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!
