Africa Askew Read online

  Bosaso looks like a typical Somali town, with whitewashed low houses, and a few minarets stretching up above the roofs. Amongst the buildings there’s a lot of sand, and those areas which form both the town’s jungles and its wastelands immediately take over anywhere that houses have not yet been built.

  Somali’s civil war meant that many people had to leave regions in which their clan was not in the majority. This led to refugee camps springing up in all Somali towns. The nomads, too, move in from the surrounding area if the rains are late or if they believe that they may get along better in the town, and they build their dwellings from the waste of civilisation.

  In one such jungle of pickets, branches, cardboard boxes, rags, blankets, clay bricks and vehicle scraps just at my feet, a woman was having her morning shower. As is so often the case in Africa, the bathroom had no ceiling, and the woman hid herself in the corner, so that nosy observers on the hotel terrace could only see the water jug and her outstretched arm. And just another twenty steps away, a man was relieving himself in a semicircle of scrap lorry parts.

  For Ioan M. Lewis, perhaps the most competent observer of Somali, the post-civil war country resembles that of the 19th century. He wrote of “spears replaced by Kalashnikovs and Bazookas”, and of how “foreigners could only enter or cross the clan regions with permission from the natives, usually following an appropriate payment for ‘security’”.

  One of the best-known travellers to visit Somalia in the 19th century was the British Orientalist Sir Richard Burton. He was the first Christian to visit the “Forbidden City” of Harar and to return safely. The most important person for Burton in the Somali regions was his “Abban” – guide, trustee, guardian and translator in one. He needed a new “Abban” for each different clan area. The Abban introduced Burton to the traditional leaders, and carried out all the transactions for his caravan. He earned a few percent commission on each purchase and sale made. If Burton had selected a bad Abban, he would have been ripped off terribly.

  The autonomous region of Puntland and its largest city, Bosaso, had, however, left the 19th century behind. There was a police force and an administration – well, the Governor of Bosaso had an office at least – and the Kalashnikovs had disappeared from the streets.

  You also only rarely heard shots. I once heard a couple of volleys at night, and an isolated one during an afternoon. You couldn’t tell who had fired the shots and why. At dinner, however, Garibaldi and the aid organisation employees didn’t seem concerned about it, so neither was I. To sum it up, I wouldn’t need guards for my journey to the easternmost point, and rather than looking for an Abban, I needed to look for a translator who spoke good English.

  At that time, however, this change in Puntland wasn’t widely known about. When Mohamoud Askar introduced himself as an “infrastructure mediator” I immediately realised that this is exactly what an Abban would be known as today, if this venerable role still existed. Askar’s price was thoroughly modern too. He wanted around £40 per day in return for providing his own infrastructure.

  Askar rented out his SUV to the aid organisation. And he wanted to charge me half a day’s rent for a second car, which he’d had ready at the hotel without asking me, when I was travelling back from the airport in a car provided by the aid workers.

  So I had been warned, but I still wasn’t prepared for the candidates he suggested as translators. The young man had already worked for aid organisations, and wanted a meal allowance, an overnight accommodation allowance and, in the end, would have earned more than I would have for a job for a daily newspaper. Much more, in fact.

  I found Nuredin via an Italian aid organisation. He, too, had worked for two years as an aid worker in a refugee camp in north eastern Kenya, but he was demanding a more modest salary. He was in his early 30s, a trained nurse, and with his beard and finely chiselled profile he reminded me of a figure from an ancient Sumerian relief. He was hoping to soon complete his medical studies abroad, once he’d got enough money together.

  Nuredin and I went for a coffee that afternoon. The café was empty, but after a while a man came in and sat down at the next door table. It seemed that he hadn’t seen many white people before. For over five minutes he followed my every move, spellbound, studied my facial expression, and it seemed he would never tire of watching. Giving him a nasty glare made absolutely no difference. He simply continued staring at me. At one point I pushed my chair back, in order to hide behind Nuredin. But I couldn’t shake him off that easily. He moved his chair forwards, in order to continue gawping at me, unimpeded.

  The Somalis living in Kenya are known as “Sijuis” by those in Somalia. This means that they are wimps – or, at the very least, not true Somalis. It was experiences like this, however, which made me purposely look for a Sijui as a translator.

  Nuredin had never before been to Cape Hafun, the easternmost point. But I believed that I knew people like him from Nairobi – where young Somalis are sent because there are no secondary schools in their homeland, so they go to relatives in Eastleigh, the district of Nairobi which is primarily home to Somalis.

  Nuredin had, in fact, studied in the Kenyan capital for a while. We talked about the matatus – the minibuses known in Nairobi for their breakneck driving style. He knew the line numbers, and the street names. He seemed to enjoy thinking back to this. And I trusted him. That was the decisive factor.

  It was important to have someone with me who I could rely on for the journey to the easternmost point. Someone who wasn’t there just for the money. After all, I didn’t know what we would encounter on our journey to Hafun.

  Abdullahi, on the other hand, had already been to Cape Hafun. This was probably why our Abban, Mohamoud Askar, had chosen him to drive our SUV.

  Abdullahi looked odd. He was so thin that his clothes flapped around him as though he were a scarecrow. And he wore an extra pair of tracksuit bottoms under his trousers. His hands were as long and thin as bird’s talons, and his slightly protruding incisors and high cheekbones gave his face a sneer, so he seemed to be laughing at you even when he was being serious.

  Despite his age – he said he was twenty-seven – his hair was already thinning at the front. He had a lit cigarette in his mouth almost constantly. And he always hid his eyes behind dark, metal-framed sunglasses, like those so often worn by policemen in bad Hollywood films.

  Before we could set off on our journey to Hafun in the morning, however, we first had to get some local currency. There are no banks in Somali towns. Their duties are taken on by money-changers at the market. In Bosaso, they piled up bundles of notes in front of them, waist-high and three or four rows deep.

  The largest notes in Somalia have a value of 1,000 shillings – about 10 US cents. We exchanged $200 cash for a plastic sack filled with worn notes. The sack was a pale blue colour, like rubbish bags back home. I had to keep it with me at all times.

  Then we had to get petrol. Everyone standing there lit a cigarette immediately, as though in Bosaso you were only allowed to fill a car with petrol if you smoked at the same time.

  Abdullahi took the jerry can and put some of our fuel into the tank of another car which had drawn up. He explained, apologetically, that he still owed this driver five litres. Then we put another barrel of diesel into the boot, as there are no petrol stations on our route to the easternmost point.

  Finally we had to go to the police station, to get a travel permit for Hafun. I’d already been to see the Governor of Bosaso about this the evening before. He had approved my plan in principle, but delegated the responsibility to the police, to be on the safe side.

  He seemed as drugged up as though he were under the influence of a general anaesthetic which still hadn’t fully taken effect, and it cost him visible effort to speak. Garibaldi, who was with me during the meeting, reassured me on the way home. As soon as the Governor had got his khat he would appear completely normal again, he assured me.

  At the police station there were some men, in civilian clot
hes, holding a morning meeting at a long table. The station had little to offer – a couple of old chairs, a table and a small desk with an old typewriter. A naked light bulb dangled from the ceiling, and on the wall there was a map of Puntland, which had seen better days, and a couple of yellowed, dried out documents.

  Initially the policemen wanted to send two of their officers with us on the journey. Not that it was dangerous at Cape Hafun. Not in the least! They just hadn’t yet set up a police station there.

  As Nuredin explained to me later, a major had jumped up, clicked his heels together, and gone straight home to pack his luggage for the journey. Ten minutes later he had returned with a small plastic bag. The second policeman didn’t even have to pack at all. He evidently came to work every morning prepared for a journey.

  Even after Nuredin’s subsequent translation, however, I didn’t understand why they ultimately didn’t go through with their plan to send someone with us. In any case, they called in our driver, Abdullahi, and seemed very pleased that he had been born in the Hafun area. They obviously considered this entirely sufficient protection for us.

  We were finally given our travel permit. It looked as though it had been attacked by a swarm of moths, as the typewriter had punched a hole in the slip of paper for every small “o”.

  According to my map, it was 155 miles to Cape Hafun as the crow flies. Most of the route was across desert, with no paved roads, so we had to allow for a journey time of two to three days. Not only did Abdullahi know the route, however, he even came from the area. That was good news.

  Thus, happy and confident – at least in my case – we stopped at a small shop on the outskirts of Bosaso and bought some extra provisions. After the lemonade and biscuits, Abdullahi was also handed a Kalashnikov through the window.

  What?! Do you get these from kiosks too then?

  No, explained Abdullahi. It was his own. He lived nearby, and had just left the weapon there temporarily. And on seeing my worried expression, he added that I needn’t worry. He only had the weapon with him on account of the car. We had nothing to fear on the trip to Cape Hafun.

  Initially, during the car journey, I felt rather as though I were on an international youth exchange. A lot of things look different in retrospect. But today, I remember my trips to my home town’s twin towns in France and Scotland as the best time of my life. The sky was bluer there, the food better and the girls prettier.

  Everything was just a little different, but still somehow familiar. On the whole, all our conversations with our hosts revolved around one topic – that’s how we do things and – wow! – so do you.

  That was reassuring, but at the same time also comfortingly unsettling. A true cultural exchange really – give and take, which could only benefit both parties because our hosts were to visit us the following year and see everything for themselves.

  Our conversation topics in the car now were the same. Where did my parents live? Where did they work? Did I have brothers or sisters? What did I think about this or that? And driving through a lunar landscape of bare rocks and sandy plains, across which the Somali wind had scattered plastic bags, we talked about the Somali music Abdullahi was playing on our cassette player. And Nuredin talked about his work in Kakuma, a refugee camp in northern Kenya. We shared some halva, a horribly sticky sweet made from dates, and Abdullahi even tried to speak English, despite the fact that it was obviously difficult for him, and that Nuredin laughed at his efforts.

  We laughed, and I realised how little I actually knew about Somalis, and that I had been wrong to assume that no understanding or exchange would be possible between us.

  Abdullahi’s style of driving was certainly unorthodox. He never simply sat calmly at the wheel. He constantly fiddled with the air conditioning or the window, or hunted for a sweet, a tissue or a cigarette.

  He hated driving in a straight line. He turned, swerved and drifted, even when the desert was spread out before us, completely flat and larger than an airstrip.

  Driving on the tarred roads, he indicated whenever the road curved. Once the bend was behind us, he turned the indicator off again. In the city, however, he had never indicated, even when he was turning.

  On the way back when, admittedly, the atmosphere between us was already significantly worse, I asked Abdullahi why he indicated on the rural roads. Nuredin must have conveyed my question, which I’d asked purely out of curiosity, with some anger, as Abdullahi responded that he could stop indicating entirely if it bothered me. It didn’t bother me. But to this day I don’t know why he indicated without ever turning off.

  Abdullahi could also only drive either frustratingly slowly, or so quickly that you feared for your life. In Bosaso he hooted, and stamped on the accelerator whilst people were still crossing the road in front of us. For the first thirty miles or so on the tarred road, however, he just drove at 30 miles per hour. Then on the desert stretches he shot along at over 60 even when you couldn’t see what was coming after the next hump in the ground.

  In the desert, the track almost always consisted of two, or sometimes even three or four, different lanes. They branched off from each other, ran parallel, diverged around shrubs and bushes, met and crossed again, all with no obvious explanation.

  I was already familiar with this from southern Somalia, and I encountered it again later, between Hargeisa and Djibouti. Of course, other African countries also had lanes branching off if a puddle or a deep pothole had developed in the track. But there were no lanes constantly running parallel to each other. These could only have been made by people like Abdullahi.

  You see, he hated short cuts. Whenever one track seemed to take a shorter route, he almost always chose the longer, and preferred tracks promising a diversion around a bush to straight ones.

  Abdullahi certainly drove strangely. But at the time I still didn’t consider this significant. That often happens to me. Although there were already a lot of indications, and I needed only to put them together to form the overall picture, the decisive part of the puzzle (which would have made everything come together of its own accord) was obviously missing.

  Despite all the incidents on the trip to Hafun, I only fully understood Abdullahi once we were back in Bosaso. I wanted to know what had happened to Mohammed, the young man from London I had met on the khat flight from Nairobi. I found out the name of his uncle from the airport officials.

  In Africa, even more so than in Europe, airports, borders and government buildings demand respect. They make you more modest, make you speak one tone lower, and make you try on no account to provoke anyone.

  But not if you’re Abdullahi. Although it was perfectly obvious that a man was standing at the entrance gate to the airport, he didn’t brake, but simply hooted again, kept his foot on the accelerator, and shot out into the street. The man only managed to escape by leaping aside at lightning speed. He may have been an official, or perhaps even a policeman. Turning round, I saw him threatening us, waving his fists. For a moment I feared he would draw a pistol.

  Nothing could check Abdullahi. Not even an airport! And in Somalia at that! That just wasn’t normal. And then it clicked. It was suddenly crystal clear, and I wondered why it hadn’t dawned on me much earlier.

  I should have become suspicious right away when, as soon as we’d met, Abdullahi said “Somalia doesn’t have a government. That’s bad, but in a way it’s good too.”

  I now asked him whether he’d fought in the civil war. And Nuredin, who had also shaken his head after the airport stunt, was all ears too. “Twice,” Abdullahi responded. “Once in Mogadishu and once in Bosaso.“

  If he were now really twenty-seven, as he claimed, then he would have been just seventeen when the war started. And when asked how many people he’d killed, he said, “I didn’t kill anyone. But I injured some.” That’s how I’d have responded too if I’d felt I’d been pushed into a corner.

  In the desert, however, I was perfectly happy with Abdullahi’s style of driving. The huge dust clouds thro
wn up behind us, which must have spread for several hundred yards, gave me a sensation of movement, dynamism and power.

  I was also amazed by how he could find his way so instinctively in the barren landscape. There were no sign posts, but numerous junctions. Abdullahi never hesitated over which to take.

  On our outward journey this seemed to me as though it were magic. The nature around had no form, and none of the spindly bushes looked any different to me from any others. On the way back, however, it seemed I was already starting to see the desert more through Abdullahi’s eyes. I could distinguish clearly delineated areas. It was unbelievable how clear they were – this was something about the Somali landscape I often noticed later too.

  There was no transition between the sand, suddenly covered in pebbles as though by a ghostly hand, between the many strangely stunted trees, the black, gently polished stones on the undisturbed carpet of beige sand, or the high sand dunes later on. There were just cleanly drawn borders, as though all the zones had been laid out according to a precise plan, in which no mixing of land-use was tolerated.

  Four hours into the journey, however, Abdullahi gave up his dust cloud-producing style of driving. His shoulders suddenly drooped, he bent over the steering wheel, his eyes pressed close to the windscreen, and drove like a drunk on dodgems at a country fair. He just had one hand on the wheel. He would suddenly give a start when he jolted off the edge of the road again, and would then over-steer in the other direction, so we drove in a zigzag line – until it all got too much for me.

  Abdullahi had already begun chewing khat immediately after leaving Bosaso. During our first rest stop, he plucked the leaves from the stems, put them in a plastic bag and hung it over the indicator, so he could have constant access to them. His cheek was now stuffed full of chewed and dry leaves, and he was clearly intoxicated. Even at the start, he had boasted about, rather than apologised for, the fact that he hadn’t slept the previous night.