A continuation of the experiences of one aid worker living and working in northern Somalia in 2002, a series which started with an emergency landing on John Travolta's old plane, and continued with the xray of a foot in Hargeisa.
Executive travel – you can keep it. Never again do I want to be outnumbered two to one by the pilots. And this was a free flight, funded by you lovely taxpayers from the European Union. In contrast to the UN, which charges a fortune for a similar ‘service’ (I am still smarting from our abandonment at Baidoa International after the Travolta Airlines affair), the EU offers free flights to aid workers wanting to visit the premier Somali tourist spots. So, with the other ten seats all empty, I had the run of the cabin of this Beechcraft 200. As the cockpit was not partitioned, I also had a brilliant view of our take-off.
We were heading at speed straight for the Red Sea.
Bosaso is the port town of Puntland State of Somalia, in the north-east of the country, right on the Horn of Africa. It is also a hole. The airport has a runway that ends as the Red Sea starts and, as we started careering down the runway at a fair rate of knots, I reflected that, given my recent luck with aeroplanes, it was perhaps fortunate that I had attended that adult beginners course for non-swimmers a couple of years ago.
Somali Pirates Are Not The Only Threat
We took off from the gravel airstrip with acres (actually metres, and not many of them) to spare. I breathed a sigh of relief and looked down, down at those inviting beaches, the waves easing in gently. It looked idyllic and, perhaps in other circumstances, it might have been, but I had visited the beach the previous day, in a rare moment of freedom from our guarded compound, and had seen for myself what was only just being reported – an environmental catastrophe that will keep fish off the menu for my entire stay in Somalia.
There are conflicting theories. Some say it is global warming, some that it is a natural phenomenon that occurs every ten years, some that it is due to the sea cooling, others that it is due to algae poisoning. Whatever. I haven’t a clue, but all I can say is that I have never seen so many dead fish washed up on a beach before. And not just small fish. Sharks, sea turtles and other sizeable creatures that belong in the Star Wars Intergalactic Bar. It was apparently happening all the way along the coast down to South Africa. Millions of fish. And before I came here, they told me that Puntland’s only redeeming feature was the excellent lobster. Typical.
Restrictive Working Environment
After the relaxed and secure environment in Hargeisa and Somaliland, Puntland was very restrictive. I was accompanied by Tim, my Kenyan Project Manager. Neither of us had brought any booze, but he had sent the driver back to the house from Hargeisa Airport, as he had forgotten something much more important – the Scrabble. And in the confined quarters of our two-bedroom guest house, with only Yemeni television and Sidney Sheldon novels as rival distractions, Scrabble became the lifesaver. We were both pretty good, too. And competitive – I haven’t resorted to the Official Scrabble Words so much in ages.
Puntland has two presidents, one in Bosaso and one in the capital, Garowe. They don’t like each other. While Bosaso is apparently calm (not calm enough for anyone to let me go for a stroll though, at least not without an armed guard), Garowe is not – the presence of Ethiopian troops in the region recently further complicates the issue. The whole of Puntland has been off-limits to expatriates for months and I was one of the first back in. In fact, as I was taking the minutes at the International NGO coordination meeting the next day, I realised just how few we were. The EU liaison officer (appropriately a Somali Canadian) was looking into the evacuation plan. He had two planes with a total capacity of 24 seats. We did a quick calculation and found that we had 24 expatriates on the ground, of which eighteen were Africans from other countries.
Which leaves the white skin as quite a rare thing out here. Just before I left England, I shaved my head. I have a few weeks growth now (at least in the areas where it has chosen to grow back), and I felt happy that I was fat for the first time, as Tim, unable to hide his delight at the prospect, muttered to me as we descended from the plane:
"Given the war on terror, I hope they don’t mistake you for an American Marine." I knew there had been a benefit to drinking all that beer before I arrived – I don’t look like the crack military fighting force that I might if I shed a few pounds.
The office was just next door to the guest house, so the daily routine was work (six days) from 7.30am until 2, lunch, then… Scrabble, Yemeni television, Sidney Sheldon or work. Appetising.
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Paul Bradbury - Author of Hvar: An Insider's Guide to Croatia's Premier Island, and Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski
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