A Week In Somaliland!

[Jacaylbaro]

hahahaha ,,, inaanu sxb nahayna waa suuragal ,,,

[Blessed]

^Haha. It's possible.

 

Obama Restaurant made it into News Week .

[nuune]

JB, ma Waaheen/Gargaar baad odeyga geesay, and why did u told him my hiding place.

[ADNAAN]

That was a nice read, looking forward to the mirqaan session.

 

How come there was no mention of minyaro, I reckon the tourist guide failed miserably in the main task.

If it was JB who was the tourist guide he gets 5/10 for effort and I suggest other potential “minyaro doon” look for an alternative guide. Hadii kale sidan wax ha ka badalo xaaji JB .

[Jacaylbaro]

NG, It is Friday tomorrow ,,, give me something to read ,,, i mean ,, go on ,,

[NGONGE]

^^ War that boredom thread depressed me ninyo.

I'll try to finish the story in the next few hours.

[NGONGE]

We got to Berbera and went to have a meal at a restaurant by the sea. The food was nice and the setup not too bad but the cats and birds were a nuisance. My tourist guides later went for a swim whilst I sat down and enjoyed the scenery. I could not swim because I had no swimming trunks on and did not want to take my glasses off.

 

When we got there, the beach was almost deserted. There were only a couple of people swimming and hardly anyone walking around. But, with it being Friday, the place suddenly started to fill up. Lots of young boys appeared out of nowhere and commenced to play football in the water. A group of teenage girls arrived and sat there watching them. One of the girls ran into the water and started swimming. She seemed to know what she was doing. The rest of the girls sat to my right and kept on shouting at her and telling her to cover her chest! This was a baby girl in her early teens; there was no chest to cover (plus she was wearing a Manchester United red top).

 

The battery on my camera ran out and I could not take any photos. I instead resorted to taking photos on my phone but it was not the same quality. I was disappointed and angry with myself when I spotted the Somaliland Coastguards returning from one of their many forays into the Red Sea. They were on a boat (obviously) that resembled a floating technical. There were four people on it and it sailed a couple of hundred yards beyond the swimmers. My first thought was that these guys were more Bay Watch than Pirate Watch. But I recently discovered I was wrong and that these guys did actually manage to thwart and capture some pirates! I am not being bias or patriotic at all when I tell you I am quite impressed, you really needed to see the boat. Furthermore, their achievements take on a whole new meaning when you compare them to those of the vast American, Japanese, Indian, Russian and Chinese navies operating in these seas.

 

Other than swimming, eating and drinking some tea, we really did not do much in Berbera. In fact, the journey there was much more interesting than the city itself. We drove past lots of little villages along the way and stopped at one to have us some tea!

 

Somalis have lots of proverbs concerning tea. Even I, with my limited knowledge of the language, can spit out at least one or two. Tea is extremely important. In Somaliland (and, probably the rest of Somalia) they drink their tea sweet. When I say sweet, I do not mean three or four spoonfuls of sugar. I am talking eight or nine. The trick seems to be to make the tea, add the milk and then keep on adding sugar until both the tastes of tea and milk are obliterated from the cup. If I had to call it anything, I would not call it tea. I would not call it sweet tea. I would not call it sweet milk (for they fill the cup with that too). I would not call it sweet water. No, the nearest name for that funny liquid is warm sugar. In my week in Somaliland I was forced to drink lots of cups of this warm sugar. No wonder people thought I put on weight when I returned home!

 

The village we stopped at was empty and did not seem to have more than two dozen dwellings in it. We stopped by a little shop where a couple of young girls were serving and asked them to supply us with some of their finest warm sugar. The service was prompt and the girls, though they did not talk much, looked wise and intelligent. A couple of kids and a local male (customer) appeared and sat on the chairs opposite. We chatted about the place, our destination and the camera we had. The customer told us about a mountain near by where the word Allah is formed out of the natural grass and bush growth on it. He started by being enthusiastic and insisting that it had the word on it and that we should take a picture when we pass it. But later qualified his words by saying he was told the strange shape on the mountain resembled the word Allah! When we drove away, I kept an eye on all the hills we passed and did not see a mountain with anything that looked like words on it. On our way back from Berbera (for all this took place on our way there), I looked again and finally spotted the mountain (hill really). It did have some strange shapes on it but you would really have to close one eye, squint with the other whilst having your hand obscuring your vision slightly in order to at least claim to have seen the A of Allah on that mountain (hill really).

 

We got back to H town in the early evening and we were carrying a casualty with us. It seems that my tourist guide had developed some sort of illness and was the worse for wear for our entire journey back from Berbera. I told him this was the sign of old age and that he should not have flung himself into the sea like some sort of Olympic swimmer but he winced at me, which I took as a sign of his disagreement. This illness was to stay with him for the next three days (probably still there now).

 

I was back in my hotel room in H town. I had lost my tourist guide to illness and the phone numbers to my own relatives in the city were ringing with nobody picking up. This was going to be real dull! I was going to have to fend for myself in this vast place full of Somalis!

[Jacaylbaro]

[Faarax-Brawn]

Originally posted by NGONGE:

quote:Originally posted by Faarax-Brawn:

NG. Waxaas iga daaye, how was the marfish session? I have always fantasized about woqoyi jaad session.(dont ask folks).

 

One of the a kind, saaxib. It was the best part of the whole journey but I only chewed just the once (and it was more than enough).

I am gonna need some more info than that sxbow. You cant just say that and leave to it..Hallow!?!

[Jacaylbaro]

It is coming in the story ,,, markaa iska sug ,,

[Haneefah]

It's 3am, sheeko NG ma akhrinkaro, but I am glad you're back safe and sound. Hope you've enjoyed your trip.

[NGONGE]

^^ Thanks, dear.

 

 

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That evening, after my tourist guide left me, I went to the hotel lobby and passed the time having conversations with my fellow guests. One of them was from Djibouti and I don’t think he ever saw the outside of this hotel. He was chewing every single night and arguing with anyone that came within earshot of him. But it was not aggressive, violent or antagonistic argument. It was a happy chewer’s argument. There was also a man from Puntland (he told me) who enjoyed arguing with this Djiboutian and would keep telling him that his country (Djibouti) was nothing when compared to Somaliland or Puntland! In addition to these two regulars, I also met a young man from Canada who was on his first ever trip to Somaliland (or anything Somali). He was forever being dragged into the arguments of these two and, the last time I saw him, he cheerfully told me that he was moving out of the hotel and going to visit his relatives in Jigjiga. He was planning to stay there for three months before returning back to H town for a couple months more. The chewer told him that he would be forced to marry. The Puntlander agreed and advised him to insist on a pretty girl. The young man insisted that he is not going to get married and that he already had a sweet heart in Canada. The other two laughed at him and asked me to intervene. I jokingly told him that if anyone approachs him with ideas of marriage, he should quietly claim to be gay. It took the other two a few seconds to get the joke but they were not impressed at all and the looks on their faces resembled those of one expecting a fight to break out any minute. They were surprised when the Canadian man took it in his stride and laughingly refused the suggestion. He’s probably in Jigjiga right now, chewing the life out of some fresh qat and shouting across to his young teenage woman to get him some more warm sugar.

 

I went to bed early that night and had no idea what I was going to do the next day. My tourist guide was not feeling well and my family were not picking up the phones. I had a strong feeling that something bad was going to happen to me!

 

The following morning, I woke up early and went down to breakfast. After having my shoes polished, eating my food and reading the local newspaper, I decided to give my family another call and see if anyone would pick up. They did! They came to get me within half an hour and I wondered if I would ever see my tourist guide again.

 

I have an aunt and uncle living in H town that I have not seen for twenty years. Visiting the family was not going to be that much of an ordeal. These were people that I knew (or at least once knew). I hoped to pick up from where we last left off. However, in the intervening years, this aunt of mine had managed to have herself eight kids and adopt a couple along the way. I was going to a house full of people and hoped I would not make any mistakes.

 

As I entered the house, I noticed that there were more kids than the ten I was told about. I happily said hello to whoever said hello to me and cautiously searched for my aunt. Once I spotted her, I went over to her and greeted her in the proper way. She pointed out her various sons and daughters only for me to discover that those young rascals I warmly greeted as my long lost cousins were nothing but the neighbour’s children! I quietly whispered a question to my aunt about the many women milling about in her front yard. She told me that these were the maids and I decided there was no need for any warm greetings in that quarter. My aunt told me that my uncle’s wife was in the next room and I decided to go and say hello. I got into the room and started to say hello and use all the pleasantries my limited Somali would allow only for my aunt to tab me on the back of my shoulder and inform me that my uncle’s wife was in the next room. To this day, I have no idea who the smiling woman I was greeting was!

 

A few cousins and other male relatives arrived and suggested that I should join them in the garden they were working on. This was a plot of green land in a different part of the city and these guys were digging a new well to water the various plants there. I went with them.

 

Sitting on a rug in that vast garden with tea, soft drinks and various fruits in front of me and having Somali music blaring out of a car stereo was very pleasant. However, my perpetual terror resurfaced again. This was a garden, not a dwelling. It was big and had many places were cold blooded slithering evil would happily call home. What if one happened to come out now? What if one was crawling behind me or under my feet? To make matters worse, a vulture was circling the sky above. A real, bald-headed, ugly, death-loving vulture! The bad feeling I had all morning increased ten fold and I longed for the company of my safe tourist guide.

 

A couple of the men were sat with me on the rug and chatting away about the world, pirates, Obama, Somalia, Riyaale and terror. The rest of the guys were digging the well. They were working on it for four days and were saying that they were very close to finding water. The thing was so deep that the man digging it had to use a ladder to get in and out. The others were lowering a bucket down to him so that he would fill it with mud and sand for them to empty. I kept watching them from my seating area but got bored and returned to looking around me to check for any creatures that sneak up on humans.

 

There was a rustle in the trees behind me and I jumped up. It was only a tortoise.

 

As I sat back down again and was quietly telling myself off for being a coward, I heard a shout from the well. It was a loud scream that died very quickly. Then the men started laughing and I concluded that it must have been something to do with the bucket they were pulling up and maybe that the sand had fallen on the worker’s face. I looked away from them and went back listening to my companions’ conversation.

 

Then it happened! One of the men from the well was walking towards us with a robe in his hand. He was laughing and saying the word ‘abris’! I politely smiled back, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. The others with me laughed and kept asking him questions as he approached us. Then I saw it. Then they did not see me. It happened so quick that I believe I could have beaten Usain Bolt in the one hundred meters final by at least nine seconds.

 

I was out of the garden and standing by the entrance. The man was following me with the snake dangling from a robe and telling me that it is only a baby snake! I showered him with a collection of juicy insults that I never knew I knew! He finally backed off and dangled the snake on a tree. I thought it was a dead snake but once it was out of his hand and dangling on the tree I noticed it was still wriggling and fighting for its last breath. He wanted to approach me with a live snake? I called him some more names (even though I only met him a few hours earlier). A cat ran behind me and I almost had a heart attack. I wanted to leave H town, leave Africa, Leave the world. I wanted my tourist guide back.

 

After a few minutes of panic and worry, the snake stopped writhing. I shouted to one of the guys to pass me my camera (which I left on the floor as I ran away) and looked at the snake through the big lens. It was a small snake. It had its mouth wide open and after the first glance at that mouth, I never looked at it again. However, I managed to get the man to bring it down from the tree and put it on the floor and then started taking pictures of it (only the body part, not the head) from a very safe distance.

 

 

This whole trip was ruined and I was just looking forward to the day I would fly out. Worse still, I kept having nightmares about it every day until I was back home in London. Bloody snakes (the colour, size and look of it fits a Black Mumba)!

[Cara.]

Less yapping more pics.

 

*Kidding*

 

Welcome back.

[NGONGE]

^^ My younger brother took the camera and the pictures and went to another city. The rascal is not back yet. My other set of pictures are with a man who told me he'll send them to me as soon as he finishes his lunch (that was a week ago).

 

Thank you. Welcome back too.

[N.O.R.F]

Bloody snakes (the colour, size and look of it fits a Black Mumba)!

Waar dadka ha ku ciyaarin it was a baby snake that got you running