Yoder Sons: Somaliland Extends Warm Welcome

[Jacaylbaro]

Levi and I were sitting in a waterfront restaurant here, watching the sun set over the port. The eatery wasn’t my concern: The staff were friendly, other diners smiled at us and Levi gave thumbs-up to his camel-meat stew. It wasn’t the weather: The day’s heat had died away with a cool breeze off the water.

 

After furtively glancing around, I leaned over to share my nagging doubt with Levi.

 

“How many shillings do you have left?,” I asked in a low voice. “I’m not sure I have enough to pay the bill.”

 

Getting money, it ends up, has been about our only major worry, traveling here in northern Somalia.

 

Which isn’t really Somalia at all. We’re not in the Somalia that many people in the West might visualize — the tortured country of pirates and Black Hawk Down.

 

We are in the Republic of Somaliland. Technically, it’s still part of Somalia because it hasn’t been internationally recognized as a separate country. But Somaliland — to the north of Somalia — has run itself as an independent nation ever since its civil war with the South two decades ago.

 

We got here easily enough, overland by bus from Ethiopia after two weeks in that country. (”Welcome to Somaliland!” the Somaliland consular official back in Addis Ababa told us, in what would become a familiar refrain, when she presented us our freshly-stamped visas.)

 

Although foreign tourists still must get a travel permit and hire an armed guard to travel east of the capital of Hargeisa, it’s safe to travel in many parts of this country.

 

The capital at first blush projects an alarming air of disarray that’s easy to mistake for anarchy. Its streets are mostly potholed dirt with makeshift markets crowding their curbs. Even in the center, some stone buildings are crumbling. Somaliland’s cities have still not completely rebuilt after the South bombed them to smithereens in 1991.

 

But we soon found that the predominantly Muslim Somalilanders are possibly the most welcoming people we’ve met so far in Africa. “How are you!” we heard at least 125 times in our first few hours wandering the markets and dusty alleys of Hargeisa after arriving overland from the South. Scores of locals — shopkeepers, students, office workers — walked up to shake our hands. “Welcome to Somaliland!” we heard from dozens.

 

Many people we’ve met are quick to distinguish themselves from the South. “We are different from Somalia,” a computer technician told us in an open-air cafe over sweet cups of “Somali Tea” one night. “Somaliland is peaceful. We like foreigners…We like Americans.”

 

Our worries about losing money to crime quickly fell away. But for the first time in our two months in Africa, we’ve had to worry about getting access to money in the first place.

[Jacaylbaro]