Travel Log 12 - South Ethiopia - The wrong way to Kenya

Addis – Awassa (9 hours - minibus)
22/5/08 – 25/5/08
A town ruled by scab-faced storks

We dined at Lewi’s, which by the looks of the fleet of white land cruisers in the car park was the favoured haunt of the NGOs. Their menu was wildly ambitious and their food tasted good but it seemed as if there had been some misunderstandings between the reading of a recipe and the production of the dish itself, which was a little embarrassing when being introduced to the chef. Beer battered fish was fish inside a doughnut and beef with spinach and cheese was deep-fried beef Wellington.

The town sat on the shore of the beautiful Lake Awassa stretching out for miles of perfect stillness, with hardly a boat on it, only reeds, mountains and birds. Walking along the path that followed its lip was Bill Oddie’s wet dream. As non-ornithologists all we knew was that the waders, kingfishers and raptors were, typically of Africans, far more flamboyant than their British counterparts.


Walking back into the town we passed a fish restaurant where the cooks and customers squatted under a tarpaulin set up at the waters edge. Outside stood a guard of huge and hideous storks that looked like Terry Gilliam monsters and lumbered unwillingly out of our way as we passed up onto the road.


Awasa-Arba Minch (9 hours – big bus)
26/5/2008 – 27/5/2008
Avoiding the crocodile market

We found the decision to charge double for farangis to stay at the aptly titled ‘Tourist Hotel’ too hard to swallow so ended up in the even better titled, ‘Hallelujah Pension’ next door.

A man on the bus had recommended a place in Arba Minch called ‘Paradise’ so we set up the hill to find it. The view down in the valley of the silver-domed church glinting in the light creeping out from behind the rain clouds was spectacular. It was good to look at, less good to listen to. Apparently the locals regularly make complaints about the church sound system which is unwillingly turned down but always creeps back up to the ludicrous level we heard. From three in the morning onwards a tag team of shouty-voiced Orthodox Christians whinge in Amharic. It was loud enough that when we had a drink in the evening in a bar several hundred metres away, it was making the music unlistenable. It hard to imagine even their God was enjoying it.

At the top of the hill we came to the dirt track leading to ‘Paradise’ – this road was clearly only ever taken by farangis in 4x4s because the local children were frantic with excitement to see us. A gaggle followed us, occasionally holding our hands. We asked for directions to ‘Paradise’ and one called out to ‘Jesus’ – saviour complexes well and truly established. When we eventually reached ‘Paradise’ it was a new hotel still under construction but the terrace offered superb views of the two lakes Chamo and Abaya separated by the bridge of God.


All the guides in the town had mercana (Amharic for the specific high achieved with ch’at, when it was described to us it was consistently described as something one ‘has’, as if it were enlightenment) because they had not yet encouraged us to visit the mysteriously titled, ‘crocodile market’. After a little investigation it turned out that it was an area of the river where the crocodiles basked and would have been very expensive. ‘Market’ was a shrewd misnomer.

We heard on the grapevine that there would be a market in a village a few hours down the road in Chencha. Having already clocked up a serious number of land miles in the past few days and with more to come, a two-hour bus ride is just like doing stretches.

On the bus which went up and up the mountain a policeman got onboard, presumably to moan about the people squatting in the aisles. When we arrived in Chencha he got into a ruck with the ticket collector who rather embarrassingly knocked the policeman’s hat and received a hard boot to the thigh and a sharp punch to the head. There were no twitching net curtains, everyone crowded round, the shorter ones pulling themselves up on taller shoulders. It seemed to be settled amicably with only two grumpy faces to be seen in the beaming horde.

The bus took us through the post–apocalypse Paradise of the Watch Tower magazine. Everything was in a vibrant green, dotted with bright flowers and fruit. Outside thatched huts sat men and women weaving on wooden looms on the toy-town grass hillocks, kept childlike by cattle. Outside most houses were allotments, dominated by the vast leaves of the false banana, the roots of which we were to discover, form the staple in the region.

A local guide took us across the town’s football pitch which was inhabited by teams of cow, goat and sheep all tied to separate stakes, industriously forming mown circles and continued up to a high point where locals get married. We were surrounded by sea-green mountains and meadowland.

The market had a similar ambience and look to a music festival. People spread out, sitting on a grassed area busily making chaos. Different areas of the market catered for different needs. In the water pipe zone people took it turns to buy a dollop of tobacco and shared it round. In the staple zone women mashed false banana into a pulp with their hands. In fabric zone a man with a wooden spindle demonstrated his craftiness to us with a toothy grin. Our guide told us that the people of this village made the distinctive cloth which the Masai of Kenya wear, but it was hard to know whether or not to believe him.


Arba Minch – Jinka (9 hours – big bus)
28/5/2008
There was a man in a miniskirt next to me on the bus

As it was the thirty-year anniversary of the fall of the Derg (the Communist group which overthrew Haile Selassie) the restaurants and bars of the town were full of old-timers taking the opportunity to reminisce and not so idly talk politics.

It was easy to understand why northern Ethiopians were in favour of the current Prime Minister. His impact was tangible, the roads had improved under his management and there had not been the flagrant violence seen after the last election in which the streets of Addis were awash with blood. As we travelled further south opinion was not so positive. He is of the northern Tigray tribe and it was believed that he favoured his own, to the detriment of the south. Most people believed that he was not a bad person but was operating in a corrupt and biased government. Many of the older generation still clutched to what was perhaps, a rose-tinted nostalgia for the Communist Derg, under which the roads that are now in disrepair were originally built. It is very difficult to know how dissent was forming into rebellion, as the press was so filled with disinformation regarding Somali, Eritrean and Sudanese rebels. What was clear was that in the desperate face of famine that there is a valid fear of an uprising.

A few hours before, on the last part of the journey to Jinka, a member of the Bana tribe got on the bus. His upper biceps were tightly constrained by brass copper bands. His hair was shaved at the front and plaited at the back. He wore a miniskirt and a sports vest. On his wrists he wore bright beading in sky blue, black and red and he carried with him nothing but a wooden perch. It is hard to look dignified in a fifty-year-old bus doing breakneck speeds on 4x4 terrain but he managed it. When the ticket collector asked for his fare he broke from our previously held National Geographic image of the stoical tribesman. He released a one liner presumably regarding the price of the bus ticket, so powerful it brought the previously silent bus into hysterics. He grinned then returned to his world of serenity.

Our original intention had been to travel back seven hours the following day to the town of Konso, which we had already passed through. Unfortunately the road that would take us from Konso to Moyale, the border town with Kenya, was closed due to fighting between rival tribes. This put us in an awkward position: we had to reach Moyale by 1st June because our visas would run out. We decided to head for Key Afar two hours back in the right direction as they had a market on and this was the best chance we had of seeing something of the south. We spent the rest of the day in the ‘Oromo District Research Centre’, which catalogued the peculiarities of the tribes in the area, including lip plates, bull jumping, female circumcision, polygamy, scarring, and soothsaying with goat entrails. They had a collection of wooden perches as we had on the bus. They were stylishly carved in accordance with specific tribal designs. We saw them in use in the area, waiting for buses and general milling about as an uncomfortable looking stool which, apparently, doubled up as a pillow, much like that used by geishas.


Jinka – Key Afar (2 hours-big bus)
29/5/2008
Hustlers with feathers in their hair

Before coming to the Oromo region we were warned by fellow tortoises that much of what we saw in the Rift Valley would not be ‘real’. When local tribes-people get wind of the arrival of farangis they would prepare costumes of brighter colours and more intricacy, to outdo their rival tribes-people and to win the 2 Birr reward normally expected in exchange for taking their photograph. These over-the-top costumes were without cultural significance. From one perspective, who can blame them? Their tribal practices are really none of the tourist’s business. If they are wearing an inauthentic costume, the tourist’s photo may look more spectacular and the tribes-person gets some cash. On the other hand it all sounds a bit sordid. The concept of going to an area to have a ‘real’ experience ‘man’ is more irritating than accepting your position on the other side of the camera lens. What is positive, perhaps, is that a startlingly large proportion of their culture is intact despite being given the opportunity to change.

We can only assume that we went to the right village and the right market and the right tribe because we were the only tourists in the market place and money was only mentioned when we asked prices. It was a mutually starey situation, but more of a giraffe stare than a hyena or crocodile stare. They thought we were dressed oddly and we thought the same of them. The significance of the different elements of the costumes of people in the market was explained to us by a local boy. The women who had thin dreadlocks moulded into shape with red clay were married. Those with a huge metal necklace were the first wife of a husband and therefore important. Men with their hair sculpted and coloured and topped with a feather, making them look startlingly alien with their elongated red, white or blue heads with valve like attachments, indicated that they had recently killed an impressive animal. Those with their hair white at the back had lost their father recently and were still in mourning. Those men with extra beads and tall feathers in their hair were on the look out for a wife. It was an amazing social system that allowed them to cut out a great deal of needless chitchat.


Much of the jewellery was recycled. Many earrings were produced from white plastic packaging and necklaces were made from the broken watchstraps of metal Casios. The choice of materials was indiscriminately focused upon looking good.

During the evening we walked out to one of the clusters of huts on the outskirts of the village as the sun was setting over the maize fields. We were introduced to a family who performed a dance for us. It was a fairly mercenary experience, the dance was for our entertainment. However, after we alighted from the ‘real’ high horse it was clear to see that as they leapt around and mock shoulder barged one another, they were enjoying themselves and it suited the moment perfectly as they rhythmically ‘hummmm’ed and their jewellery clattered as they came back to earth, dust rising from their feet. We drank tea made from the husks of coffee beans and tried to persuade the grandmother that it was OK that the smaller children who were clearly terrified of us, did not have to come and shake hands with us, we did not want anyone wetting themselves.


Key Afar – Sodo (12 hours – big bus, minibus, landcruiser)
30/5/2008

As tribal fighting was blocking our intended route and we had only two days left on our visas, we had to retrace our steps sharpish before our visas finished, right back up to near Awasa in order to get onto the road running from Addis Ababa to Moyale. Leg one should have taken us back to Arba Minch but the bus broke down less than half way there, just before a village made up of not much more than a hotel. We walked along the road in the mid-day sun with tribes-people and business men and were lucky enough to hitch a ride in the cab of a lorry a few kilometres down the road, while meeting the disapproving glares of our fellow bus riders, still tramping along in the heat. From the hotel we smarmed a lift with Catholic missionaries the rest of the way, much to the indignation of bus riders who felt we were getting preferential treatment – finally! Before reaching Arba Minch we stopped for lunch in Konso, home of the perma-culture ecolodge Brits we met in Addis. We asked the waiter if he knew them and he replied that they had been there just the night before and he promised to pass on our best wishes. From Arba Minch we found a bus that took us the three hours down the road to Sodo. By the time we reached the town everyone was tired and hungry. When the driver stopped for petrol a couple of minutes from the bus station there was a very real possibility of a rebellion. We scouted around the dingy Sodo for somewhere to stay, everywhere half decent was fully booked so we ended up in a brothel perched above a bad disco.


Sodo – Dila
31/5/2008

In the morning we woke at 5.00 once again to fight for a seat on the 6.00 bus – departure time is dictated by the government in an attempt to prevent night driving and move Ethiopia off the top-spot for worldwide road fatality rates. We arrived in Awasa in the afternoon and took a minibus to a rainy Dila where we stayed over. By this point we had passed the stage of hysteria and were well and truly in a state of grumpy confusion. Now as we tried to sleep on the bus, if we went over a dramatic bump and banged our head against something, it was no longer chance, but part of some sadistic joke.

During the evening in Dila a woman selling baskets invited us into her shop for a coffee ceremony. Her blind grandfather sat in the corner going through his prayer beads and periodically praying. They told us about the local language and how they learned English from a flat-screen TV donated to them by Germans, all while we ate delicious popcorn and drank delicious coffee and a tailor a few doors down repaired Toby’s bag with his leg-powered sewing machine. The following morning it was Dila to Moyale and the beginning of a whole new type of strangeness.


Escape to Kenya
Moyale

Young cats prowled across the flat concrete roofs, the ‘city’ behind them, creeping up the hillside, lit up and squat. The pregnant quietness of the Kenyan side of the town only became noticeable when manic allah akhbar’s began to sound from the mosque. A stark contrast from the typically rowdy Ethiopian side of town.

Moyale had the now familiar unfamiliarity of a border town, on the frontier of something more than another country but not discernable. People passed through and left a gaggle of chancers whose lives were dictated by the movements of a fickle river. The river being made up of stray tourists, downtrodden businessmen, people visiting family, trucks full of cargo and lonely and frustrated men in search of Ethiopian ‘company’. They picked up what is left on the shoreline – in this case, two not so shiny new mwzungus (Swahili for white man, literally translated as ‘man without smell’) staring at their bowls of stew in the ‘Baghdad Restaurant II’, wondering how to eat it without cutlery.

The border between Ethiopia and Kenya was a metal pole weighed down by some rocks and a rusted wheel rim. As we re-entered Ethiopia after sorting out a hotel in Kenya and a bus to Nairobi for the following day, passport control called us over. We were under strict instructions to be back before six because they would be clocking off.


Moyale to Nairobi (26 hours – big bus, minibus)
2/6/2008 – 3/6/2008

After this period of waking up before the sun, spending a day sitting on a bus, arriving in a town eating anything and collapsing anywhere, what did we need? A twenty-six hour bus journey of course! The bus was just like the geriatric boneshakers of Ethiopia but with, much to Stuart’s knee’s delight, slightly more legroom. We were told beforehand that the big bus is safer than the trucks because shifters (armed bandits who extort money) were generally local and therefore much more likely to hit one of their relatives if the spray a big bus with bullets. However, the addition of an armed guard was there to offer reassurance. After two police checks within the first half hour we made bets as to how many there would be before we reached Nairobi, the winning figure being nine. When we stopped for dinner the bus’ mechanic introduced himself to us. Apparently we could rest easy because he was now on board as the police had decided to release him from prison, where he languished on charges of cannabis possession. Charges he was very pleased were true. Another member of the bus team, whose role we could not entirely discern, was a Somali. He proudly told us how he had made his money as a member of Dog Crew in Cardiff for whom he sold smack and cocaine. Brilliant! The scenery was almost enough of a distraction. We passed through a very British looking landscape, other than the mighty presence of Mount Kenya, rising incongruously from the horizon. The next morning we were still chugging along with few enough passengers to lie down on the spare seats when the bus broke down. From here on we took a pimped out minibus or matatu as it is know in Swahili right into heaving central Nairobi.

Somaliland - The Unknown Republic

Somaliland and its bid for international recognition


The revelries of 18th May 2008 as the Somalilanders rightly celebrated the seventeenth anniversary of their democratic republic fell upon deaf ears amongst the international community.

Somaliland is a small country located in the northern part of the Horn of Africa with Djibouti to its northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west and Puntland (another separatist part of old Somalia) to its east. The capital of Somalia is further south in Mogadishu.


After declaring its independence the country was levelled by the Mogadishu based dictator, Siyad Barre. Since then the Somalilanders have built themselves a country based upon the greatest ideals of democracy, with the zeal of people in search of personal safety, education, free speech, healthcare and food.

But Somaliland is running three-legged in a race where the other competitors run unimpeded.

International non-recognition ties Somaliland to Somalia and is thus preventing it from becoming a model for African democracy.

Somaliland is being asked to give up its democracy and stability and join with a war-torn country in a state of collapse. This entails Somaliland’s great potential for investment, its rich mineral, coal and oil reserves remaining unutilised. Somaliland’s ability to import and export goods is being seriously impeded as the insurance costs set by Lloyds of London is extremely high for any ship which uses the port of Berbera. The country’s merchants, whose main exports are camels, frankincense and myrrh see the situation as far from wise.

But as the long-time Somaliland supporter, Tony Worthington, ex- MP for Clydebank and Milngavie explained in his 2004 House of Commons speech on the matter of Somaliland’s independence,

Somalilanders are caught in a vicious Catch-22 position. They are being told, “Destroy your nation by joining the destroyer in the south, and we will recognize you. Stay outside, with stability and democracy, and we will ignore you.”

The ignorance on the part of governments is voluntary but for the average citizen of the international community it is mainly down to being ill informed. In his speech he went on to explain why it is imperative that action is taken now (now in this case being four years ago),

The longer the world ignores the achievements of Somaliland in creating stability and democratic institutions, the greater the risk that wilder elements will take over, and the longer Somaliland is left to fend for itself without resources for schools, for example, the more willing will radical elements be to step in.

With the recent spate of Somali pirating and kidnapping the case for action is ever pressing. In the face of such adversity the Somalilanders have a national pride that comes of seeing the horrific repercussions of political instability. They are quick to welcome strangers with open arms in order to show them what they have achieved. The reverence one is shown as a foreigner gives some indication of the Somaliland people’s collective desperation for international recognition.

One hurdle which Somaliland is successfully tackling, which is going some way to keeping Somalia in the political Dark Ages is the knowledge of ancestry peculiar to the region. From a young age Somalis / Somalilanders / Puntlanders are expected to know their paternal lineage for ten to twenty generations as writ. Many Somalilanders we met knew theirs for more than forty.

This puts all citizens in sub-sub-clan divisions with a complex system of allegiances. Of the five major clans, Isaaq is dominant in Somaliland. However, the government has included a section of its constitution to ensure that clan based discrimination which plagues Somalia is minimized. There is now a multi-party democracy with district councils contested by six parties. It seems that Somaliland is keeping a close eye on Somalia and learning from its mistakes.


A history of the bloody tip of Africa’s Horn
After the Greeks, Egyptians and the Ottomans the Colonialists came to the Horn of Africa and divided what was then Somalia along typically uncompromising lines.

1880’s: In the far north the French occupied French Somaliland for Djibouti’s capacity as a port.

The British attained a protectorate over northern Somaliland in 1886 in order to provide the garrison in Aden (Yemen) with meat.

The Italians were permitted to occupy Somalia with Mogadishu as its capital after their siding with the Allies in WWI.

Southern Somalia was incorporated into British Kenya.

Ethiopia took the western deserts.

1900: The ‘Mad Mullah’, Mohamed Abdalla Hassan began to sow the seeds of a struggle for a reunited Somalia with his failed attacks against the British.

1920’s: Britain got a firm grasp of the region after a series of ‘pacification campaigns’ which decisively formed the borders of what is now Somaliland.

1940’s: During World War II the Italians in Somalia attacked the British garrisoned in Somaliland which resulted in Britain taking Somalia from Italian rule and forming Greater Somaliland. During WWII 9,000 Somaliland troops from the Somaliland Scouts and Somaliland Camel Corps fought with the British against the Italians, holding back an army of 291,000 Italian and local troops.

1950’s: Britain began to prepare Somaliland for its independence, holding meetings between different clans in order to broker stability after their departure.

1960’s: On April 6th 1960 Somalilanders voted for independence from Britain and to unite with Italian Somalia. From the 2nd to the 7th of June Somaliland was independent before the formation of the Somalia Republic with Italian Somalia. The union was disastrous, the mainly Issaq Somalilanders were not represented fairly by the Somalia National League party of central government. In the face of further Italianisation the Somalilanders unsuccessfully attempted a coup in 1962. The centralised government system inherited from Italy and Britain was unsuccessful in dealing with de-centralised pastoral peoples without the Colonial resources and the situation became anarchic, returning Somalis to their pre-Colonial days.

1969: General Siyad Barre took control of the Republic of Somalia in a military coup. Barre strove for reunification of its five states immortalized by the five-pointed star of the Somali flag. The Soviet Union was happy to oblige Barre’s gung-ho intentions by supplying him with arms, he then further ingratiated himself with them by declaring the Republic of Somalia a Marxist state, thus heightening Soviet involvement.

"When I came to Mogadishu...[t]here was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go."

1977: As Ethiopia fought a war with Eritrea to its south Somalia seized the moment and regained its western lands in the Ogaden War. Unfortunately for Barre the Soviet Union changed allegiances, supporting the greater power of Mengistu, the Marxist leader of Ethiopia who deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in a military coup. As a result arms stopped flowing into Somalia and with the help of the Soviets and Cubans, Somalia was crushed back into the shape Ethiopia dictated.

The bottom of Barre’s internal support dropped out and internal power struggles began in earnest, leaving Somalia in a clan based chaos.

1980’s: The sour taste of communism, left after the Soviet Union’s flip-flop, was sweetened by the arms of American and Italian democracy, as both countries were keen to prop those with anti-red sentiments and to gain a foothold in the Horn of Africa with its strategic importance as a neighbour to the Middle East.

As the Somali Salvation Democratic Front formed Puntland, the Somali National Movement attempted to establish Somaliland on its 1960’s borders. During the chaos Barre began his vindictive campaign against the Somalilanders. During the air strikes on Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, in which planes took off from the city’s airport one of Barre’s closest aides recalled Barre considering himself to be, ‘a Darod chief who had totally annihilated an enemy clan.’

1982: Students rioted in Hargeisa, in response to Barre’s policies under which systematic human rights abuses prevailed.

1988: The Somalia Civil War began and the mainly Darod clans of the Somalia region commenced a campaign of destruction against the mainly Isaaq Somaliland region. Barre’s preoccupation with the Somaliland region saw his opposition in Somalia grow in strength and non-humanitarian aid stopped flowing into the country.

1990: At the end of the year Barre fled Mogadishu in the face of a military attack from a rival clan member, Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, who placed Ali Mahdi Mohamed in power. This left Somalia without a foreseeable future of peace.

1991: Somaliland declared its independence and established an interim government made up of representatives of clans who elected a President, beginning on the road to what should logically be international recognition by putting in place the institutions required for democracy to prevail.

2003: Dahir Riyad Kahin is the first democratically elected President of Somaliland with a winning margin of only 0.008%. The votes are counted by students and the military leave their arms in the barracks for the day.

Somaliland as it stands today

The treasure of the three wise men – Somaliland as seen from the ground
As we travelled through Somaliland we were constantly asked, without malice, why had Britain, with such strong connections to Somaliland, forgotten them in their hour of need. Ethiopia has already stated that it was willing to be the second country to acknowledge Somaliland and with them, the African Union is likely to follow. The United Nations will be a harder nut to crack but with the support of various EU countries including the UK, already present if not written, all that is required is a bold step forward by a significant world player.

In 1960 Macmillan addressed the House of Commons as follows:

I should like to say, however, that it is Her Majesty's Government's hope that whatever may be the constitutional future of the Protectorate, the friendship which has been built up between its people and those of the United Kingdom for so many years will continue and indeed flourish.

It is easy to understand why the Somalilanders feel betrayed.

During Barre’s campaign 200,000 Somalis were brought to the UK, many settling in London and Wales. The small Somaliland government, as we were informed by the Minister for Trade and Industry (who used to work for Bristol City Council) has seven members who are British citizens. He also told us of the country’s energy crisis. The price currently stands at $1/kwh – the highest charge in the world. He then suggested we meet with ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency – an NGO) to find out more on the subject of how they were going to run the country on renewable energy alone.

With so little investment Somaliland’s current main source of income is its loyal Diaspora of over a million, who are evidently determined to rebuild the country and are savvy enough to be wary of making the same mistakes as many other African countries.

The Parliament and President’s Palace, as they were proudly described to us by Hargeisan’s, were very humble. Many wanted it to stay that way, fearful of the prospect of Machiavellian machinations that will come with the might of the World Bank. They are very clued up.

The Somalilanders are rightly proud of their democracy - during the election period the police and army go to work unarmed and the votes are counted by students.

Somalilander’s generally have a murky view of the UN. The officer responsible for Somaliland is stationed in Nairobi. It seems that the UN is concerned about the threat of ‘Balkanisation’ of the Horn of Africa. It is perceived that an independent Somaliland will jeopardize the potential for peace in the region as this peace is envisaged as a united Somalia, drawn up along the pre-Colonial borders. This view does not appear to have evolved as the situation has, and now devolution seems the only plausible solution.

Somaliland remains a graveyard for international dabbling. We were shown the NASA landing strip by the beach, the tennis courts of the British Protectorate’s summer retreat in the cool of the mountains, the North Korean crates in the abandoned cement factory in the desert, the Ottoman hilltop fort, the shell of one of Barre’s Soviet tanks outside the village of Hamas, the Bulgarian medical equipment in Sheik’s decimated hospital. All acted as monuments to international involvement which have passed into a distant memory.

In Berbera we met with the Community Concern Group, a local NGO. Solomon, the director of the port and Dictor Jama (he was a doctor but this was how he was introduced), a one man Somaliland restoration whirlwind compered the evening. We were told about the various projects they had undertaken and were undertaking, building schools, planting trees and so on. They were keen to know our view on Somaliland’s bid for international recognition. It was announced that we were from then on partners of the CCG and plans were made for our appearance on national television the following evening to state as much and air our opinions on Somaliland’s independence.

A meeting was scheduled in a plush hotel lobby where we were met by two effervescent Kenyans from the ADRA whom we were put in touch with by the Minister of Trade and Industry. During the meeting it became clear that ADRA was one of the few NGO’s working in Somaliland. A theme that ran throughout was of the possibility of making a great country. It is practically being built from scratch and there is the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other countries - skip out the less savoury stages of development and become a beacon for hope.

Recognition
There is a widespread fear that Somaliland’s current opposition to fundamentalism may begin to lose its strength if the international community continues to turn its back on them.

The international think tank Senlis compiled a report in April of this year on the failures of America’s ‘War on Terror’

Those bombings and sponsorship of a proxy Christian army – Ethiopia –to fight in Mogadishu have provided militant Islamists with abundant propaganda material

An embattled population found the resolve to reconstruct itself, establishing functioning organs of government without little upheaval – a rarity in post-conflict reconstruction. Its drive to create multi-party democracy upon a backdrop of relative peace and security has been impressive, if not without flaw.

Of all the states in the Horn of Africa it is the self-declared yet internationally unrecognised aspirant state of Somaliland that offers President Bush with his most viable opportunity to claim an Africa success story.

A 2006 report compiled by the international NGO, concerned with compiling independent reports on politically unstable and humanitarian situation, Crisis Group, called for the urgent action in the Somaliland debate, pointing out that,

A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the Somalia Transitional Federal Government continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently “unique and self-justified in African political history” that “the case should not be linked to the notion of ‘opening a pandora’s box’”. It recommended that the AU “should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case” at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland’s application for membership.

All evidence leans towards a need to reward Somaliland and not to consider it merely as part of a potentially fractious Africa movement of ‘Balkanisation’.

In March of 2006 a speaker of the Somaliland parliament was invited to speak before the National Assembly for Wales and rightly or wrongly took is as recognition of his country. It is a baby step but it is in the right direction.

Travel log 11 – Somaliland – Hargeisa, Berbera, Sheekh, Las Geel and Harar (Ethiopia)

The following is a description of our travels in Somaliland. During our time in the country we became very interested in the country’s history and its ongoing bid for international recognition. The article above which follows this travel log contains the hard facts, and is not as easy a read but please give it a go

19/4/2008 - 20/4/2008
Addis Ababa to Jijiga
The road to Somaliland
We headed east from Addis taking an overnight minibus to Harar. Squashed into the minibus the driver sped through the night stopping only occasionally in small villages where trucks lined the roadside making their way to or from the ports in Djibouti or Somaliland. The driver would stock up on food or ch’at, the mild amphetamines which seemed to do a good job of keeping him awake and psyched up for the treacherous drive. Arriving at Harar at first light we jumped straight on the next bus to take us closer to the Somaliland border, in the town the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘advise against all travel to’, the relatively respectable Jijiga.

21/4/2008
Jijiga to Hargeisa
Walking across the dirt track border
After overnighting in Jijiga we were glad to be on the bus to Wajaale. It wasn’t a case of the place feeling unsafe, more of it feeling like a town at the end of the Earth. Entering Somaliland was blissfully simple and after stamping our passport the official exclaimed, “Welcome British Protectorate!”

As we waited for the sixth passenger to get into the car that would take us from the border town to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, a middle-aged man popped his head through the window to welcome us to a peaceful Somaliland where we could be assured of our safety, and to enquire as to how Ealing was since his repatriation. Self-conscious patriotism was a repeating theme.

A passenger in the car told us how he, as a Somalilander, differed from a Somali. If he saw us in trouble on the street he would be willing to die for us in order to protect our safety as we represented a step towards international recognition. If a Somali saw us in trouble they would join in. On a cramped two hour drive it was difficult to know how to handle this kind of hyperbole with anything other than ‘thanks’.

After two hours and numerous passport checks we arrived in Hargeisa driving past the presidential home and the parliamentary building. To say they were not elaborate would be an understatement but for a fledgling African nation it was a refreshingly humble sight to see.

22/4/2008
Hargeisa
The capital of an unrecognised country
Wandering round Hargeisa brought into relief quite how other-worldly the place is. Moneychangers lined the streets, sitting behind walls of money. One British Pound is equivalent to 11,800 Somaliland Shillings and as the largest note they have is 500 Shillings, changing $100 gave us both very satisfying bagfuls of money. What was notable though was that there was no fear of anyone stealing from us, there was something in the air. When the call to prayer came over the loud speakers these same money changers and those squatting on the street side selling gold all strolled up to the mosque, leaving their livelihoods unattended on the street. Although the country does operate under sharia law, which can account for some degree of the population’s propensity to abide the law, they are relatively progressive, allowing women many of the same roles as men. Many of the women we met, like the headmistress of the Berbera Maritime University wore a headscarf but were far from submissive. She drove us round in her jeep and it was hard to get a word in edgeways.


At one end of the ‘high street’ is the Somalilanders war monument: a Soviet MIG shot down during the war for independence against the Mogadishu based Siyad Barre. Its concrete base was adorned with bright coloured murals depicting the horrors that were committed against the Somalilanders and their more recent successes. This was Hargeisa’s closest approximation to a conventional tourist attraction.

23/4/2008
Hargeisa - Berbera
A trip to the seaside with an armed guard
To travel outside Hargeisa the government stipulates that you must take a driver and armed guard. Our experiences made it seem an over-zealous policy, but Somaliland is so desperate for international recognition that if those few tourists who do visit them come a cropper, this will scupper their chances as it will be seen as an indication of their failure to control the security situation. On the other hand our guard, Mr. Mohammed was nice enough and looked very professional in his full military outfit. The only gripe we had with him was that whenever our driver left the car (normally to pour water on the engine) he turned our tape off and switched the stereo onto Somaliland radio. We were not in a position to argue with him even though the shouty din over atonal stringed instruments was fairly irritating.

Our driver / guide / presidential hopeful Abdullah showed us around his country, pointing out the success of democracy as a guide in North Korea might with Communism.

It was possible to put the independence conflict out of mind because the destruction was generally out of sight: the city had been levelled and everything was new. As we left the city we could see that progress had been slower. On the road to Berbera we passed crumbling buildings, the gutted remains of Soviet tanks and a group of women who had been raped and had had their eyes gouged out with bayonets. But it was as if there had been a forest fire and now life could start again, new construction springing up all around, full of hope.


We went to Berbera’s best restaurant, in the heart of its bullet-riddled Colonial ruins and ate fish caught a few hours previously, drank fresh tamarind juice and discussed the future of Somaliland with a motley crew of businessmen and teenagers.

Abdullah took us to a pristine beach on the sapphire waters of the Red Sea where we met a group of boys who had caught a fish with their bare hands and an elder who had dyed his extensive beard bright orange with henna, as is the custom with Somalis.


On the beach, framed by the mountains in which he had fought, sat our guard in full military uniform, keeping an eye on our bag full of money.

On the drive back to our hotel Abdullah snapped from his cheery mood and took us to a vast graveyard with bits of wood, metal and rock for headstones. We stopped by a lorry axle protruding from the sand and he told us how his brother had been killed in front of him. While trying to stop Barre’s soldiers from burning the family car his brother had had his throat cut. He laughed about it with a glazed look on his face as if it were too absurd to have happened.

That evening we chewed ch’at, a green leaf containing a mild amphetamine, favoured in the region as a legal social drug and Abdullah announced that that evening there was a meeting scheduled for us with the Community Concerned Group (CCG) who would tell us about all the good work they were doing.


24/4/2008
Berbera
Ghostly city by the sea


Dictor Jama, the one man Somaliland restoration project, from CCG decided to give us a guided tour of Berbera which was slightly bizarre at points and in around 40oC and extremely high humidity quite testing. We first toured the port, the port director, before being taken to meet with the governor of the region and then touring the abandoned cement plant, then on to see the salt factory (which turned out to be a small concreted area they put sea water into and let it evaporate) and then along to Berbera lighthouse. We were shown an area of land which had been bought by Dictor Jama and Abdullah out near the old iron lighthouse for a hotel they were planning. They offered us part of their beach so we could build our own houses on it. Stood on an endless, empty beach watching the sun set over the calm sea it seemed a tempting offer. But there were still ghosts around. The area of scrub between us and the NASA landing strip now used as Berbera’s airport in which dark-eyed camels looked out over the sea was the same stretch Dictor Jama and Abdullah had sprinted across as they fought together against Siyad Barre’s troops and people presumably bled into the sand.


In the evening we were set in front of the national press. It soon became clear that the purpose of the broadcasts (three channels, including on satellite and the national newspaper) were to be political. We were asked how the Somaliland we saw differed from the one we had envisaged. At the end of the broadcast the reporter from Somaliland Times asked us if we could send him pills for his stomach ulcer when we returned to England.

25/4/2008
Hargeisa – Sheekh – Las Geel – Hargeisa
Into the mountains and caves
We visited the mountain top town of Sheekh, the summer retreat for the British Governor when the stifling heat of Berbera, down on the coast became too much. The house was in ruins but the tennis courts and swimming pool could still be made out and locals had left the baths and window frames, for which they had no use. This was in stark contrast to the botched together nomadic huts which now surrounded it. We continued into Sheekh to see the hospital which had all but been destroyed in the war. It still smelt like a hospital and much of the Bulgarian medical equipment was still in place but the walls were covered in graffiti and the only sound we could hear was of the children playing football outside and the birds flying from ward to ward.


We then went back through Berbera on our way to Hargeisa, as we cruised through the desert in the left hand drive car on the right side of the road (a typically absurd Colonial reminder) Abdullah pointed out the mountains which he had hidden amongst and the straights across which he had run with Mr. Mohammed, our guard, when they fought together. Mr. Mohammed remained stony faced even in the face of the Libyan trance reggae tape we put on which Abdullah was very taken by.

On the last leg of the trip back to Hargeisa we were taken to the most spectacular site in Somaliland, the Neolithic cave paintings of Las Geel, which are regarded widely as some of the best if not the best rock art in Africa. The caves are located in a beautiful area of the country high up on a hillside looking over the vast expanse of scrubland and desert where a river once ran. It is thought that the paintings were produced 4000 years ago and yet they are still in stunning condition. The subject matter mainly revolves around images of different types of cows but also of men, dogs, giraffes and other animals. There is clearly a hugely complex symbolic subtext to the works which archaeologists are still trying to piece together. The area is in fact still being catalogued as it was only discovered by a French team in 2002. Upon seeing Las Geel we had to agree that the only reason it is not a World Heritage site is because it is in Somaliland.


26/4/2008
Hargeisa
Meetings with the ministers
On returning to Hargeisa we met with the Minister of Trade and Industry to discuss the country’s potential and his interest in promoting clean development. It was strange chatting to a man who used to work for Bristol City Council and was so proud to be a British Citizen, as were seven other members of the cabinet. They came with the tens of thousands of Somalilanders brought to Britain during the war who are now flooding back to rebuild their country.

Later we also met ADRA the only NGO doing serious work in Somaliland and discussed the huge potential in the country. They also added to the bizarre picture we were building up of the country by telling us it is the most hooked up (in terms of electrical coverage per head) country in the whole of Africa.

27/4/2008
Hargeisa – Harer (Ethiopia)
Turning down the Vice -President
In the morning we were supposed to meet with the Vice President of Somaliland, but the meeting was rearranged for the afternoon, and unfortunately we had to leave, meaning that we missed out on the opportunity. We had a long day of travelling back into Ethiopia, all the way to Harer.

28/4/2008 – 29/4/2008
City circled by hyenas
Harer
We wandered round the high, narrow streets of the old windy city of Harar, escorted by a local guide without whom we were guaranteed to get lost in the labyrinthine mess of markets, houses, churches and shrines. Without him we would never have found our way past the unassuming gates which led to Rimbault’s old house, nor would we have thought anything of the run down wooden building in which Haile Selassie was born.


During the evening we went to witness the surreal tradition of hyena feeding. It is thought, or more likely, was thought, that if the hyenas were not fed the crops would fail. There is undoubtedly an inverted logic to the feeding of the hyenas and the community’s general prosperity as the well-fed beasts were less likely to kill livestock. Now the affair is far more touristy. There is warm up act of a man who calls to the hyenas down in the valley with a strange moan. Then, like a circus performer a man puts bits of meat on sticks to give to the tourists to feed to the stinking animals. Unfortunately we came the day after Ethiopians celebrate Easter and their vegetarian fasting ends. The hyenas were clearly pogged after the previous days off-cuts so their performance lacked its normal verve. Still, it was quite impressive and in terms of a touristy show there was only one other tourist there. The next morning we returned to Addis by minibus and were lucky not to have ended up in the hyena man’s basket after we collided with a rock in the road. The conductor handed out some ch’at and repaired whatever had broken with a mix of black paint and superglue.

Travel Log 10 – Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa
29/3/2008 – 18/4/2008 and 30/4/2008 – 21/5/2008
The ageless mango

Having been told by a businessman on the bus that ‘Addis Ababa’ meant ‘new flower’ made the approach to the city one of imaginings. Would it be fresh and vibrant? Would it be a delicate and beautiful place?

Historically it does not live up its name. ‘New’ is somewhat a misnomer as it is widely considered to be slap bang in the centre of the seat of human kind, from where, 100,000 years ago the human race spread out across the globe. In more recent times, it was established by Emperor Menelik II in order to appease Taytu, his wife, who was fond of the natural mineral baths the city still provides. In the present it does live up to its name, as its people are new. Everyone in the city seems to have either consigned themselves to an eternal immovability or is in a state of manic movement, waving their arms about and strutting around. Men in oversized sunglasses and designer stubble mix with the robed crowds praying at the old churches. Women in traditional dress eat pastries to the sound of 50 Cent and prostitutes trussed in Lycra swaddling rub shoulders with priests wearing strange, cylindrical hats. There is not necessarily a sense of Addis, the place being ‘new’, more that it inhabits a time all of its own. It is more the case that its people are ‘new’, but they have come from all different times.

‘Flower’ suggested something effeminate, and it was impossible to deny that the city had a disproportionate number of knee-tremble-inducing women. However, the dirty, raucous nature of the place was symbolically closer to a fruit like the mango: exuberant, but sordid.


‘Ageless Mango’ as it should be known was dominated by the vast Presidential and Prime Ministerial palaces, grand Coptic churches, high rise shopping centres (but never with more than ten storeys), the brightly lit Ethiopian Electric building, wooden scaffolding reaching up into nothingness and decadent the British Embassy.

When the Djiboutian Embassy asked for a letter of recommendation from our embassy in order for them to begin processing our visa application it did not come as a big surprise, the same was required by the Sudanese in Cairo. The shock came when we passed through the imposing gates of the vast British Embassy with its polo field, swimming pool, golf course and pet leopards. Presumably in order to fund such a jolly good time we were asked to pay $120 for the one page printout which cost around $30 in Cairo. Toby had previously been in the Post Office to collect his birthday cake but the security guard was unwilling to allow it entry into the Embassy compound. Presumably as it was a heavy fruitcake it posed a risk as a weapon.

It sounded like an echo of the not-so-distant past. Haile Selassie would feed his lions before breakfast every morning. The image we had built of the mythical man was brought crashing back to reality when we visited his palace, now part of the city’s university (where there are no tuition fees). We stood uncomfortably in his private chambers looking down at his sad little bed. There was a poignant reminder of his usurpment by the Communist Derg on the 12th September 1974 in the form of a bullet hole in his bedside mirror. His private bathroom did not have gold taps, it was a utilitarian affair of plain mosaic not too dissimilar from toilets down the road in Kaldi’s café.

Kaldi’s is Starbucks with a more inventive menu and better coffee. There are the same chalkboards, uniforms, logo and unpleasant prices. An enterprising gentleman suggested Starbucks open a chain in the home of coffee. They refused after they lost a court battle with the Ethiopian government with regards to the patenting of an Ethiopian coffee bean. Ethiopian coffee producers thought it unfair and won the case. Kaldi’s was built in its stead and appears to be hugely popular.

We occasionally watched the ice cream melt in the counter fridges during one of the city’s many power cuts. After reading the local press it came to light that the late Mahar rains were the root of the problem. Ethiopia gets its electricity from hydropower and with the imminent completion of expansion projects intends to begin exporting power to its neighbours. Without the rain the system did not work so power was being rationed. What was not in the Ethiopian press was the more pressing effect of the drought: the impending humanitarian disaster in Oromiya and Somali regions where 4 million people are at risk of death. A week after the US and UK pledged $90m in relief, the Ethiopian government announced that it will be increasing its military budget eightfold to $400m.

Some of the Ethiopian press was surprisingly free (most notably, The Reporter) which described how the opposition had ducked out of the local elections which were taking place while we were in the city. They claimed the voters and politicians were being pushed, violently. While we were in the city three people were killed by a bomb blast at a petrol station. There were suggestions that it was the work of Ogaden National Liberation Front (the underdeveloped south of the country). What was bizarre about the ONLF was the government’s claims that they were backed by the Qatar government. No indication was given as to Qatar’s interest in the debacle, but it entailed the Qatar based Aljazeera website being consigned to the same fate as all blogs in the country – it was barred. This made writing this blog challenging.

Addis seemed to attract fascinating eccentrics from all over the globe, all with weird of wonderful tales. The Austrian researching the sticks Ethiopians use as toothbrushes. The French graffiti artist, fluent in Amharic and the world’s only white azmari (traditional Ethiopian minstrel who sings freestyle about the audience members and current affairs). The group driving three Morris Minors from South Africa to London on the way to the 60th anniversary celebrations. The Dutch woman trained in hostage negotiation helping street children. The French street performers preparing for a fire show. The three Brits setting up a perma-culture ecolodge in the south of the country. The alcoholic Saudi Arabian who loved America at around four in the afternoon but generally hated them by about ten in the evening. Two of the three Russian cyclists we first met on the boat from Egypt to Sudan who were hating Ethiopia, having had rocks hurled at them as they passed through villages. The Japanese farmer who wanted to introduce bamboo to the Ethiopians. The British journalist living in Lebanon researching tobacco and ch’at. The part time DJ from Dalston searching for source material. The Frenchman who had single-handedly rediscovered Ethiopian jazz of the 60’s and 70’s (as can be heard in Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers). He was in the process of organising a music festival steeped in Romanticism. One of the performers had not been in Ethiopia for fifteen years after he sought political asylum in America. He was found working as a petrol pump attendant and had agreed to return for a one off performance.

Politics and music were hot topics in the ch’at and coffee houses during our stay as the country’s number one performer had been locked up just before the election. Apparently this is a repeated theme, the governments of Ethiopia have had some bad experiences with their more feisty song writers. Teddy Afro was in court on the charge of a hit and run murder and everyone had an opinion on the matter, far beyond the information found in the papers and very deep into their imaginations. It was a welcome break from talking about Arsenal, Man United and Chelsea (and in the cases of some wild cards, Liverpool).

Knowing where to go out in Addis was a tricky business. We had to base it upon the advice of those who had tried and tested before us. On Toby’s birthday the decision was made that FreeZone would do for dinner, Harlem Jazz for some music, then wing it from there. FreeZone turned out to be the place to be, a courtyard of people posing, posturing and doing their best to catch the attention of the waiters (in Ethiopia waiters are very possessive over their tables, if you catch the eye of the wrong one you normally get a blank stare). Everyone was having fun and it was a relaxed place to be but everyone was showing off a little too much. Harlem Jazz proved to be the place for some genuine reggae. Many of the ‘twice as nice!’ band members came from Shashamane – the spiritual home of the Rastafarians and sang of Selassie, repatriation, Jah and Bob over lolloping and scatty rhythms that made all of the white people dance like idiots. We made the schoolboy error of asking a twelve year old taxi driver where we should go next. We were taken to the notorious Memo Club where women outnumber the men 4-1 and the ugly ones are turned away at the door. The flaw in this seemingly perfect club was that they were all prostitutes. Fat, bald, sweaty Chinese businessmen lounged on sofas draped with women while UN types ground against women in mini-skirts. However, the saviour of the dance floor came in the shape of an Indian man wearing a sweat band and sporting one hell of moustache. He pointed to the DJ to signal that now was the time for his song (the one where bhangra music is played over the top of the Night Rider bass line). He picked a point when the dance floor was empty. He circled round pointing to people in the crowd then erupted into a flailing masterpiece. It turned out to be good fun, once we had established with the women that their services were not required they were very cordial and referred to themselves as our sisters and we all had a good dance. We never quite got the hang of the Ethiopian shoulder dancing (which randomly interspersed the 50 Cent and Timberland tracks) but we gave it a bloody good go.

Addis was not a place of attractions. The Derg Monument near the Post Office was an imposing monument to Communism and intriguing in its incongruity. The Millennium Square celebrated the Ethiopian Millennium with a giant metal dove and the flags of most of the countries of the world. Then there was Selassie’s palace and the ethnographic museum, which did have some good photos of British soldiers who were stationed there, as was Toby’s Great-grandfather, and the tribal habits of the Ethiopians of the south. Then there was the church housing the body of Haile Selassie and his wife (that is if you are to believe what the ‘bomboklat’ minister tells you – Rastafarians believe him to be alive but in hiding) with its mural above the altar depicting Selassie’s moment of transition from mere mortal to super hero. It was at his speech to NATO that his words became prophetic, he foresaw and warned them of WWII but no one was listening! The truth of the matter was that although these sights were distracting, Addis was far more about drinking amazing coffee and reasonable beer and chewing the cud with anyone and everyone. This sensibility seemed to rub off on those people passing through and left the city crackling with chatter.


What was treacherous about Addis’ streets was the moral threat rather than a physical one, as culturally Ethiopians did not seem inclined towards crime. We were told how children come to the city looking for easy cash. If they are not female or not pretty enough to be a prostitute they are taken under the wing of a Fagin character who in many cases purposefully disfigures them, in order to improve their earnings. From a roof top café one could watch a mother sending her toddlers out to targeted individuals. We saw a man lying on the street with what looked at first glance, like a pink sweet stuck to his belly, hence the flies. It seemed like a cruel trick to play on someone so destitute. On closer, and completely innocent inspection it turned out to be the membrane of some internal organ which had ruptured through the skin. The Addisians reaction to these people was one of resolute acceptance. We watched as two blind people collided in front of a bus queue. They were locked in an awkward embrace, maintaining there respective sales pitches – the man calling upon the name of Selassie and tapping his white stick, his face almost entirely burnt away and his white eyes bulbous. Her calling upon Jesus and shaking a handful of change up and down rhythmically. People from the bus stop quickly and quietly righted them.

Addis’ merkato is dubiously given the title of Africa biggest market. It covers a huge area but what is a shop and what is a market stall is hard to tell, and where it starts and ends it also unclear. What is clear is that it is a dirty, noise life-filled headache. Everyone was bustling to get to their bargain and out again. Inside one shop / stall we bought honey. It was a high ceilinged and dark hall filled with musty smells. Huge sacks of butter, honey and dried fish were piled high. The shopkeeper scooped handfuls of honey into a plastic bag, gently conducting the flies around him. The place was alive with bargain hunting women preparing for the end of the Easter fasting. As Easter approached the goods became in higher demand and the prices rose and this was apparently the best time to buy.

We were lucky enough to be in the city during the annual film festival. The Africa Spelling Book whetted our appetites for Kenya as it was a film made by an NGO which had given cameras to Nairobian street children and told them to produce short films about what Africa meant to them, based upon the letters of the alphabet. The driving, upbeat feel to the films set in slums were thought-provoking. It was easy to forget that although these places may be a mess, they are also people’s homes, in which they go through some the very same sagas as people in environs more familiar to us.


During the night the city felt very safe. When we visited the Habasha Restaurant for a treat we dined with the Kenyan diplomats and were treated to the most spectacular shoulder dancing we had seen to date. The dancers moved their necks and shoulders independently and into impossible contortions, flicking their heads around like ping-pong balls. Members of the audience (generally older Ethiopian businessmen) would periodically go up and give it a go, then stuff cash into the pockets of the performers. Miraculously nobody suffered from whiplash.

Another dance performance was on a whole new scale of weirdness. It was a variety act at Concord Club which involved a dance narrative performed by a man and woman. The man is a drunk, saved by the power of love. The climax of the show is the man playing the woman as a variety of musical instruments. The most eye popping being the piano. He laid her legs in the splits position across his lap and pressed her thighs and feet as if they were keys. When a bum note played on the musical accompaniment he went straight for the groin. We later saw the same performance re-enacted on the TV. They are clearly quite a sensation.

Another night’s entertainment was advertised to us as ‘traditional’ which turned out to be quite a stretch of the imagination. It was a fashion show watched by Addis’ great and good, with a camera crew there ready to film our awkward grins. Between designers the entertainment included a stand-up comedian who we suspect may well have been using us, as the only two white audience members, as source material. There were also three far from coy mistresses in Lycra performing a very ‘special’ dance routine. This all took place on top of one of the city’s tallest towers in the modesty titled Cloud 9 Café...

It was all a lot of off-kilter fun.