a very short break in Africa's most dangerous country (apparently)

With all of my organised holiday trips from April onwards cancelled (well, postponed until next year), I decided that I should try to persuade one tour comany to retain a small part of one trip - just an optional add-on for maximum three people, for a two-day trip, that I thought might be feasible - and I succeeded.  So I have just returned from an entirely illogical trip that involved three and a half days of quite expensive travel for just one and a half days of actual holiday - but am enormously happy to have done so as the psychological boost of going away, and to somewhere new, has been huge.

 

So where have I been?

Somalia - to Mogadishu!

Not your run-of-the-mill destination, but a really interesting one and it being somewhere that nobody I know has visited somehow made it feel more of a major trip.  

It is not somewhere that is yet safe to wander around on your own, so the three of us were accompanied throughout by a rota of guides and drivers, with two vehicles and four armed security guards.  So many of the 'sights', from monuments to the ruins of buildings left from the 1991 civil war, were seen only through the car windows (tinted so that people on the street could not see that there were foreigners in there), and we had to be back in our hotel (in the green zone of the city) by 5pm, with my pleas for a taste of the nightlife (Somali tea and shisha pipes, I understand) being met only by a trip just down the road to a gelato place, with us and the guide the only ones there ... but overall it was still an enormously enjoyable and worthwhile trip.

We were able to get out of the vehicles to visit the fish market, which was another step up from most I've visited before (so many sharks, and enormous swordfish), to wander around a secured beach, take a short boat trip, and look at the fishing boats by the remains of the Italian lighthouse.  We also went to the roof of the tallest building in the city (so that one of my fellow travellers could get some good shots of the city from his drone), although passing through a news office on the top floor to get there, I was unable to get the foreign correspondents working there to explain to me why they had a flipchart in the room with the points "I'm a gay" and "Are you gay?" written on it in English.

I would have liked to have been able to interact with more locals - such as the group of women enjoying sitting on the sand with the waves washing over them (all fully covered and veiled, of course) - but even the different perspectives I got from talking to the guides were interesting.  From questions about the motivations of Al Shabab (ideological - ie a stricter version of Islam - according to one local, or just a local version of the mafia there to make money according to a visiting member of the Somali diaspora) to the impact of the recent rapid development of the city (when I asked the guy from the diaspora what the locals thought about them coming back and buying up the land to put up new buildings, he admitted that they were resented - even hated - by those who had stayed on through the civil war), I learned something about the place although was left wanting to hear more.

I was surprised to see no evidence of any Chinese interest there (must be the only country in Africa where they don't appear to have a presence!), but it was interesting to see the other influences, both historic and new.  This ranged from the Italian influence on the cuisine (cappuccinos and lattes, pasta dishes, and superb ice cream), the more prosaic legacy of the UK (from the three-square-pin power sockets to the "UK aid" sign showing that the fish market was constructed with money "from the British people") to the growing Turkish interest in the country (including an enormous, and beautiful, Turkish mosque recently built in the green zone).

Also very interesting was the extent to which the country has taken to mobile (digital) money, so much so that the country is now almost cashless.  It was almost impossible to get change from any purchases we made, and took a great deal of persistence to eventually get myself a Somalian banknote as a souvenir (the largest denomination - 1,000 Somalian shillings - worth 4 US cents on the black market and with a 98% chance of being counterfeit although that doesn't stop people using them as that is all they have).  I was suprised that even the beggars there use mobile money, holding up signs providing their number should you want to send a digital donation their way.

At the end of the trip, our hotel screwed up and failed to provide our airport transfer at the scheduled time, so by the time we got to the airport we were too late for our flight.  We were provided with another night at the hotel, and meals, but as the guide and armed guards were not available we were not able to go out of the hotel.  I have to admit I was quite tempted, as the hotel is in the green zone with multiple checkpoints all around it supposedly keeping it safe, but I followed the instructions and stayed inside, sorting out and uploading my photos.  I realised that I had made the right decision when late in the afternoon I heard several rounds of gunfire from just a couple of blocks away, followed by a circling helicopter and plenty of shouting in the streets; even looking out from my small balcony seemed too dangerous at that stage.