they’re so bright, and the sky so clear and so big.

and the silence of the night. like nothing i’ve experienced before. i feel like i can hear the dust settling on my skin. i can hear every breath, every rustle, of the wind. such complete silence…no distant wail of sirens or reggaeton bursting from car speakers (hahaha worcester), no laugh track on the tv and no buzz of the electric fence.

the landscape too, is awe-inspiring. it’s just an empty expanse of earth and sky, no breaks in the except a tree perhaps 20 kilometres away. when i first saw the emptiness, it felt like i was part of it…not that i felt empty, it just suddenly felt like i was the earth and the sky instead of standing on it or below it. i can’t explain it but for the first time in my life, i felt like i was part of the landscape instead of standing separate from it observing. it’s an amazing feeling, to feel so close to the earth as to become part of it. i think that if i stood long enough in one spot, i would find myself to have hair made of leaves and feet made of roots. what amazed me was that there was no sense of loneliness…i thought the landscape being so empty would generate a sense of loss and loneliness, but instead it created a sense of complete belonging. strange, eh?

somalis are interesting people, to say the least. they are extremely loud for one. i was in a car with 3 somalis the other day and i thought i would go deaf because they were ‘talking’ (talking = screaming as if they were at opposite ends of a football field, even if they are in the same car as me, very unfortunately for me). that same day, i was happily napping in the car when the security pokes me awake just to ask me whether i was sleeping. from that, and the other episode of ‘breakfast’ i can only conclude that they are also fond of waking people up when they are happily sleeping. i also find them to be rather unfriendly…but i don’t know whether that’s somali or whether that’s the language barrier, i am inclined to believe that it’s the language barrier. perhaps they are just reserved in some ways because the people I work with have finally warmed up to me (the somalis, not the kenyans) and are being much more open and friendly. i also find them to be quite set in their ways, eager to be heard, and gossipy. but still they are extremely nice once they warm up to you…i just wish i knew the language because of how much i can learn about what they are thinking about the world around them. that’s what I love and miss about kenya, i could talk to anyone and learn their version of the world!! i mean, imagine how interesting somalis would be…there’s so much i’m missing…wish i could learn somali by osmosis.

--
written on 31/08/07

somali stamp

so i finally have a somali stamp in my passport!! i arrived here on saturday, took the somali airline (!!! i mean how do they have an airline but not a government???!!!) daalo, whose airplane looks like it belonged in world war 2. i thought we might fall out of the sky at anytime, but i arrived in one piece in galkayo, which is about 10 hours drive from bosasso (the place i'm based at right now). so after flying a few hours and driving a few more, here i am, on my second day of work. my leaving of kenya was all very rushed, and honestly, i was not psychologically prepared...but as a wise soul said, 'don't worry, the potholes will still be here when you get back!' so armed with those words of wisdom, here i am, psychologically sound! we landed in mogadishu on the way to galkayo on the plane, and i saw and smelled the ocean there. it looked almost like a dream because it was amazingly blue & hazy, almost like a painting rather than a photo...a friend of a friend has agreed to take me to the coast here and i can't wait. since there are no tourists here, the whole ocean will be mine...just as i have dreamed!!

somalia...what can i say? the tea is really sweet and spicy/gingery...it's very very good. the food could be better but it's livable. we get a 3 hour break for lunch (which means i get to sleep off my food coma after lunch), but work until 6/7/8. there isn't much to do after 8 (for me anyways), nor much to eat or drink...no more mojitos...*sniff*. i've never attempted to live in a place like this...where the western world has only a tenuous grip. the landscape itself is so alien, so barren and so devoid of colour (for the most part) that from the very beginning it hits you that this is a different world. kenya reminds me so much of burma that it almost felt like coming home...when i was in town at night, all i had to do was close my eyes and i might as well have been in burma as i remember it. but somalia is a whole new world. on the drive over, it was a never ending horizon...shades of beige and gray. i have missed my green rice paddies and fluffy trees of the philippines since i left more than 6 years ago, and of course i will not find them here. it's a very lonely place i think...there was not much life out there and the pieces of life we found were few and far between.

bosaso, however, is very much a large town. it's full of life and interesting people. there are a lot of NGOs here although i have yet to see another person from another NGO. but then again, i don't do much but work and sleep, and then again, i've only been here a few days. i have yet to see another 'chinese'. bosaso is very very white, almost blindingly so...white buildings, white roads, white sun, white heat. bosaso is safe, and according to everyone here, it is certainly safer than nairobi. people don't stare at me as much as they did in nairobi, but then again, i have yet to go walking around town and taking matatus here. the women are all wrapped up, and to be honest, i don't know how they keep themselves wrapped up because my headwrap keeps slipping and it's rather hot (40+ degrees celcius). although i do understand why the women wear the dresses because they are wonderfully cool. i thought that i might sense some hostility because i don't quite have the headwrap thing figured out and i don't really do it the right way, but it's okay. i think that i am so obviously foreign that it doesn't really matter that i don't do things right...they just laugh at me when i am fixing that darn headwrap. i also don't have to wear it in the office, which is really nice. so far, i find the women to be very friendly and rather humourous while the men are a bit more reserved.

the women, for the most part are so beautiful, but in a very different way from kenyans, who are also very beautiful. somalis are taller and slimmer and have lighter skin. but i might be generalizing...this is what i see for now, for first impressions, for the short time that i have been here.
--
written on 08.08.06

puntland visa