Into the blue

Now, another fascinating thing in Somaliland is the private construction sector. Whenever I drive through town, there are new buildings (and at least one new mosque) alongside the streets. Popping up like mushrooms, they turn Hargeisa into an extremely vital city, that changes its appearance on a nearly daily basis. While scattered ruins keep reminding the visitor about the violent past of the country, these new buildings scream out the forward look that most inhabitants of Somaliland have since adopted.

Besides posh and kitschy one family houses with pink and turquoise balustrades, there are recently some skyscrapers growing up into the blue sky of Hargeisa, too. Same as the one family houses, they grow with an unbelievable speed of at least one floor per week. Same as the one family houses, they have some sparkles of pink, turquoise, baby blue, yellow, and other mellow colours. As recently reported by a friend, there is now even one sky scraper with a elevator - though my friend, knowing about the fastness of construction business in Somaliland, preferred taking the steps up to the fifth floor...

I always wandered what would happen to all these wannabe towers of babel if an earthquake would hit the hit the town. Would they survive? Although a pleasure for the eye, I don't really see the Japanese anti-earthquake-protection yet incorporated into the design of these towers. That's why personally, my interaction with skyscrapers in Somaliland is limited to an admiring (and surprised) look when yet another one popped out of nowhere...

Whats's new in town

I didn't believe it until I saw it: the pool table recently imported from UK by our dearest friends Armen and Chris! As it turned out, the table was actually not a pool table, but a "snooker" table (whatever that is?!). For one hour we tried helplessly to figure out the rules and moreover, how to set the balls before starting the game. The desperation on Jans and Armens faces is evidence enough that our attempt to understand snooker failed miserably. If there would have been any Briton among us, we might have had a slight chance to understand the game...But fortunately enough, we didn't need a Briton, since Armen eventually handed over the real billiard balls, and we could finally show what great billiard experts we all are... Some did actually pretty well, like Henrik above ... Some looked pretty good, like Hanna above...
Some, such as myself, were hopeless cases...
Driving others, like Chris, into a state of desperation...
Yes, there is still much too learn, expect for those few talents like Henrik...

Now, thats real dedication!

The car of Mr. Hussein, director of Non formal education at the Somaliland Ministry of Education - since the window had broken few weeks ago, he has been driving around with a temporary window: a plastic sheet fixed with stickers that advocate for education and literacy. Now, that's real dedication to get people understand the importance of education, isn't it? :)

Somaliness - the key to the un-explainable

Many mysterious things have been happening around me for the past two years, for which I just couldn’t find a slightl satisfying answer. Until recently, when a friend told me the answer to all these unexplainable stuff: “Somaliness”! For outsiders, it might be a bit tricky to fully grasp the meaning of this word, for those of you who have been regularly reading my blog, it might be a bit easier. Somaliness – one word, able to embrace a world of questions. Let me give you some samples of Somaliness, to boost your imagination a bit:

Imagine, you are driving down the main road in town. All of a sudden, the car in front of you stops in the middle of the road, while a car coming from the opposite direction stops, too. Down go the windows, and as if the whole universe would come to a still stand, the two guys start chatting, laughing, exchanging (again for outsiders not understandable) gestures. And you wonder, how long will it take them to realize that the universe is actually still alive, hustling around them, trying to move on? In line with Somaliness, it can take a really long time and it sometimes needs the concerted efforts of many singal horns, to get the two cars moving again!

Or another occasion, again on the road (roads of Africa can be quite exciting locations), a caring observer will soon notice that despite that there are fuel stations on nearly ever corner, each of them succeeds to find a unique way to spell “fuel”. It can be anything from fuul, feul, feel, full. Hardly ever its fuel. The same goes for petrol. It’s sometime patrol, sometimes patrool, sometimes betrol, and badrool. Extending a bit on the miracle of the Somali language, there is a small episode to tell from another friend of mine. He recently asked one of his staff members to translate a code of conduct for de-miners (people who take mines out of the ground...) from English into Somali. All went well, when all of a sudden three evil words hampered him from completing the task: professionalism, discipline and sterile. He just couldn’t find any suitable translation!

Then there are also all these goats strolling on small groups through town. I always wondered how on earth people know which goats belong to who? Somaliness, it’s the only answer I can find.

There is not one single day passing by, when I am not pausing, scratching my head, rolling my eyes and thinking: what on earth…?? It’s a miracle, this country. Unfortunately, unexplainable things are not always funny. For instance, one might ask why there are so many new mosques build with every month, while over half of the children can’t access school because there are simply not enough facilities? Or how it comes that majority of the adult (male) population is day in, day out chewing chat, a narcotic plant called drug by some, cultural heritage by others, while the country claims to be one of the poorest in the world.

There are many questions I didn’t find answers for in the last two years, and having only two weeks left before heading on to a new duty station, I am grateful that I got to know this single key, one word, applicable to all the mysteries around: Somaliness. Gosh, although I am in this very moment looking forward to move on to a new place, I bet that I will miss this small country with all its tragic-funny scurrility's!

Somali street art

Contemporary Somali art is best viewed during a little stroll through town. All over the place are colorful displays of food and services. Quite often, these displays are not only demonstrating the creativity of Somali artist, but also their incredible ability to copy well known global brands (and notes...) and transform them yet into a unique piece of art. Somali street art is accessible to everybody, diverse, entertaining, you name it. Unfortunately, it is also an expression for the high illiteracy rates which are still prevailing and affecting over 75% of the adults in Somaliland. Although the disappearance of these original displays would definitely be a loss for Hargeisa, I still wish that one day, they will not be there as a symbol for illiteracy, but -if at all- simply as an expression of art ...