Time passes, and there you are doing things you didn’t know were possible: harvesting tomatoes; meeting ministers; winning the trust of neighbors; chatting with cargo ship crew from New Jersey at the Berbera port; stripping down to bathing suits on a Somali beach, guarded by baby camels and soldiers with AK-47s. You made it, and the story no longer writes itself; you’ll have to put pen to paper and craft the day anew each morning. Here’s to relentless adventure.
No, not those guys (as far as I know, no one here eats those guys). Oatmeal with bananas (the lesser, Somaliland–Ethiopian?–bananas, as opposed to the giant, creamy bananas of south-central Somalia) and jam, mint tea, and a few gulps of camel milk. Truth be told, the camel milk was for my canine companion. but it is a breakfast, dinner, and snack of choice for many. I can tolerate it in Somali tea (see also here and here), but this creamy drink is not for the faint of heart: if it comes from a camel, it inevitably tastes like camel. The benefits of this milk are much-touted, especially where it’s consumed most–strength, vigor, vitamin C, anti-cancer properties, and enough oomph to keep you full for hours. For now, I’ll stick to my oatmeal, and a just a cup of the magic stuff from time to time.
An early morning jaunt on the outskirts of Hargeisa. Foggy, chilly, hopeful.
morning comes early on the Gulf: by 4:30am, the sun lifted our eyelids and danced on the humps of camels.
In lieu of pumpkins, since there are none to be found in Somaliland, we carved the most handsome of jack o’ lanterns from watermelons.
For a recent work project, our staff recorded radio advertisements targeting BBC Hargeisa listeners. Here are some images from our day in the studio, when we discovered some of the silky-smoothest radio voices among us.
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