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!!
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.
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written on 31/08/07
written on 31/08/07
