Iain will be writing to Somalilandpress.com about his experience in Somaliland and will be offering tips to anyone who may want to visit the unrecognized republic along the way – discover Somaliland from a Non-Somali perspective.
The sun scorches down through the hottest hours of the day. The variation we have in our weather is virtually none; except for the ill-frequent winds which occasionally blow through and cool us slightly. We usually shelter from this intense heat in the airy shade of our immense living room. We only work in the early mornings or late afternoons.
We’ve been busy buying cooking supplies and visiting the University of Hargeisa, our employer, to prepare for the new semester starting. We are ferried around by our driver Shukri, a woman! She’s an amazing woman at that; she is full of life, humour, energy and guts. If someone steps out into the road without looking or another driver is reckless, careless or downright incompetent she will give them the horn, an earful or both! She is one of only two women I have seen driving out here.
We met our local colleagues for the first time. They are a mixed bunch with three older men exuding humour, personality and class. These men had us smiling all the way through the staff meeting with their friendliness and jokes. One kept talking about the need for us all to be introduced but wouldn’t pause long enough to introduce himself. “The Somalis have a saying: Bread and Salt. We need to eat together before we really know each other. We should have dinner. Can we expense that to the University?” We agreed that would be an excellent idea but he hadn’t finished. “Or some qat (the local drug which is a bit like coca in South America, the leaves are chewed for a buzz.)” Yes! Let’s get some qat. Can we expense that to the University?” We might well try. “We should get some new whiteboard erasers too, they always disappear. Sometimes I have to ask my students if they are wearing black socks which I can borrow!”
We passed the time before the meeting trialling a new grading examination to see if it could accurately separate pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper intermediate students. This involved us going out and about on campus with a handful of exam papers and approaching students who weren’t currently in their classes. We had to try to convince them that they should take a five minute English test in their spare time! Remarkably we managed to convince forty students to quit their breaks and take the test, I’m not sure we could do that in any other country.
One of my flatmates spent a sizeable amount of cash, by Somaliland standards anyway, on a series of ingenious cockroach traps. He purchased five plastic milk jugs and filled them, according an article he found on the internet, with coffee powder in about two inches of water. The 20cm high jugs were lubricated on the inside with a great deal of Vaseline and then ramps were constructed out of cardboard for the cockroaches to walk up and fall in. He created two traps with a great amount of zeal and some tempered disdain for our laughter at his scheme. The article he had read supposed that cockroaches have a particular fondness for coffee, so much so that they would climb cardboard ramps in search of it. Once in the pots they would be unable to get out. Feeling a little sorry for him a couple of us picked up some live cockroaches and put them in his traps whilst he slept.
Matthew and I went food shopping the other day. The sort of food shopping that requires a great deal of talking, negotiating, checking the tomatoes are the right colour (green) and wandering round the labyrinth-like market. The stalls are rainbow-streaked offering, as they do, all manner of imported Chinese plastic goods, fresh and not so fresh vegetables, fake perfume and exotically coloured traditional Somali clothes. The assault of smells on the nose is an eminent experience as spices from all over the Middle East permeate the vegetable waste which is chopped away from bunches of lettuce and other vegetables in order to keep as much of the valuable asset intact as possible. The aroma of milky Somali tea drifts out of tiny hidden cafes within the sauna-like tent inferno we march through searching for what we are looking for.
We were running out of time to buy everything so we separated and I went in search of fruit whilst Matt went off to buy some non-food items for the house. I met him back at the car with a huge watermelon under one arm and a bulging bag of oranges and apples in the other. “I still have five minutes; I will go get some tomatoes from that old lady who always smiles at us.” I disappeared into the crowd.
Back at the house we were unpacking our groceries when Matthew cursed. He had been tricked! In the process of buying socks he had negotiated what he thought to be a better deal for three pairs of socks but the buggar had slipped one of the pairs out whilst Matthew wasn’t looking so he had paid the original price and not the negotiated one. Sympathies were offered all round and we resolved to be vigilant in future when sock shopping. The next day I was making lunch for everyone when we ran out of salt. I rummaged around the forgotten bags of spices from yesterday and opened the salt. Two brand new grey socks were sitting in there.
I tried out the rock climbing at last! With good steep lines and big holds it is perfect to get strong arms. I tap the holds gently before using each one as I haven’t got a bouldering mat, only a lilo as a crash-pad. I also live in hope that the tapping will alert any poisonous snakes of my presence and scare them off. I’m not sure what they would be doing hiding in the holes of boulders but one cannot be too careful. In other wildlife news we are winning the battle against those cockroaches! I find myself disappointed by this because I had hoped to catch five of them, fry them and coat them in Cadbury’s chocolate on my birthday. In the end we settled for Al Nugom peanut and nougat chocolate bars and no cockroaches.
The best place, our big flat rooftop aside, to watch the sun set is by ‘the rock’ which is what the non-climbers call our rock climbing area even though it is in fact a collection of rocks. We had heard that hyenas could be seen at dusk so we go in search of them as the heat of the day fades and we are tempted out of our shady cavernous house. It is still hot under the fading sun but it is out there in that isolation when we are looking out for hyenas, the girl amongst us feels brave enough to t take off her headdress and I climb routes which have never been climbed before, that the evanescent winds will blow dust from the desert floor and cool us with their temporary temperate presence before blowing inland towards the mountains at our backs.
The sun scorches down through the hottest hours of the day. The variation we have in our weather is virtually none; except for the ill-frequent winds which occasionally blow through and cool us slightly. We usually shelter from this intense heat in the airy shade of our immense living room. We only work in the early mornings or late afternoons.
We’ve been busy buying cooking supplies and visiting the University of Hargeisa, our employer, to prepare for the new semester starting. We are ferried around by our driver Shukri, a woman! She’s an amazing woman at that; she is full of life, humour, energy and guts. If someone steps out into the road without looking or another driver is reckless, careless or downright incompetent she will give them the horn, an earful or both! She is one of only two women I have seen driving out here.
We met our local colleagues for the first time. They are a mixed bunch with three older men exuding humour, personality and class. These men had us smiling all the way through the staff meeting with their friendliness and jokes. One kept talking about the need for us all to be introduced but wouldn’t pause long enough to introduce himself. “The Somalis have a saying: Bread and Salt. We need to eat together before we really know each other. We should have dinner. Can we expense that to the University?” We agreed that would be an excellent idea but he hadn’t finished. “Or some qat (the local drug which is a bit like coca in South America, the leaves are chewed for a buzz.)” Yes! Let’s get some qat. Can we expense that to the University?” We might well try. “We should get some new whiteboard erasers too, they always disappear. Sometimes I have to ask my students if they are wearing black socks which I can borrow!”
We passed the time before the meeting trialling a new grading examination to see if it could accurately separate pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper intermediate students. This involved us going out and about on campus with a handful of exam papers and approaching students who weren’t currently in their classes. We had to try to convince them that they should take a five minute English test in their spare time! Remarkably we managed to convince forty students to quit their breaks and take the test, I’m not sure we could do that in any other country.
One of my flatmates spent a sizeable amount of cash, by Somaliland standards anyway, on a series of ingenious cockroach traps. He purchased five plastic milk jugs and filled them, according an article he found on the internet, with coffee powder in about two inches of water. The 20cm high jugs were lubricated on the inside with a great deal of Vaseline and then ramps were constructed out of cardboard for the cockroaches to walk up and fall in. He created two traps with a great amount of zeal and some tempered disdain for our laughter at his scheme. The article he had read supposed that cockroaches have a particular fondness for coffee, so much so that they would climb cardboard ramps in search of it. Once in the pots they would be unable to get out. Feeling a little sorry for him a couple of us picked up some live cockroaches and put them in his traps whilst he slept.
Matthew and I went food shopping the other day. The sort of food shopping that requires a great deal of talking, negotiating, checking the tomatoes are the right colour (green) and wandering round the labyrinth-like market. The stalls are rainbow-streaked offering, as they do, all manner of imported Chinese plastic goods, fresh and not so fresh vegetables, fake perfume and exotically coloured traditional Somali clothes. The assault of smells on the nose is an eminent experience as spices from all over the Middle East permeate the vegetable waste which is chopped away from bunches of lettuce and other vegetables in order to keep as much of the valuable asset intact as possible. The aroma of milky Somali tea drifts out of tiny hidden cafes within the sauna-like tent inferno we march through searching for what we are looking for.
We were running out of time to buy everything so we separated and I went in search of fruit whilst Matt went off to buy some non-food items for the house. I met him back at the car with a huge watermelon under one arm and a bulging bag of oranges and apples in the other. “I still have five minutes; I will go get some tomatoes from that old lady who always smiles at us.” I disappeared into the crowd.
Back at the house we were unpacking our groceries when Matthew cursed. He had been tricked! In the process of buying socks he had negotiated what he thought to be a better deal for three pairs of socks but the buggar had slipped one of the pairs out whilst Matthew wasn’t looking so he had paid the original price and not the negotiated one. Sympathies were offered all round and we resolved to be vigilant in future when sock shopping. The next day I was making lunch for everyone when we ran out of salt. I rummaged around the forgotten bags of spices from yesterday and opened the salt. Two brand new grey socks were sitting in there.
I tried out the rock climbing at last! With good steep lines and big holds it is perfect to get strong arms. I tap the holds gently before using each one as I haven’t got a bouldering mat, only a lilo as a crash-pad. I also live in hope that the tapping will alert any poisonous snakes of my presence and scare them off. I’m not sure what they would be doing hiding in the holes of boulders but one cannot be too careful. In other wildlife news we are winning the battle against those cockroaches! I find myself disappointed by this because I had hoped to catch five of them, fry them and coat them in Cadbury’s chocolate on my birthday. In the end we settled for Al Nugom peanut and nougat chocolate bars and no cockroaches.
The best place, our big flat rooftop aside, to watch the sun set is by ‘the rock’ which is what the non-climbers call our rock climbing area even though it is in fact a collection of rocks. We had heard that hyenas could be seen at dusk so we go in search of them as the heat of the day fades and we are tempted out of our shady cavernous house. It is still hot under the fading sun but it is out there in that isolation when we are looking out for hyenas, the girl amongst us feels brave enough to t take off her headdress and I climb routes which have never been climbed before, that the evanescent winds will blow dust from the desert floor and cool us with their temporary temperate presence before blowing inland towards the mountains at our backs.
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