Nura's Wedding

The happy bride - Nura - and myself

Hanna and me, waiting for the bride to come

The bride, Nura A., surrounded by her younger sisters and best friends

Somaliland weddings are - as demonstrated above - very colourful events.
After one and a half years of living and working in this country, I have finally managed to join the beauty club by purchasing a real Somali dress. Walking in this overdimensional big dress was a challange at the beginning, however, by the end of the evening I even managed to dance in it without constantly falling over the dress... Looking forward to the next wedding :-)

Weekend in Berbera

Thanks to the Somali dress code, we constantly look like a bunch of Hippies who have resisted the transition into twenty first century :)

UN family under one "hat". Me, Livia, Fred, and Santosh demonstrating a respectable collection of UN agencies...

Everybody needs a break from time to time - which place would be more ideal than the Beach of Berbera to gain new energy?

And again - somali beach dress code...

Bestseller number one among expatriates in so called "hardship" zones :-)

Nura's Birthday

Knowing that some of Nuras (my lovely boss) friends and family members living abroad regularly look up my blog for news from Somaliland and in particular the organisation we both work for, here the latest pictures from Nuras birthday party! Asha, Nura and Rahma during the hand over of the birthday cake

Abdifatha and Nawal, our finance and water experts Trying out the belly dance: Daniela and Asha
Getting ready to attend a wedding later on: Ayaan, one of my sweet colleagues!

What a lucky man :-) Abdifatha in between Nura and Asha

Somali style: Daniela fully dressed up

Hotel Venezia

Typical Somaliland food consists of "hilib" (meat), rice and pasta - or baastoo, as commonly called here (it's inherent to the Somali language to double vowels wherever possible). These three basics are served by 99,9% of all restaurants in town. Only one place seems to resists this diet:

The "Club, Hotel, Restaurant, Meeting Room" Venezia.

Besides offering a variety of Barilla pasta, with pesto, dried tomatos, mushrooms, and other specialities such as Gnocchi, the restaurants has another peculiarity to offer: It is managed by two middle aged men from Bozen! For all those who dont know it: Bozen is the capital of the northest region of Italy, in brief, the region where I was born and raised. So, how do two middle aged men from a small town in the heart of the Italien Alps end up running a restaurant in Somaliland? To be frank, it's a mistery that I have tried to solve for the past two years.

Every week I visit the place at least one or two times, but instead of finding answers, more and more questions are popping up with each visit to the restaurant.

Food, apart from being different, is not particularly tasty, at least not always. For instance, yesterday: the pizza was soggy, the crem caramel was frozen, the drinking water was warm. Against our recommendation, the place still has no music, leave alone a glass of wine.

Due to these shortcomings, the place is most of the time empty. Which I personally dont mind, since it means more privacy (a pure luxury in Somaliland). But it raises another question: how can these two guys support their restaurant? Its a miracle.

But than again, my mandate here in Somaliland is not really to find out about the past of restaurant owners. I should rather appreciate the fact that there is a place that offers something else than the usual diet :-)

Nasa Hablod

On the peak - Fred, Ayaan, Dimity, Ulf, Daniela, me
Katja - also on weekends she's still at work ;-)

Me - Somali style
Ayaan - catwalk on top of Nasa Hablod
For all those who did not read my earlier mails, Nasa Hablod are two mountains just outside Hargeisa - they are commonly known as the two breasts: the one to the left is the "young one", while the one to the right is the "old one".
Action - Fred, Dimity, Erik (hidden behind Dimity), Ann, me, Katja, Ayaan, Ulf, Andrea, Daniela
Helping each other climbing up the mountain - Ayaan, Daniela, Ulf

In the gym...

I am sure that for many of you, Somaliland manifests itself primarely through camels, khat and sand. Now, to some extend I might actually have triggered this image through my countless accounts and pictures of camels, goats, dust and rust. Sorry about that.

So please see this message as a serious attempt to bring some more funk into the monotonous impression of Somaliland I might have passed on to you previously.

Since joining Caritas some five months ago, I eavesdropped conversations between my local (female) colleagues about their intentions to loose weight (majority of Somalilands women are build "strong", as I would call it in German). These serious and less serious attempts include things like skipping lunch, downloading exercises from the internet, walking from home to the office and, drinking only five cups of sweet tea each day instead of six, and last but not least - going to the GYM! So after eavesdropping long enough, I decided to try it out myself. Not so much skipping lunch or drinking less of the sweet tea, but inspecting a gym from inside. After all, what is there to loose? Weight? Maybe - maybe not. There was defenitely more to gain in it: bizarre stories for my grandchildren, should I ever have some... ;-) Now, the gym we went to was fortunately not the "smallest gym in the world (see previous post), and neither did we have to "build our bodies"; rather, there was plenty of opportunity to engage in some serious body building.

The fun started out on a pretty "low profile". From outside, the gym was just a simple house in one of Hargeisas backyard streets. Kids who played around in the street peeked cautiously at me while I entered the house; as if they would have never have seen a white woman in a red jogging suit before... Hm, actually, they might indeed have never seen a white woman before... Maybe also not a woman in trousers...

Once inside the gym, I was immediately embraced by a warm, humid and stuffy air as well as the voice of Juanes, one of these cheese love and sorrow singers from Latin America. Overwhelmed by air and sound, it took me some time to fully seize the room and the girls who already jumped energetically to the rythms from the blaster. The equipment, I must admit, was rather un-impressive: a bike, some weights, and some other unidentificable equipment. One of the other girls looked at me curiously and then asked blantly: "why are you here? You're not fat!" Oh, thanks!

Shortly after getting rid of my scarf and my shoes - its a no shoe gym - I started imitating my colleagues who were already running zigzag between the equipment. Not bumping into any of the machines and/ or colleagues in this narrow room was a major challenge.

After this challenge, the real challange started: FAT BURNING! The instructors work was basically to switch on the TV and to insert a videotape with aerobic from the eighties. Suddenly, I felt Europe (and my childhood) as close as never before here in Hargeisa: a perfectly shaped woman, with perfectly bleached and arranged hair, not to forget about the make up and the shrill combination of tight turquois trousers and a even tighter pink top smiled towards us from the screen. Looking around in the room, I couldnt really find an equivalent. Decent coloured and slabby cloths, a little bit of fat on the hips, and far less smiling - thats how I would describe the bunch of determined girls on the other side of the TV. But the lady in pink did not allow much time for self criticism. With an even brighter smile she welcomed us to this edition of fat burning, and the only thought in my mind was - why on earth do I try to burn fat in Somaliland? Arent there other things to worry about? But again, no time for further elaboration of thoughts; the lady in pink started jumping around from one leg to the other like somebody who hadn't peed for a whole day, and encouraged us to coordinate at the same time the arms - my god, our group was a disaster! Nobody (including me) really understood in which direction to move, with which leg, which arm, not to forget about the smile... We would have been kicked out of any aerobic class everywhere else in the world... :-)

One hour and seven steps of fat burning later the lady in pink was still smiling, while majority of us just grasped for air. But again, the fun was not over yet - situps, weight lifting and rope skipping formed the second part of the two hours training! Why do we torture us that much? Not that it would increase the love of others, at least... And yet I liked it.

No, I think the reason why I liked this afternoon in the gym was that I suddenly felt so - normal! No veil that seperated me from the other women, no long skirts, just trousers and Tshirts. And one common goal: loosing weight... There are defenitely moments in life when I simply can't else than believe in the similarity between human beings, regardless of nationality, age, language and whatever else is there to divide us.

Las Geel - some more information

The following is an abstract that I found on the wwww on the outcomes of an archeological survey that was done some years ago:

An archaeological survey was carried out by a French team in November and December 2002 in the Somaliland Republic. The objective was the search for rock shelters and caves containing stratified archaeological infills capable of documenting the period when production economy appeared in this part of the Horn of Africa (circa 5th and 2nd millenia B.C.). The Las Geel site, a granite rock sheltering about ten shelters decorated with polychrome paintings, was dis- covered in the course of the survey. These paintings, in an excellent state of preservation, mainly represent humpless cows with large lyre-shaped or arched horns and the neck decorated with a kind of „plastron”. The cows are accompanied by stocky human figures with spindel-shape legs and raised arms. There are also some figures of canidae placed beside men, a single giraffe and some antelopes. The evident superposition of several graphic styles will no doubt make it possible to establish a chronology of Neolithic or Protohistoric rock art in this part of the Horn of Africa. Through the abundance of its paintings, their quality, the originality of the type of representation of bovines and human figures, the Las Geel site will henceforth take its place among the major Holocene sites of rock art in this region of Africa. A future mission planned for November 2003 will make it possible to undertake a detailed study of these paintings and their archaeological context. This note constitutes a preliminary presentation of this exceptional discovery

And this is how the Lonely Planet writes about Las Geel

Las Geel is undisputably Somaliland's pièce de résistance. Hundreds of magnificent neolithic rock art paintings in perfect condition adorn the walls of several interconnected caves and shelters. Some paintings exceed one metre in length and their state of preservation is exceptional.
Were it not in Somaliland, this fantastic site would immediately be declared a World Heritage Site and swamped with masses of tourists. Sadly (well, not quite), as long as Somaliland is not recognised by the international community, all attempts at protecting Las Geel will be unsuccessful and it will remain a hidden gem.

Las Geel - Somalilands main tourist attraction

Somalilands' tourist attractions are not plenty in numbers, but those few, which are there, are worth to be seen. After having lived for almost one and a half year in Somaliland, I have finally made it to visit the major tourism site, too: The rockpaintings from Las Geel - Las meaning water and Geel meaning Camels. However, its name does only partly pay tribute to the history of this place. None of the numerous rockpaintings shows even the smallest camel. Instead, the massive caves are decorated with hundreds of cows, in a variety of situations:

milking cows

pregnant cows

grazing cows

decorated cows

The variety was almost endless. Next to cows, some other animals were eternalized on the rocks of Las Geel, too. On the picture below, you can see the Director of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (yes, Somaliland has a ministry for culture and tourism!) pointing at some giraffes. Have these been the last giraffes of Somaliland? Today, the rockpaintings are the only witness that these gracious animals have ever lived here.

Shabelle, how the Director introduced himselves to us, had come down to the caves together with a British tourist. Alone prospects of such a special treatment are worth to visit this country, dont you agree? In which other country of the world would a simple tourist have the honour to be guided around by the Director of a Ministry?

Besides phantastic paintings of pregnant and milking cows, the area around the caves is quite rewarding, too. What could be better for a passionate mountain climber like me than climbing a little peak? On top of Mt. Las Geel, I enjoyed the view and a nice chat with my new colleague from SwitzerlandAnd this is the view. Empty river beds, called Wadi, and a wide, semi arid, yet in my eyes beautyful landscape.
None of us doubted the peacefulness of the place. Yet, as it is the rule in Somaliland, we were accompanied even to this remote spot by the so called SPU, special police unit. I dont necessarily feel safe with a kalashnikov in my back, but thats the package that one gets in Somaliland. Either you take it, or you leave it. But than you should also leave the country.

Anyhow, even our SPU (who are, by the way, to a great extend quite sympatetic fellows) seemed to enjoy the day and to learn more about their ancestors The caves also offered some cosy sitting areas

And here again, the Wadi. By the time we visited the place, it was nearly empty. But be aware of rain. These innocent sandy riverbeds can turn themselves into torrential rivers within less than an hour!