making cake

it's amazing the shenanigans that you can get into when left to your own devices for entertainment. for example, one trip to somalia, i randomly decided that bringing instant cake (the ones where you add just eggs and water and bake) would be a great idea. this, despite having no oven, no baking dishes, no mixers, and eggs the size of coins. i think i had some random thought that i could just eat the dough (hello salmonella & typhoid!!). so yeah, there i was one day with a box of instant cake, a free afternoon, a friend as bored as i was and this was the result:

the beginning - 
dough made with tiny eggs 
(put in 5 when the instructions said 3)

this is the 'stove'

the dough was put into a pot

which was then covered

and topped off with hot charcoal

and then weighted down
with the top part of the 'stove',
also filled with hot charcoal

resulting in rather burned,

crumbly,

cake

the end result -
crumbly sweet cake which looks 
more like rice than cake,
but we ate it anyways! hey!
beggars can't be choosers!!

on the road

from the air

on an echo flight

food

often my favourite topic and often the centrepiece of my life, somalia became the only place i've been where i ate more for survival than for enjoyment.

colours

was watching a movie the other night, a ewan mcgregor film called 'stay'. in it, he's talking to his girlfriend about how to get somebody who wants to committ suicide to 'stay' in this world - and the girlfriend (who has attempted suicide before) says, 'tell him there's too much beauty, there's too damn much beauty to quit'. as corny as it sounds, there's truth in it. working in somalia, where beauty is not even an afterthought, this stands out even more starkly - and yet, perhaps because beauty is an (after) afterthought, perhaps because there is a lack of visual stimulation and distractions, you begin to notice the actual (read: natural) world around you, and the simple beauty of a sunset can almost bring you to your knees. 

night

the night sky is unparalleled in somalia. indescribable and absolutely soul shaking, i have passed many a night just staring, overwhelmed by what i saw. of course, it is next to impossible to take a good picture of the night sky, and of course none of this does any justice to the reality of it, but  here's a bit of the moon over Badhan (it might even have been an eclipse night):

village, town, city

badhan

hadaftimo

bosaso

midisho

las qoray

a village somewhere along the way

this n' that

cool cat in las qoray

cool goat in bosaso

cool tree in between mindigale &
badhan:
this tree has always fascinated me -
it's huge, gorgeous and green -
in the middle of desert

ouch!

smack dab in the middle

learning salsa & meringue in the office in the middle of conservative Muslim Somalia while continuing the discussion on gender & gender-based analysis

hearing 'my neck, my back' by khia (the uncensored version!) in the office (yes, in the office in the middle of conservative Muslim Somalia), NOT coming from my computer but rather from somebody's phone (it was his ring tone)

getting there

There are a few ways that one can travel to Somalia:

One such is a flight called UNCAS, renamed to UNHAS at some point. Although I have no idea whatsoever what UNCAS (or UNHAS, for that matter) stands for, I do know that they charge an exorbitant $900 or more. Why? God knows. Perhaps they consider the fact that they take the passengers on a Somali safari, dropping by all the airports available in Somalia (it seems) on every flight you get on, making a very long flight ever so slightly longer. Very thoughtful of them really, as there is much to enjoy at those airports: who wants to miss the sights and sounds of dust, fuel, goats and gunshots? UNHAS/CAS also charges for the fact that once in a while there is a chance that they might lose a plane to fire when they fuel - my project manager once turned to watch the plane being fueled and also watched as the fuel line caught on fire. Oops. And one must not forget the delicious smells of the pilot's lunches that they serve on an UNHAS flight - you may not get a mouthful, but you sure will get a noseful! UNHAS does not serve food on their flights, but you can sit and listen to your stomach grumble as you inhale the delicious scent of someone else's lunch.

And then there is ECHO. ECHO is free, and has no bathrooms in their planes ('nuff said!). I'm convinced that even the most experienced and strong-stomached flyer is likely to get sick on an ECHO flight, or an ECHO landing. You might also freeze your toes off, in which case, you will be immediately flown back to Nairobi as a medical emergency - hmm...ECHO also has a tendency to develop problems mid-flight and seems to regularly need to turn around and land back where you started from. But for some reason, this only happens when you are  flying from Somalia. 

And of course, one must not forget Daalo. Daalo is Somalia's, erm, airline. Or perhaps I should say 'airline', as it seems more to be an echo of what an airline should be rather than an actual airline itself. Stories heard on Daalo: 

• And then the pilot who smelled of whiskey, shoved me out of the way as he hurried to the cockpit carrying his rather large bag of duty free alcohol. 
• The flight attendant told me to sit over there because they needed to 'balance' the plane.
• The plane took off with a broken air conditioning system. It was so hot people literally started to take their clothes off, and when the passengers complained, the pilot said, 'Well, if you wanted a cooler flight, you should have flown earlier in the morning."

Perhaps these airlines are meant to prepare you to enter Somalia. In that case, I say BRAVO!!!