Camels and remote lands

After my first camel safari the length of Somalia, I was hooked.  There is only one thing better in life than loading your camels in the pre dawn darkness, with the embers of last nights blaze slowly dying away and another day in the deserts of  Africa and  Asia to look forward to; and that is making the same journey by the light of a full moon.

Camels are so much more than transport. They are perfectly adapted  to semi arid environments; their soft padded feet  suited to the fragile soils and their selective browsing quite unlike the devastation caused by overstocked herds of cattle and flocks of goats.

Breakfast

As for personality, when you get to know them, each has its own character and temper, and if mistreated they will remember and wait for that moment when you are all on your own and no one is looking.  

Camels are bred for a wide range of characteristics be it milk production, riding or pack camels. In the Middle East a good racing camel can be worth a small fortune. For me they are simply the best excuse to travel in and experience remote lands.

one big camel 

Perfectly adapted for semi arid environments.

The pool by the Jacaranda - Nairobi Kenya

Travel has inevitably included many nights in far flung hotels ranging from rat infested hovels  to historic gems. Favourites have included Deans in Peshawar and the beach huts in Zanzibar - with revolving ceiling fans at neck height.  In Liberia Mamba Point was at one time one of the few safe place to stay in the country with nightly rates fixed accordingly, and Abidjan's Hotel Marly endlessly playing Celine Dion’s album 'D'eux' .

For Kenya, The Fairview was the traditional colonial hotel in Nairobi exuding character, with the  balcony of  The Norfolk  the place to meet.  However the old Jacaranda remains my favourite. That Jacaranda no longer exists in its old form. It was taken over by new owners  revamped and is now a modern hotel. Back then every day was a new adventure.

The Jacaranda became the base for many aid workers going in to or from Somalia during the fighting of the early 1990’s.

Sometimes water flowed from the taps and sometimes it did not.   One day a broken water mains was repaired when everyone had gone out for the day leaving their non functioning taps on, resulting in a spectacular waterfall from the top balconies with the torrent pouring out under the doors. 

On another day the pool was a sea of shampoo bubbles. It was the only place left to wash. It took some time to clean the pool out and refill it for its normal use.

The Jacaranda sometimes employed newly qualified staff fresh from catering college. 

Two stood behind me one evening having a blazing row - should I be served from the left or the right. Eventually the girl threw the bowl of soup to the floor and stormed off; I remained unfed.

I also managed to incur the worst bout of food poisoning ever and spent a night doubled up, but these are minor hiccups compared to the effect the Jacaranda had on those just back from the Somali bush.

The place was an oasis of calm in hectic Nairobi; the food by and large great; and the staff welcoming. It's attractiveness grew exponentially when camping out in some forsaken corner of unloved Somali desert.

The one distressing quirk was the outside door the staff   used to enter the kitchen. It always shut with a loud bang.  It did so with a group recently evacuated from Somalia sitting by the pool. You have never seen so many reflex dive for cover.

Merca and the story of Ali Maow Malin - Somalia

Merca was famous as a beach resort many years ago, used by the British as a rest base for troops pushing up towards Addis in an earlier conflict.

I had a field office close by the mosque, to manage an agricultural rehabilitation programme in the nearby countryside. Swifts used to circle the minaret after their epic seasonal migration from Europe.

Merca at that time was quieter than Mogadishu and provided easier access to the programme area. This was long before the international military intervention led by the Americans. The webi shabelle flowed close by, and the single access road into the town from Afgoi was buried under moving sand dunes and  just passable with a 4 wheel drive.

We used to come back filthy and exhausted after days in the field, to face an even greater challenge - the TV.

One of the national staff had produced this ancient contraption and equally ancient video recorder.  When it was plugged in and the generator started, the crackling noise from the plug and faint air of electrics about to ignite pervaded the whole cinematic experience. We had no TV signal and only one video ‘The Mirror Cracked’ an Agatha Christie mystery. Sometimes we had the picture with no sound and at other times the sound with no picture.

How the compound did not burn down remains a complete mystery, as did the ending of the film. No-one ever managed to stay awake long enough to find out who did it. Over the intervening years when the opportunity arose I have never been able to bring myself to try one more time to watch the wretched thing to its final scene.

Merca has its place in history for one event of global importance. The final eradication of smallpox. Nearly twenty years earlier in the 1970’s Somalia was one of the last strongholds of the disease. An outbreak in 1977 led to a WHO containment programme which eventually led to Merca’s hospital and the hospital cook Ali Maow Malin. He had ducked his jab in an earlier inoculation programme and became infected. His treatment was to be as the last patient before the WHO announced in October 1979 the full eradication of smallpox in the world's population.

A spot of malaria on the Webi Shabelle - Somalia

The ritual at the start of each day in the fields around Baidoa was a visit to a young entrepreneur at the entrance to town with a large mound of coconuts and a panga. For a few shillings you had a freshly opened coconut and they were delicious.

The market

Another routine was to walk the irrigation ditches to check they were in good order. 

One morning with a bout of malaria simmering below the surface, I came to a reed bed outside of town and out stepped a few feet in front of me a bird of jaw dropping height. It did not look up, rather it stared straight forward, more curious than alarmed.  After a minute or so of complete silence between us on that deserted track, it turned away and vanished back into the reeds, leaving only the hum of cicadas in the intense heat.

A verdant landscape rife with malaria and dengue

When I reported the encounter to my Somali friends, they exchanged looks, fell silent and quickly changed the subject. Gerald Hanley’s experience with the spirit world in these parts came to mind and  I was left to wonder if it was just malaria that has left me with the distinct feeling that I had just met with something far more elemental than possibly the largest Saddlebill Stork in existence.

Three brave men - Somalia

Long before the arrival of the Americans in Somalia, farmland near Baidoa was the location for an agricultural rehabilitation programme.

Crossing the Shebelle with  agricultural extension workers

Unlike the surrounding desert Baidoa was green and verdant with abundant coconut and banana plantations. You could still see the concrete huts in which the former Italian colonists kept their plantation workers.  During the rainy season stagnant pools between the houses were ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes – dengue and malaria were rife.

seed trials

Much of the work was restoration of irrigation channels and the perennial problem of raising water from the Shebelle River. The pumps long since  looted.

Where there was once a pump to raise water from the Shabelle

That we managed to bring large swathes of agricultural land back into productive use was down to the determination and bravery of three exceptional extension workers.


 Three  brave men.



and their appreciative audience

A Year in Mog - Somalia

Somalia is a place that really gets under your skin.  A land of extremes that draws you back again and again.

I made one of my all time unforgettable safaris before the civil war, walking camels up from Kismayo to Hargeisa.  The book I took on that journey is the Somalia book, that I have re-read many times - 'Warriors and Strangers by Gerald Hanley. Later during fighting in the early 1990's I returned to establish and manage agricultural rehabilitation programmes along the Juba and Shabelle rivers.

Looking back at old black and white photos of the Italian colonial era it never ceases to amaze that a place could be so comprehensively trashed and still provide a home for so many.

Each day of blazing heat was greeted with the cry ‘turned out nice again’ before heading to the field. The Somalis were just as affected by the pulsating sun and white glare reflecting off an unforgiving landscape, perfectly matching  their highly volatile nature's.  

Back then Mog had the daily backdrop of almost constant automatic weapons fire.  Usually M16’s and AK47’s and occasionally something heavier when the Technical’s became animated.

One faction owned a flatbed truck with a four barrel anti aircraft gun attached. It tended to appear out of side streets, horizontally traverse that gun and let rip. Everyone scattered to the hills as its destructive impact within an enclosed urban space was spectacularly appalling.

Most NGO's had hustlers outside their compounds trying to sell or rent what they had looted. Occasionally these groups became fractious, and the normal backdrop of gunfire grew in intensity and volume.  One security briefing continued under a heavy dining table with bullets pinging off the wall above our heads

Then one day the firing outside really did become intense and the compound  filled with smoke. Bursts of gunfire  tended to last a minute or two, but this just went on and on.  It was the ambush and murder of 24 U.N. Pakistani peacekeepers, an event which contributed to the intervention of the Americans. The rest of that story is now history.

Two outstanding people I worked with and will never forget were Dan Eldon of Reuters and Sean Devereux of UNICEF.  Both were exceptional but found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and did not make it back.

Preparing for a trip to the field

In 2013 the Brits re-opened an Embassy and  and funded solar powered street lighting which has made a huge difference to the atmosphere in Mogadishu after dark.
The diaspora are starting to return, leading to a spectacular rise in the value of habitable real estate and now there was even a dry cleaners. 

If Somalia can emulate the success story that is Somaliland, those old black and white photos may cease to be distant memories.

Somalia

Somalia is not just a country, it is a state of mind. No one who travels here leaves untouched. Like the climate it is a place of extremes invoking passions unlike anywhere else.  Many leave promising that nothing on earth will ever make them return, or like me you are hooked.

I love Somalia. Once long ago, a Somali friend and I walked four camels from Kismayo up to Hargeisa, travelling mostly at night. It was an unforgettable journey. Then the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown and Somalia descended into a long nightmare.

I returned in 1991 to set up a relief programme for one of the British NGO's and ended up staying a year through some of the worst fighting. The bravery of the Pakistani soldiers in an impossible situation  and the eventual arrival of the Americans and Operation Restore Hope are not scenes easily forgotten.

It was like a tower of Babel. So many nations had soldiers there. From America to Zimbabwe with just about every letter in between. The French Foreign Legion had their first base on the roof of my compound. Then despite a huge effort we had Black Hawk Down and the rest is history.

Now there is finally  tangible progress. Somaliland has a vibrant economy and Puntland has  seen a sharp reduction in attempted piracy from its coastline. The changes down south are also making a real difference. The diaspora are slowly returning as are the refugees from Kenya.

 For those of us who have had the privilege of living there, Gerald Hanley's 'Warriors and Strangers'  encapsulates Somalia's magnetic appeal.