Hot, dusty, and frustrating...sounds good to me.
-Lonely Planet Thorn Tree post
My latest country, Somaliland, is so well off the beaten path that it isn't even a country. Yet.
Somalia as a whole is shaped like a "7," with the Red Sea to the north and east, Djibouti to the NW, Ethiopia to the east, and Kenya to the south. The majority of the country has suffered through varying states of anarchy since 1991 when dictator Siad Barre was over-thrown and replaced by various waring clans. One region of the country though, the northern region of Somaliland, used this opportunity to delcare its indpeendence after having fought for years against the south. It has since turned into a rare success story in the Horn of Africa.
This is where I set off to visit.
Somaliland is at the very top of Somalia. To its east lies another autonomous region, Puntland, and below that lies Somalia-proper. Somalia-proper was governed by regional tribal chiefs until 2006 when the radical "Islamic Court Union" took it over. At this point, Ethiopia, who has never been a fan of Somalia, invaded them to prop up the US-backed central government which in reality governed only parts of a single city. This turned into their own personal Iraq and they finally pulled out, having accomplished nothing, just a couple weeks ago. Puntland, who still recognizes themselves as part of a greater-Somalia, has fared little better. It is off this coast that all of the recent piracy issues have occurred. I'm going nowhere near Puntland because I risk getting shot or, much worse, getting kidnapped and having to explain to the nearest US consulate and my mother (hi Mom!) why I was stupid enough to go there in the first place.
But Somaliland has always thought of itself as something apart. They don't like violence and pride themselves on being an island of calm surrounded by a stormy sea of violence in the Horn. The emblem of the police force here is a type of desert deer which I've seen a couple times, a docile, tasty-looking animal that runs as soon as it sees humans. It isn't an accident, I've been told; indeed, the police are very honest, careful, and courteous. The only real violence that Somaliland has seen recently were a trio of suicide bombings here in October courtesy of some crazies who came up from the South. These bombers were a real shock to a country which otherwise has seen none of the violence that has been the norm in the south.
The country forms a weird juxtaposition between two conflicting beliefs regarding the level of danger to tourists. The first belief, that of backpackers, most locals, businessmen, and actual news reports, is that the country is incredibly safe and poses absolutely no risk. This is the view that I take. The lack of violence here since 1988 is stunning and there is no evidence that foreigners are targeted for any reason. The locals are equally safe. Most everyone is friendly and appears to like Americans . . . or at least those who voted for Barack Obama. People are anxious to appeal to tourists and are naturally extremely friendly and hospitable. When I ask them what they think about me wandering alone they swear to its safety. With all this in mind, I have come to think of this country as far safer than Minnesota.
The second belief is taken by foreign state departments, the Somaliland authorities, aid agencies, and the those with long memories. Hargesia was leveled to the ground in the war for independence in the late 1980s and the affects are still felt. The AK-47, a normal feature of travel in Africa, is a standard here with security forces and you get used to seeing it around. I've been told that there are fantastic weapons bizarres in the east which feature everything from hand guns to anti-aircraft guns. Fortunately, the roads to these towns are closed to foreigners so I won't be checking them out. A little closer to home, my hotel in the capital Hargesia has a picture of a knife, handgun, AK-47, and hang grenade on the front door, all with a red "X" through them. You can imagine how reassuring that is. (The front desk, by the way, also has a no-smoking sign. So, you know, you can't do that either.)
Various state departments, who have a Fox News-like tendency to hyperventilate when it comes to foreigners and violence, warn against travel here, though most I've talked to to dismiss these warnings out of hand. The aid agencies, who I find annoying in this region, pulled out after the bombings and most have yet to come back. Perhaps, however, agencies and foreign governments are simply taking their cue from the Somaliland authorities, whose paranoia makes travel difficult.
The world has refused to recognize Somaliland's independence, so the foreign investment desperately needed here has yet to show up. It's stuck in a sort of international no-man's land and they get almost no visitors. Most tourists get their visas from the Addis Ababa consulate, and when I was there I was the 14th person of the year to have gotten a visa two weeks into January.
The lack of visitors appears to be for three main reasons. First off, the authorities are worried that any visitor getting injured, kidnapped, or killed could derail an international recognition which is potentially is only months away. Consequently, they make it very difficult to go anywhere . . . I've never encountered a country with more red tape. Secondly, there is little infrastructure in place. Finally, many tourists just don't know about Somaliland.
The trip from Harar to Hargesia, the capital of Somaliland, was one of the more excruciating I have ever had. The border crossing, at a dirty, broken town called Wachale, offered up an indication of the depth of the rabbit hole I had fallen into when the security agent opened up my bag for a search and discovered, oh God, my stash of alka selzter. He glossed over the the two 18-inch Afar knives I had in my bag but freaked out over my pills for stomach acid. It might have been okay had he spoken English, but when you're trying to communicate to a Somali-speaker what heartburn is, you run into problems. Eventually I basically shouted at him in frustration "It's for my hang-overs!" and mimicked drinking and then pretended to look ill. He looked at me, laughed, and let me pass no problem. I realized later that he still probably didn't understand what I was talking about - because booze is illegal in Somaliland - but was tired of trying to get a bribe out of me.
Hargesia doesn't act much like a capital city. The tallest buildings are perhaps six stories, and even those don't number more than a dozen. The rest of the city is sprawled out into the desert, colored with endless trash, wandering goats, the typical stalls hawking everything, and the occasional meandering camel. The roads are crazy, and the dust covers everything. It acts more like a frontier town than a capital city.
Upon arriving, I threw my bags in my room and set off into the heart of the city to do my typical first-day exploration for future restaurants, stores, and markets. However, I ran into a problem after less than five minutes when a plain-clothed police officer picked me up and drove me to the nearest police station. I wasn't worried, as I assumed I needed to check in or something, but instead I was brought before the police chief who drilled me for fifteen minutes about my visit. What I a journalist? Was I alone? Why wasn't I traveling with anyone else? How did I get here? Am I sure I'm not a journalist? How long was I going to stay in Hargesia? How long in Somaliland? Am I positive I'm not a journalist??? I fielded these questions as best I could and, for the first time in my trip, passed around a bunch of Obama stickers I brought for this very purpose to the small group of policemen who had gathered in the room.
Eventually, satisfied that I didn't pose a threat, the chief turned extremely friendly and offered a lieutenant to drive me around. I wasn't about to pass up a free ride, so I jumped into a 4X4 with three officers and they took me on a tour of the city, going through the camel market on the outside of town, the goldsmith section, and a number of other rather interested locations. They dropped me off at my hotel warning me not to wander around by myself. I agreed, and then immediately tried to exit through a back door to explore on my own. The same truck was waiting for me.
"Don't go out by yourself," they repeated.
ARGH! I was to learn, in the coming days, that this was standard procedure. It seems that authorities here had a massive over-reaction to the October bombings and decided that to ensure that tourists were kept utterly and completely safe they wouldn't be allowed to do anything. If they had their way, I would never leave the hotel. In the first three days in Hargesia I was picked up a total of five times by police. They quickly began to remind me of the over-protective mother whose son has never kissed a girl, let alone broken a bone.
Soon, after I had doled out a number of Obama stickers and made friends with enough of the policemen, they apparently decided that I was an alright guy so they stuck to giving me lifts when they saw me or just tossing me a friendly wave. Whew.
But then it was on to the regular population. It seems the further east I travel from Addis Ababa, the more of a spectacle I become. My hotel was downtown, away from where the aid workers stay, so I was the only white guy around. In Hargesia, as elsewhere in the country when I walk around, people are positively shocked to see me. Everyone, and I mean that, wants to stop and talk. I guess I hadn't prepared myself for that, but in reality, it's sometimes like swimming against a tidal wave.
Anyone who approaches me initially guesses that I'm German, which to me is like guessing that my favorite food is ketchup or my hero is James Dobson. But when I tell them I'm American, they get really excited and profess a huge love for Obama and America, which a nice change. And when I say I'm a tourist, a lot of people seem to get confused. This seems to be because most foreigners here are 1) Aid workers, 2) Reporters, or 3) Smugglers/gun runners. They get a huge charge out of the fact that I'm just . . . visiting.
Speaking of the third option, I was walking down the street the other day and a guy grabbed me and asked if I was a reporter. I assumed this to be normal conversation starter, but when I said no he brought me into his empty "shop", locked the door, and dumped a small pile of diamonds on the table and asked how much I wanted to pay for them.
"I hate diamonds," was my truthful reply.
"Okay, my friend, then wait one minute," he said, and went into a back room. When he returned, he had a slightly smaller pile of rubies which he placed on the table. "How much you pay for these?"
Stalling, trying to think of a way to get away from this creepy guy, I asked how much one cost.
"No buy one, only buy all!" he insisted.
"Okay, where did you get these?"
"In the desert, I go, and look around, and see them."
"And they're already polished? I think I need to go."
So I left. That being said, however, the other foreigners in my hotel were two Chinese who are also smugglers, so I can always get my hands on some diamonds from them if I change my mind.
Site-wise, as I indicated, there hasn't been much to get excited about. It took me a full day in order to secure a permit to travel to a place called Las Geel, located 40 kilometers outside of town. Las Geel has some neolithic rock paintings that are up to 11,000 years old, some of the oldest in Africa. It was just discovered five years ago in reality is a pretty amazing historical find, though there is a distinct lack of tourists. As it is, I had the entire place to myself to explore, and it was pretty cool. Set in the middle of the desert, it was an entertaining, if slightly underwhelming, tourist stop a country that has no others.
In the short time I've been here, a couple weeks, I've made some genuine friends and have gotten to know a hilariously large amount of the locals. Going out has become a real treat just because everywhere I go I can sit down with someone and have tea with someone while chatting about anything under the sun. Today, drinking some mango juice mixed with milk - a spectacular combination - with a friend, I noticed the only other foreign tourist I had seen so far, a Korean guy, changing money on the other side of the street. My friend and I got a huge charge out of watching him and joined the rest of the street in staring at the poor guy. It was at this moment I realized that I'd gone native.
I arrived in the port city of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, basically the only other tourist town, after a week in Hargesia. And when I say "tourist town," I mean town-where-tourists-might-go, not town-where-tourists-are. As it was, I was the only white person there save for a absolutely fantastic British couple. I think it's more a tourist town for Somalilanders living elsewhere who are back in the country for vacation.
This British couple, Jill and Steve, were staying semi-permanently at a hotel called the Maan-Soor on the outside of town on the beach and are in the process of setting up a dive shop in and around Berbera and marine reserves up the coast to the Djibouti border. They are working with a businessman named Abdulker. Not only does Abdulkaer own the Mann-Soor and two others in Somaliland, but he is amazingly well-connected to the business and political community in the country. As such, he is working closely with Steve and Jill to navigate through the red tape of Somalialnd in order to ensure they succeed in their endeavors.
He is also, along with Steve and Jill, among the friendliest people I have ever met. Every day in Berbera I played a game of cat-and-mouse with the local police (they acted similar to the Hargesia police) and fled town to visit the Maan-Soor and beach. It was only a few kilometres from town to the hotel so after hiking there I would go snokeling or diving with the Steve and Jill (I brought snorkel gear with me and, because they are just setting up shop, they let me dive for free). The beach is fantastic with its beautiful blue-green water, perfect weather, and great marine life. Abdulkaer was always there to offer me fish, lobster, and pasta free of charge for my meals and help me with any questions I had. When the Regional Tourism Minister - a position that doesn't actually exist - showed up with two intelligence officers and tried to give me a hard time and take me for $50, Abdulkaer not only solved this dilemma for me in less than a minute of talking to him but called the Minister of Tourism (whom I had previously had a run-in with), the Information Minister, and the mayor of Berbera to let them know what happened and ensure it would never happen again.
These three also offered friendly and sincere conversation for me in the days I spent in Berbera and I learned a great deal about Somaliland's history and current political situation. Today we even had breakfast with a member of the electoral commission who described their efforts to register the country for the national election in two months. These efforts are stunning.
To fully understand how excited I am about what they're doing, imagine a country where no census exists and no voters have been registered. Then imagine that this country has a terrible infrastructure with horrible roads and little electricity outside of the major towns - which really aren't that "major". And then keep in mind that this country is largely NOMADIC. Think of the shear problems you would have with registering the voters!
But they're doing it here, with less than $20 million. Using electronic fingerprinting, computerized face-recognition, and good old-fashion clan names and family history, the electoral commission has manage to use its 15,000 workers to take not only the first national census but register every eligible voter as well. The USA has had 230 years to get it down and we haven't, but Somaliland's FEDERAL registration effort has turned out to be one of the best in the world in one try. I still can't get over the issue of registering so many nomads, but they have somehow managed to do that. Unbelievable!
Getting Back to Addulkaer, Steve, and Jill, they have also been a lot of help in planning for an upcoming adventure I'm embarking on. I won't be writing again for a number of days, but assuming that my plans go through as planned, I would definitely recommend checking back here in a few weeks because I'm going to attempt something pretty cool.
Cheers to everyone. Keep well!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Ethiopia
The effect was such that I determined always to carry a barrel loaded with shot as the best answer for all those who might object to "Feranji."
-Sir Richard Burton, "First Footsteps in East Africa"
My quest to Sudan was put on hold indefinitely after the USA vetoed the resolution in front of the UN condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. The Sudan Embassy in Cairo apparently decided to start their own little jihad and stop issuing visas to Americans . . . bummer. But it's cool, and instead I went directly to Ethiopia, a country which I fell head-over-heals in love with.
The mountain air or Addis Ababa was a refreshing break from the smog of Cairo and the Sahara dust of Egypt. But the temperature and climate, perfect really, is little compared to the food situation. I think most people who would actually read my blog realize this, but for anyone who might not know - my food intake in the USA is never limited by appetite but instead by cost. Here, everything is so ridiculously cheap that I hardly know what to do with myself. And after a steady diet of falafels and koshery, massive amounts of Ethiopian food is a gift from God.
Those who have ever hung out around Cedar/Riverside in Minneapolis know what I mean. Ethiopians know EXACTLY what they're doing with their cuisine, and while it's maybe ten dollars for a plate in Minnesota, it's a dollar and a half here. Not only that, but a 30 year occupation by the Italians a century ago means that they left behind pasta for Ethiopians to put on their menus, something that comes as a blessed relief to me after having pasta maybe four times in the first six weeks of my trip - basically a starvation diet. I was so enthused when I first saw spaghetti on the menu of a restaurant for one dollar that I ordered four plates, but after the look I got from the waitress quickly decided to order two plates and then just go to another restaurant.
Anyway, it's just a good place. Addis Ababa still has that same general group of people who give me dirty looks and shout "Ferangi!" ("Stranger/White person") at me and a smaller subset who try their various tactics to get money out of the stupid tourist, but they're far less annoying than up north. Those aside, most everyone else is at least moderately friendly.
Instead of traveling the popular northern circuit, I decided to head east towards the Somali border. There were a number of cities I had read about and wanted to visit. Chief amongst these was Harar, a city that has always been a spot of mystery to me.
Harar for years was an important city in the slave trade for caravans heading east. It was impossible for white people to enter it without getting their heads loped off, but in 1885 Sir Richard Francis Burton made his historic run from the Red Sea city of Zayla across the desert to Harar and entered under the guise of a Turk, thus becoming describing for the first time to outsiders this "impenetrable" city.
Okay, I have so stop here for something: I'm going to write a lot about Harar for a number of reasons, but one of them is because I LOVE Burton. One of few among the great European explorers, Burton had an endearing tendency to understate rather than exaggerate the perils he faced in his various travels. This is in stark contrast to, for instance, his famous contemporary Henry Morton Stanley, whose writings are excruciating because they read more like science fiction than reality. Stanley and too many others appear to view exploration as something to be undertaken with giant caravans of porters and servants and saw no problem with killing or kidnapping inhabitants of villages they came across in order to keep up their food supply. "Exploration" for him was done in the name of fame and was carried out in the name of destruction. (I'll leave it at that, though I'll most likely complain more about Stanley when I get to my Central Africa posts.)
Burton, on the other hand, had first made a name for himself by writing about his travels to Mecca. To do so, he spent seven year learning Arabic, studying Islam, and immersing himself in the Indian-Muslim culture. Only then did he go on his pilgrimage to Mecaa, one of the first infidels to do so and certainly the most famous. Later, after returning from Harar, he traveled with John Speke in search of the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Tangyanika. Burton was forced to stay here, ill, while Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria and the true source of the Nile, a feat which had previously eluded countless searches.
His writings display a large amount of wit, prescience, and subtlety that make them a real pleasure to read. Besides a fair amount of humorous fatalism that should be present for any travelers attempting travel in the Horn of Africa ("The next morning, all the villagers assembled . . . consoling us with the information that we were dead men."), he throws in the occasional philosophical comment ("What hath man but a single life? And he who throweth it away, what is he but a fool?"). He predicts well the consequences of what was to happen when the spear was to be replaced by the gun in Somalia and cautions others against rushing in a foolhardy manner towards his exploits. Altogether he is a calm, rational, and extremely entertaining writer. And he is what made me love Harar. Luckily, though Harar is a twelve hour bus ride from Addis Ababa, it's on the way to Somaliland, so it fit perfectly into my schedule.
In Paul Thoreau's cross-continent "Dark Star Sarfari", he described Hararis in rather negative terms, spitefully shouting "Ferangi!" at him from every doorway and hurling the occasional rock at the white intruder. In reality, however, I suspect that the locals simply had an inkling of who he was and wanted to give him his come-upings. I found Harar to be, hand's down, the friendliest city I have ever in my life been to. Nothing compares. Yes, it seemed that nearly everyone did yell "ferangi" after me, but it was always in playful, welcoming tone. Depending on the age and gender, it could even be a little shy.
Little kids, those who weren't scared of me at least, were constantly running up to me and shaking my hands and asking me questions. I couldn't sit down in public without being invited it to someone's home to relax, drink something, and, "if I was at all interested", chew some chat. I always accepted because Hararis appear to have perfected the art of relaxation with a room separate from the house about 10x8 feet, no lights, comfortable cushions, a hookah, stereo, and sometimes a tv. The men typically hang out here in the afternoon. Having done this one three different afternoons, I can tell you that it can't be beat.
Given its place in history and the wonderful ambiance surrounding it, I expected more tourists, but was pleased to have large swaths of the city to myself. And gosh, if there is a city to walk around in, it was that one. The women, as typical of Ethiopians, are beautiful. My first day a women, stunning even by local standards, walked up to me and said in halting English "I think you . . . are very handsome!" before turning and running away. Stunned, I manage to call after her "You're beautiful, too," which she acknowledged by turning her head and shyly grinning. This theme was to be repeated more times in the days I spent in Harar and made me wonder just what exactly was going on until I asked a local guy. He laughed and said "Ferangis have money. It doesn't matter if you're good-looking or not, they want to marry you. They do it all white people." That explained it well enough, but still, I was flattered.
A great travel experience in Harar is to visit the "Hyena Man", who sits outside the city walls each night at sunset and feeds a pack of wild hyenas who come to him. He calls them all by name and they come up to him individually and take food from his hand and from a stick he holds from his mouth. It was so entertaining watching him that I momentarily lost myself and asked him if I could do the same thing. He laughed and said "Sure!" So I was able to feed the hyenas both from my hands and from my mouth which, though perhaps less-than-sanitary, was a hell of an experience.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Harar and the cities around it, namely Jijiga and Dire Dawa, are regionally famous for growing chat. Chat is a mild narcotic consumed in the horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula that is wildly popular with the locals. It's waxy look implies a painful death along the lines of "Into the Wild" rather than any sort of high, but those who chew seem to survive and swear that it produces a mild euphoria, loss of appetite, hyperactivity, and the occasional white rabbit. Tourists almost universally disagree with this and say that it produces no effect, though given how popular chat is with people living on the Horn, I'd say that the tourists have to be doing something wrong.
Chat is illegal in the United States under our completely rational and wildly succesful national drug policy, but the large Somali/Ethiopian/Eritrean population in Minnesota has wisely decided to give the finger to the DEA and has devised an ingenious method of getting the freshly-picked chat from the Ethiopian fields, onto planes, across the Atlantic and into Minnesota in less than 24 hours before it loses its chemical properties. They then distribute it via reliable cab drivers to a grateful population.
I spent some more time in the surrounding towns, but nothing terribly notable happened, so I'll leave my post at that for now.
I'll be back in Ethiopia in a couple weeks to explore some of the south on my way to Kenya. For now I'm doing some trail-blazing here for a couple weeks, so wish me luck.
-Sir Richard Burton, "First Footsteps in East Africa"
My quest to Sudan was put on hold indefinitely after the USA vetoed the resolution in front of the UN condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. The Sudan Embassy in Cairo apparently decided to start their own little jihad and stop issuing visas to Americans . . . bummer. But it's cool, and instead I went directly to Ethiopia, a country which I fell head-over-heals in love with.
The mountain air or Addis Ababa was a refreshing break from the smog of Cairo and the Sahara dust of Egypt. But the temperature and climate, perfect really, is little compared to the food situation. I think most people who would actually read my blog realize this, but for anyone who might not know - my food intake in the USA is never limited by appetite but instead by cost. Here, everything is so ridiculously cheap that I hardly know what to do with myself. And after a steady diet of falafels and koshery, massive amounts of Ethiopian food is a gift from God.
Those who have ever hung out around Cedar/Riverside in Minneapolis know what I mean. Ethiopians know EXACTLY what they're doing with their cuisine, and while it's maybe ten dollars for a plate in Minnesota, it's a dollar and a half here. Not only that, but a 30 year occupation by the Italians a century ago means that they left behind pasta for Ethiopians to put on their menus, something that comes as a blessed relief to me after having pasta maybe four times in the first six weeks of my trip - basically a starvation diet. I was so enthused when I first saw spaghetti on the menu of a restaurant for one dollar that I ordered four plates, but after the look I got from the waitress quickly decided to order two plates and then just go to another restaurant.
Anyway, it's just a good place. Addis Ababa still has that same general group of people who give me dirty looks and shout "Ferangi!" ("Stranger/White person") at me and a smaller subset who try their various tactics to get money out of the stupid tourist, but they're far less annoying than up north. Those aside, most everyone else is at least moderately friendly.
Instead of traveling the popular northern circuit, I decided to head east towards the Somali border. There were a number of cities I had read about and wanted to visit. Chief amongst these was Harar, a city that has always been a spot of mystery to me.
Harar for years was an important city in the slave trade for caravans heading east. It was impossible for white people to enter it without getting their heads loped off, but in 1885 Sir Richard Francis Burton made his historic run from the Red Sea city of Zayla across the desert to Harar and entered under the guise of a Turk, thus becoming describing for the first time to outsiders this "impenetrable" city.
Okay, I have so stop here for something: I'm going to write a lot about Harar for a number of reasons, but one of them is because I LOVE Burton. One of few among the great European explorers, Burton had an endearing tendency to understate rather than exaggerate the perils he faced in his various travels. This is in stark contrast to, for instance, his famous contemporary Henry Morton Stanley, whose writings are excruciating because they read more like science fiction than reality. Stanley and too many others appear to view exploration as something to be undertaken with giant caravans of porters and servants and saw no problem with killing or kidnapping inhabitants of villages they came across in order to keep up their food supply. "Exploration" for him was done in the name of fame and was carried out in the name of destruction. (I'll leave it at that, though I'll most likely complain more about Stanley when I get to my Central Africa posts.)
Burton, on the other hand, had first made a name for himself by writing about his travels to Mecca. To do so, he spent seven year learning Arabic, studying Islam, and immersing himself in the Indian-Muslim culture. Only then did he go on his pilgrimage to Mecaa, one of the first infidels to do so and certainly the most famous. Later, after returning from Harar, he traveled with John Speke in search of the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Tangyanika. Burton was forced to stay here, ill, while Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria and the true source of the Nile, a feat which had previously eluded countless searches.
His writings display a large amount of wit, prescience, and subtlety that make them a real pleasure to read. Besides a fair amount of humorous fatalism that should be present for any travelers attempting travel in the Horn of Africa ("The next morning, all the villagers assembled . . . consoling us with the information that we were dead men."), he throws in the occasional philosophical comment ("What hath man but a single life? And he who throweth it away, what is he but a fool?"). He predicts well the consequences of what was to happen when the spear was to be replaced by the gun in Somalia and cautions others against rushing in a foolhardy manner towards his exploits. Altogether he is a calm, rational, and extremely entertaining writer. And he is what made me love Harar. Luckily, though Harar is a twelve hour bus ride from Addis Ababa, it's on the way to Somaliland, so it fit perfectly into my schedule.
In Paul Thoreau's cross-continent "Dark Star Sarfari", he described Hararis in rather negative terms, spitefully shouting "Ferangi!" at him from every doorway and hurling the occasional rock at the white intruder. In reality, however, I suspect that the locals simply had an inkling of who he was and wanted to give him his come-upings. I found Harar to be, hand's down, the friendliest city I have ever in my life been to. Nothing compares. Yes, it seemed that nearly everyone did yell "ferangi" after me, but it was always in playful, welcoming tone. Depending on the age and gender, it could even be a little shy.
Little kids, those who weren't scared of me at least, were constantly running up to me and shaking my hands and asking me questions. I couldn't sit down in public without being invited it to someone's home to relax, drink something, and, "if I was at all interested", chew some chat. I always accepted because Hararis appear to have perfected the art of relaxation with a room separate from the house about 10x8 feet, no lights, comfortable cushions, a hookah, stereo, and sometimes a tv. The men typically hang out here in the afternoon. Having done this one three different afternoons, I can tell you that it can't be beat.
Given its place in history and the wonderful ambiance surrounding it, I expected more tourists, but was pleased to have large swaths of the city to myself. And gosh, if there is a city to walk around in, it was that one. The women, as typical of Ethiopians, are beautiful. My first day a women, stunning even by local standards, walked up to me and said in halting English "I think you . . . are very handsome!" before turning and running away. Stunned, I manage to call after her "You're beautiful, too," which she acknowledged by turning her head and shyly grinning. This theme was to be repeated more times in the days I spent in Harar and made me wonder just what exactly was going on until I asked a local guy. He laughed and said "Ferangis have money. It doesn't matter if you're good-looking or not, they want to marry you. They do it all white people." That explained it well enough, but still, I was flattered.
A great travel experience in Harar is to visit the "Hyena Man", who sits outside the city walls each night at sunset and feeds a pack of wild hyenas who come to him. He calls them all by name and they come up to him individually and take food from his hand and from a stick he holds from his mouth. It was so entertaining watching him that I momentarily lost myself and asked him if I could do the same thing. He laughed and said "Sure!" So I was able to feed the hyenas both from my hands and from my mouth which, though perhaps less-than-sanitary, was a hell of an experience.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Harar and the cities around it, namely Jijiga and Dire Dawa, are regionally famous for growing chat. Chat is a mild narcotic consumed in the horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula that is wildly popular with the locals. It's waxy look implies a painful death along the lines of "Into the Wild" rather than any sort of high, but those who chew seem to survive and swear that it produces a mild euphoria, loss of appetite, hyperactivity, and the occasional white rabbit. Tourists almost universally disagree with this and say that it produces no effect, though given how popular chat is with people living on the Horn, I'd say that the tourists have to be doing something wrong.
Chat is illegal in the United States under our completely rational and wildly succesful national drug policy, but the large Somali/Ethiopian/Eritrean population in Minnesota has wisely decided to give the finger to the DEA and has devised an ingenious method of getting the freshly-picked chat from the Ethiopian fields, onto planes, across the Atlantic and into Minnesota in less than 24 hours before it loses its chemical properties. They then distribute it via reliable cab drivers to a grateful population.
I spent some more time in the surrounding towns, but nothing terribly notable happened, so I'll leave my post at that for now.
I'll be back in Ethiopia in a couple weeks to explore some of the south on my way to Kenya. For now I'm doing some trail-blazing here for a couple weeks, so wish me luck.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Israel/Palestinian Territorries, Wildlife Edition
I forgot to put this in my last post -
It was commented by someone I worked with on the Vote Yes campaign that I have yet to mention wildlife in my posts. That is primarily because I have yet to see much. While in the White Desert outside of Bahariyya I did manage to see a desert fox outside of our camp site one night. That was particularly cool because they are typically difficult to spot, and also because those of you who knew me back in middle school know that I was a World War II nut and read everything I could get my hands on about it. My favorite generals to read about was Erwin Rommel. Nicknamed, of course, the Desert Fox. Sweet.
Anyway, the following information was included in her email about wildlife in the areas I've been to - "So... There are wolves in Gaza and northern Israel and they need to multiply."
Nancy, feel free to, you know, expand on that if you'd like. ; )
It was commented by someone I worked with on the Vote Yes campaign that I have yet to mention wildlife in my posts. That is primarily because I have yet to see much. While in the White Desert outside of Bahariyya I did manage to see a desert fox outside of our camp site one night. That was particularly cool because they are typically difficult to spot, and also because those of you who knew me back in middle school know that I was a World War II nut and read everything I could get my hands on about it. My favorite generals to read about was Erwin Rommel. Nicknamed, of course, the Desert Fox. Sweet.
Anyway, the following information was included in her email about wildlife in the areas I've been to - "So... There are wolves in Gaza and northern Israel and they need to multiply."
Nancy, feel free to, you know, expand on that if you'd like. ; )
Friday, January 2, 2009
Israel/Palestinian Territories, Part II
One day in Jerusalem I was wandering through the Old City when I ran into a small crowd of people blocking the passageway through. They were watching a shop television that was pointed outward.
Al-Jazeera was showing live images of a large group of men, policemen I think, who had been killed in a town square. The camera crew had arrived before the ambulances, and they took sweeping shots of the square full of dead, perhaps twenty mangled bodies. I asked a Palestinian where it was. "Gaza," he said. "Forty are dead so far."
I continued on, very concerned. The Israeli/Palestinian cease-fire of six months had just ended days before, and nobody had known what was going to happen. Militants had been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel with increasing frequency, and some sort of action by the Israelis was largely expected. But this was beyond what most had thought. Every shop that had a television or radio tuned in to the coverage, and within minutes it seemed all in the Old City knew.
This is probably why people were so easy to get spooked a few minutes later as was I continuing on through the densely packed alley. The crowd of people suddenly stopped its typical walking pattern and started started stampeding towards me, yelling in different languages. I looked ahead and saw smoke. Someone yelled a questioning "Bomb???" in English, which seemed to excite everyone even more. The shopkeepers all quickly threw their wares into their tiny shop and closing the steel doors are fast as possible, but it seemed more to protect it from the smoke than anything else. I tell you, that place cleared out FAST.
Logically, I thought, if I hadn't heard a "boom" and there was already smoke, it couldn't be a bomb, so I just kind of stood there with a small group of people and after a minute walked tentatively ahead. Sure enough, we saw a decent size grease fire in the middle of the walkway ahead. So we all grabbed some rags by the garbage and threw them on top of the fire, putting it out quickly.
(The shops, it turned out, didn't re-open. In fact, the rest of the Old City shut down soon after in solidarity with the people of Gaza.)
Still, if that didn't worry me, my next stop did. I needed to go to Bethlehem to check on my stolen wallet from New Year's Eve. I faced this with a small amount of apprehension because of its location just within the walls of the West Bank, but I decided to take my chances anyway.
I jumped on a slow-moving bus from Jerusalem and made my way back to the Church of Nativity where the tourism police were. They hadn't found anything from my wallet of course, but they had al-Jazeera on and I saw that the death toll had now climbed to 150. The policeman, who spoke good English, saw that I was watching and asked me a few questions about what I thought about the whole thing. I was as ambiguous as possible because, really, it isn't my place at all to get involved here. But eventually we got into a long conversation about the whole mess.
It turns out that he had been in the same building, just yards away from the Church of Nativity, a couple years before when the Church it had been taken over by militants and besieged by the Israelis. He expressed more a sense of bewilderment towards Israel's policies ("What are they trying to accomplish in the end in Gaza? And what in the West Bank?") and the USA's stance ("I just don't understand why they don't seem to care about us") than anything else. This impression has largely been matched by most Palestinians, both before and after the strike, with whom I've talked to. Anger, yes, but more confusion than anything else. And a why-are-they-doing-this-to-us mentality combined with, let's be honest, a strong anti-Semitic streak, makes for a pretty explosive potential here.
While the average shopkeeper might simply want to make a living to support his family, a number of people wish horrible things on Israelis. It doesn't take many people to set off a rocket or detonate a bomb, and with Hamas in charge of Gaza and locked in a power struggle with Fatah for the West Bank, there's no telling what they'll do next. Hamas doesn't recognize Israeli's right to exist and their stated mission is to destroy it, so its natural for Israel to be hostile towards them. Furthermore, Israel's history with all of it's neighbors leaves much to be desired, and its understandable why the two sides don't trust each other.
But if the military ends up destroying Hamas with this incursion, then it has cut off the only leadership Gaza really has. What next? Who takes control? If they fail and Hamas stays in control, then Israel will have presumably strengthened Hamas in front of the entire world - especially those with al-Jazeera on 24/7. After the Lebanese War, Hezbollah was actually empowered. Does Israel truly think the same thing won't happen to Hamas?
So, basically, it seems to me kind of a waiting game with no possible good ending. I don't know.
Anyway, when I was done at the police station I wanted to walk back to the checkpoint to get through the wall and out of the West Bank. I wanted to talk to some more Palestinians about what was happening. The amount of solidarity they expressed for Gaza was impressive, and their attitude towards me in general was perhaps the first time I've ever felt genuine hostility because of my nationality. Individuals have expressed it before, but it's almost always directed towards my government. Rarely the population as a whole. Here I got a strong sense of "You guys, your government, everyone over there, are evil. Burn in hell."
Eventually I came to the wall that surrounds the West Bank.
The wall is just horrible. It's a giant grey monstrosity, ineffective at its purpose, and significant beyond anything else as a tangible sign of oppression for the Palestinians of the Israelis. Protesting slogans of resistance, peace, love, hate, anti-US, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, atheism, anarchy, socialism, and every other stripe cover the bottom portion of it - a poignant and sobering message to a world which, as far as the Palestinians believe, seems not to care about their plight. I followed it a while, simultaneously reading it and hating it. At one juncture, right below an Israeli-manned observation tower, a rock landed some meters away from me.
Not having noticed anyone around me, I took a quick glance around; no one. But then another one landed, and another. Finally, a distance away, I saw a group of twenty or so teenage and 20-something men launching an entire volley. Their body language didn't seem to indicate hostility towards me. But while their target appeared to be the Israeli-manned observation post above me, they knew I was there and didn't seem to care if they hit me. So I decided to get out real quick.
My position was between the wall, which created an angle with an adjacent building that made it impossible for me to continue, and the rock throwers, who were hiding behind a tree and a cement wall. Because I had backed myself into a literal corner and because they seemed to be concentrating on the post, I trotted to the other side of the street away from the rocks and walked up the road towards them to get away from them.
The Palestinians showed anxiety in their actions, as they were careful not to remain exposed for long when throwing. They would run out from behind a cement wall, hurl the fist-size rocks, and then run behind a large juniper that was near the wall. After a moment of rest the group would scamper back to the wall for more rocks. Then they all jumped out and start hurling rocks again. Evidently these guys had past memories from throwing rocks and didn't wish to be shot at or detained at a later time.
This, I found out later, was only a small example of many larger protests and riots that were already cropping up all around the West Bank. But all I wanted to do was get out of there, so I hugged the opposite wall from where the throwers were and started up the street. I waited until they had just thrown a volley and then passed by them on my way to a taxi that was just ahead of me. As I was starting to jog towards it I heard a crack behind me as a stone hit a brick store I was near. When I turned around, a half dozen of them were pointing at me and picking up stones. They threw a volley my way but I was mostly out of range by that time and the taxi driver casually opened the door for me and then yelled something toward the stone throwers.
I jumped into the taxi and asked the driver what he said. "Don't hit my car," he replied with a grin.
He brought me to the checkpoint saying "You probably shouldn't be around the West Bank by yourself any more over the next few days." He paused. "Sorry about the rocks."
My planned expedition for the say into Hebron, deeper within the West Bank, was obviously out of the question now, so I retired to my hostel for the night.
The next say I decided to exit Israel. There wasn't any danger to me that wasn't there before, but it was time for me to leave anyway. Luckily I made the Egyptian border in decent time and went back into Cairo, entering the city for, incredibly, the 5th time in as many weeks.
As I write this, the death toll in Gaza has passed 400. As it was, the first day saw 200 deaths in the largest Palestinian single-day toll since the war in 1967. It doesn't matter that 75% of the deaths are members of Hamas - al Jazeera isn't mentioning that part when they show results of the strikes. But even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference. Hamas is largely admired and respected in the Arab world, and to them this is like Israel trying to take out out a foreign government.
I'm hearing that the West Bank has had numerous protest - two rioters were killed the other day and many other injured. Lebanese have attacked their Egyptian embassy, blaming the government here for encouraging the attacks. Ditto in Yemen. Al-Jazeera has been covering the campaign pretty much non-stop and the Arab world is just pissed as hell. Here in Cairo there are marches and popular demonstrations against the the Egyptian government and Israel. Basically, this is just a tense time right now, and though I feel just fine with being in Egypt, it's yet another reason for me to want to get out of here.
Al-Jazeera was showing live images of a large group of men, policemen I think, who had been killed in a town square. The camera crew had arrived before the ambulances, and they took sweeping shots of the square full of dead, perhaps twenty mangled bodies. I asked a Palestinian where it was. "Gaza," he said. "Forty are dead so far."
I continued on, very concerned. The Israeli/Palestinian cease-fire of six months had just ended days before, and nobody had known what was going to happen. Militants had been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel with increasing frequency, and some sort of action by the Israelis was largely expected. But this was beyond what most had thought. Every shop that had a television or radio tuned in to the coverage, and within minutes it seemed all in the Old City knew.
This is probably why people were so easy to get spooked a few minutes later as was I continuing on through the densely packed alley. The crowd of people suddenly stopped its typical walking pattern and started started stampeding towards me, yelling in different languages. I looked ahead and saw smoke. Someone yelled a questioning "Bomb???" in English, which seemed to excite everyone even more. The shopkeepers all quickly threw their wares into their tiny shop and closing the steel doors are fast as possible, but it seemed more to protect it from the smoke than anything else. I tell you, that place cleared out FAST.
Logically, I thought, if I hadn't heard a "boom" and there was already smoke, it couldn't be a bomb, so I just kind of stood there with a small group of people and after a minute walked tentatively ahead. Sure enough, we saw a decent size grease fire in the middle of the walkway ahead. So we all grabbed some rags by the garbage and threw them on top of the fire, putting it out quickly.
(The shops, it turned out, didn't re-open. In fact, the rest of the Old City shut down soon after in solidarity with the people of Gaza.)
Still, if that didn't worry me, my next stop did. I needed to go to Bethlehem to check on my stolen wallet from New Year's Eve. I faced this with a small amount of apprehension because of its location just within the walls of the West Bank, but I decided to take my chances anyway.
I jumped on a slow-moving bus from Jerusalem and made my way back to the Church of Nativity where the tourism police were. They hadn't found anything from my wallet of course, but they had al-Jazeera on and I saw that the death toll had now climbed to 150. The policeman, who spoke good English, saw that I was watching and asked me a few questions about what I thought about the whole thing. I was as ambiguous as possible because, really, it isn't my place at all to get involved here. But eventually we got into a long conversation about the whole mess.
It turns out that he had been in the same building, just yards away from the Church of Nativity, a couple years before when the Church it had been taken over by militants and besieged by the Israelis. He expressed more a sense of bewilderment towards Israel's policies ("What are they trying to accomplish in the end in Gaza? And what in the West Bank?") and the USA's stance ("I just don't understand why they don't seem to care about us") than anything else. This impression has largely been matched by most Palestinians, both before and after the strike, with whom I've talked to. Anger, yes, but more confusion than anything else. And a why-are-they-doing-this-to-us mentality combined with, let's be honest, a strong anti-Semitic streak, makes for a pretty explosive potential here.
While the average shopkeeper might simply want to make a living to support his family, a number of people wish horrible things on Israelis. It doesn't take many people to set off a rocket or detonate a bomb, and with Hamas in charge of Gaza and locked in a power struggle with Fatah for the West Bank, there's no telling what they'll do next. Hamas doesn't recognize Israeli's right to exist and their stated mission is to destroy it, so its natural for Israel to be hostile towards them. Furthermore, Israel's history with all of it's neighbors leaves much to be desired, and its understandable why the two sides don't trust each other.
But if the military ends up destroying Hamas with this incursion, then it has cut off the only leadership Gaza really has. What next? Who takes control? If they fail and Hamas stays in control, then Israel will have presumably strengthened Hamas in front of the entire world - especially those with al-Jazeera on 24/7. After the Lebanese War, Hezbollah was actually empowered. Does Israel truly think the same thing won't happen to Hamas?
So, basically, it seems to me kind of a waiting game with no possible good ending. I don't know.
Anyway, when I was done at the police station I wanted to walk back to the checkpoint to get through the wall and out of the West Bank. I wanted to talk to some more Palestinians about what was happening. The amount of solidarity they expressed for Gaza was impressive, and their attitude towards me in general was perhaps the first time I've ever felt genuine hostility because of my nationality. Individuals have expressed it before, but it's almost always directed towards my government. Rarely the population as a whole. Here I got a strong sense of "You guys, your government, everyone over there, are evil. Burn in hell."
Eventually I came to the wall that surrounds the West Bank.
The wall is just horrible. It's a giant grey monstrosity, ineffective at its purpose, and significant beyond anything else as a tangible sign of oppression for the Palestinians of the Israelis. Protesting slogans of resistance, peace, love, hate, anti-US, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, atheism, anarchy, socialism, and every other stripe cover the bottom portion of it - a poignant and sobering message to a world which, as far as the Palestinians believe, seems not to care about their plight. I followed it a while, simultaneously reading it and hating it. At one juncture, right below an Israeli-manned observation tower, a rock landed some meters away from me.
Not having noticed anyone around me, I took a quick glance around; no one. But then another one landed, and another. Finally, a distance away, I saw a group of twenty or so teenage and 20-something men launching an entire volley. Their body language didn't seem to indicate hostility towards me. But while their target appeared to be the Israeli-manned observation post above me, they knew I was there and didn't seem to care if they hit me. So I decided to get out real quick.
My position was between the wall, which created an angle with an adjacent building that made it impossible for me to continue, and the rock throwers, who were hiding behind a tree and a cement wall. Because I had backed myself into a literal corner and because they seemed to be concentrating on the post, I trotted to the other side of the street away from the rocks and walked up the road towards them to get away from them.
The Palestinians showed anxiety in their actions, as they were careful not to remain exposed for long when throwing. They would run out from behind a cement wall, hurl the fist-size rocks, and then run behind a large juniper that was near the wall. After a moment of rest the group would scamper back to the wall for more rocks. Then they all jumped out and start hurling rocks again. Evidently these guys had past memories from throwing rocks and didn't wish to be shot at or detained at a later time.
This, I found out later, was only a small example of many larger protests and riots that were already cropping up all around the West Bank. But all I wanted to do was get out of there, so I hugged the opposite wall from where the throwers were and started up the street. I waited until they had just thrown a volley and then passed by them on my way to a taxi that was just ahead of me. As I was starting to jog towards it I heard a crack behind me as a stone hit a brick store I was near. When I turned around, a half dozen of them were pointing at me and picking up stones. They threw a volley my way but I was mostly out of range by that time and the taxi driver casually opened the door for me and then yelled something toward the stone throwers.
I jumped into the taxi and asked the driver what he said. "Don't hit my car," he replied with a grin.
He brought me to the checkpoint saying "You probably shouldn't be around the West Bank by yourself any more over the next few days." He paused. "Sorry about the rocks."
My planned expedition for the say into Hebron, deeper within the West Bank, was obviously out of the question now, so I retired to my hostel for the night.
The next say I decided to exit Israel. There wasn't any danger to me that wasn't there before, but it was time for me to leave anyway. Luckily I made the Egyptian border in decent time and went back into Cairo, entering the city for, incredibly, the 5th time in as many weeks.
As I write this, the death toll in Gaza has passed 400. As it was, the first day saw 200 deaths in the largest Palestinian single-day toll since the war in 1967. It doesn't matter that 75% of the deaths are members of Hamas - al Jazeera isn't mentioning that part when they show results of the strikes. But even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference. Hamas is largely admired and respected in the Arab world, and to them this is like Israel trying to take out out a foreign government.
I'm hearing that the West Bank has had numerous protest - two rioters were killed the other day and many other injured. Lebanese have attacked their Egyptian embassy, blaming the government here for encouraging the attacks. Ditto in Yemen. Al-Jazeera has been covering the campaign pretty much non-stop and the Arab world is just pissed as hell. Here in Cairo there are marches and popular demonstrations against the the Egyptian government and Israel. Basically, this is just a tense time right now, and though I feel just fine with being in Egypt, it's yet another reason for me to want to get out of here.
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