SOMALILAND STIRRED
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2009
1
3
25
Trip End
Jun 24, 2009
Hargeysa, Somalia
Friday, May 8, 2009
After catching the first bus out of Harar at daybreak, I make my connection in Jijiga and continue on, certain to make Hargeisa within the day now
the border
. Travel in Ethiopia is not hard so much as slow, though hard it can be, crammed in like proverbial sardines to the not infrequent protests of the sardines themselves. The border that is the old Somalia, wrapping around highland Ethiopia along a desert coastline, begins to make more sense as I travel, the vast Ogaden Desert, cousin to the Arabian and Sahara, spread out endlessly ahead, highland Ethiopia the only break in a desert stretching from Morocco to China. You decrease in elevation as you increase in heat, by some adiabatic ratio, and the Christian passion and delicate features of the typical Ethiopian face evolve into something a bit different, the harsher and darker Somali features and the more rigid and vocal Islamic demeanor. If Ethiopia marches to the beat of a slightly different lead guitartist, Somaliland is just as likely to be marching to the call of Islamic prayers. And instead of bars and clubs dotting the urban landscape, a perpetual street market dominates the streets and the sale and mastication of the leafy qat dominates the mouths and minds of those seeking some little release and relief from life's tedia. It helps keep you awake through prayers. Yeah right.What isn't so obvious is why Harar and the Ethiopian Ogaden region is a part of Ethiopia and not Somalia. Apparently that's what the Ogaden Liberation Front thought a few decades ago when they battled the Ethiopian government and challenged its authority in the region
the street below
. The actual border with modern (?) Somaliland just suddenly materializes out of nowhere, defining a line and trying to make a point. Here the border formalities are pretty much just that, small talk and the sound of one hand clapping, down on to the pages of passport open and willing and yearning for experience. The Somali border guards are nice and welcoming, though it seems that is not so much their nature as their job I sense. Onward tranportation to Hargeisa consists of taxis only, and if that sounds comfy, it's not, not with an Arab gentleman sitting in your lap and four other women and two babies comprising the passenger list. I'll be okay as long as the circulation in my leg holds up. If I get a Charley-horse attack, it won't be pretty. We go like this for a couple hours through several checkpoints, checking for what I'm not sure. It'll be worth the effort, right?Well, uh... Hargeisa ain't pretty, a layer of dust over the entire affair. At least my hotel's good, with Internet on every floor and both water AND power generally available, in addition to some international TV, all for barely two figures U$. I could live like this forever, as long as I didn't have to go outdoors. Out there it's the typical sprawling street market, heavy on the qat. Hargeisa's okay, and you've got to admire their spunk, but I'm not in love. So the first thing to do is plot my escape
the airport
. Since I have no Djibouti visa, I'll have to fly there or go back to Ethiopia. There's a flight the next day or another four days later. Reluctantly (yep) I decide to continue on the next day, not terribly excited about the one day I have. At least the price is right. There is one thing that might be interesting in Hargeisa however- when in doubt, space out. I go for the qat, a fistful of it for a buck. If nothing else it might at least invoke saliva in my now perpetually parched mouth. So I start chewing... and chewing... and chewing, reminded of nothing so much as a trip to Ayacucho some thirty years ago when I got stuck and the students were demonstrating on the streets and people were gawking and pointing fingers at me and I chewed coca leaves and paced my room for what seemed like days, like a polar bear stuck in some zoo down south with nothing but a swimming pool to remind him of his former existence. Eventually I 'get it', the spirit of the qat that is, though I doubt it's worth all the effort. Also I can't get past the feeling that I'm eating my mother's shrubs and soon she'll catch me, and then punish my buttock region for what was the cerebral region's conspiracy. But it moves me past a psychological roadblock, and the street market that goes on more or less throughout the night below me somehow becomes amusing.
the Russian plane
The next morning comes early, way too early, so I drag ass out the door at 4am and plug into the ADSL so I can blog you, my faithful readers. You don't pass on an opportunity for hard-wired ADSL in the Horn of Africa. My cabbie picks me up at half past six for what he said would be an hour drive to the airport, ultimate justification for the high ten dollar charge. It takes just fifteen minutes, but the music was good, local stuff almost like an Ali Farka East. We have to park outside the gate to the airport due to terrorist threats. Now there's a creative solution. I'm the first one there, thanks for nothing, and I haven't even had my morning coffee. This is no ordinary international airport, more like the old airport at Luang Pabang in Laos some fifteen years ago. Welcome to the past. Still the authorities seem to have some sense of their responsibilities, and the guy collecting the exit tax promises to bring my three dollars in change to me in the waiting room as soon as he collects it. Actually I settle for two bucks and a bottle of water AND a cappuccino as soon as the machine's finally up and running. Yes! There is a God, and He's on the job.
