Mogadishu

I’m finally back in Somalia after a break for the holidays (and a couple of breaks of my bones). It’s been good to be back. I’m always torn about coming here. I don’t like being away from family but I enjoy being with the team here.

This trip as been limited to just Mogadishu. I needed to get my visa renewed and attend to a few things at our main office. It’s likely that, security permitting, I’ll venture out to field sites on the next trip. I was informed that one of the major media outlets is interested in possibly visiting to cover the drought so that may end up being the focus.

With the complexities of Covid, some challenges with immigration, flight irregularities, insecurity, etc., heading out on a trip such as this is usually fraught with uncertainty. In the end, the travel went relatively smoothly. Admittedly expectations are quite low.

As is my luck, while we were chatting just outside the airport compound, a car hit me from behind. The rear bumper hit me just above the back of the knees and I fell backwards onto the trunk/boot of the vehicle. I rolled to my left and proceeded to land back on my feet, still facing my colleagues. I don’t know what it looked like to others but to me the whole thing felt sort of smooth. That may have been the case since the fixer leaned over, slammed the back of the car with his hand, giving the driver a dirty look, and the conversation continued unabated by the incident. Not a word was said about it.

* * *

view of the ocean, modest as it is

Once in the vehicle, we proceeded to exit the airport compound and head to the office. For the first time in five and a half years, I wouldn’t be returning to the office/guesthouse where I’ve spent so much time. A couple of months ago, we initiated a switch to a new office. The former one sat adjacent to the compound of a former president – someone currently active in Somali politics. As such, over the years he kept beefing up security on our road to the point that it became impractical for us to continue staying there. The property was also uncomfortably close one of the most attacked checkpoints in the city. After considerable search, we finally found a new building. The move happened a few of weeks ago and now I would be seeing it for the first time.

After a short drive on the main road, we turned down a dirt side street. It reminds me a bit of downtown Dar es Salaam many years ago when only the main arteries were tarmac (only Dar didn’t have the excuse of years of civil war to blame). As we made our way, we had to weave through about a half dozen cows munching on some roadside rubbish. No boom gates, cement barriers or young guys armed with AK47s. Just cows. I liked it already.

There was, however, a gate, boom gate and armed guards to enter the compound. That’s standard in Mogadishu.

The compound looked clean and nice. Some of my team were waiting in the courtyard when we arrived. I was provided an immediate tour of the place. Similar to our previous building, the facility consists of two main floors of offices with a guesthouse above. What’s cool is that there’s another room on the roof that is destined to be a workout space (with possibly other uses). Best of all is that there’s a view of the Indian Ocean – something that was missing in our previous building. It’s not a massive view but it’s not bad. You can even see waves crashing up against the rocks. Never underestimate something like that for one’s mental health, particularly here.

* * *

Most of the meetings have taken place at the office. I’ve been away for a while so there seems to be a lot of interest in small or individual meetings to sort out issues. I sort of feel like a village elder sitting under a mango tree receiving villagers as they present their various requests. There’s a part of me that would prefer to be out under a mango tree rather than in our guesthouse living room. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice space, but I would love to be outdoors.

The caveat to that is that it’s hot here. It’s not so bad in the shade and there’s quite a bit of wind which helps make it bearable. But the wind has its downside. Because so few roads are tarmac and you have quite a few unbuilt spaces, you get loads of dust and sand in the air this time of year. Directly above, the sky is bright blue but as you shift towards the horizon, it become a dark beige color. It stays that way the whole day, even throughout the night. I cleaned my laptop screen this morning and a couple of hours later I can already see a dusty layer has already accumulated again.

* * *

Usually when I come, I can get away to a restaurant, like the one at Lido beach. It doesn’t make sense this week, both because of limited time and insecurity has been an issue. It may need to wait until the elections are over. I did get out for a meeting with our lawyer followed by a short visit to a nearby café. This place is located near the airport and has good security. Being in the office/guesthouse after a while can be claustrophobic. Heading to the roof and seeing the view is nice but it’s even better to go someplace different. I sat with a colleague and we had a Somali tea. I don’t have it every day. I tend to prefer a traditional English tea mid-afternoon but Somali tea is quite good. It’s basically crushed ginger, cardamon and cloves boiled in the water for about a half hour until the flavor is fully extracted.

The bit where I often draw the line is with the milk. Somalis generally prefer camel milk in the tea whereas I tend to go with cow’s milk (though I think camel is healthier). The difference is partly flavor (camel milk is stronger and has a somewhat musty taste) and partly intestinal. The less you’re accustomed to camel milk, the greater chance of it working as a laxative. I’ve seen visitors power down a glass of camel milk with the smug I’ve-been-around bravado only to see them end up frequenting the loo over the next few hours. Proceed with caution.

* * *

One thing that strikes me about meeting after meeting after meeting with staff is how this mosaic of conversations begins to form an overall image as to what is going on. I do a tremendous amount of reading about the Somalia context from people of different clans and different socioeconomic backgrounds. Prior to the internet, it was generally the upper strata of society that could get published or be included in publications. Nowadays you can get yourself heard on Twitter or other platforms with limited resources. I dedicate a certain amount of time each day/week to perusing all these news sources. I find that the divergence of opinions in the virtual world is reflected in these conversations with staff. One might express with considerable certainty the reason such and such happened. On the heels of that conversation, someone else will say, with as much certainty, that something else was the cause. If you keep asking the same questions, with all the various nuances, the mosaic of answers seems to create a more reliable image of the overall situation. The challenge is that it takes a considerable time investment. 

 

* * *

Back to work. Nice to take a break and do something besides meetings and emails. But now, duty calls.

Space Invaders

The new year has begun and we’re more or less back to our routines. The drought is worsening in the Horn of Africa and I’m in the thick of work on humanitarian response. The girls are back in school. The cast that was on my right arm is now gone and I’m on the slow path to recovering my mobility and strength. I’ve done this several times before but it seems a bit slower at this phase of my life. It’s okay. I don’t mind the challenge.

* * *

After successfully traveling back to Kenya, we shifted quickly to the work of getting over jet lag and preparing for work/school. The former hasn’t gone so well. I’m not a good sleeper even in the best of times so when faced with jet lag, it’s often a question of whether the lying awake is caused by my normal insomnia or if it’s a matter of adjusting to the time zones. Added to that, almost immediately after arriving I came down with a bad cold/congestion. For me, sickness always exacerbates jet lag.

As with a lot of sicknesses these days, it always raises a yellow flag as to whether or not it might be Covid. The symptoms I was dealing with were more or less consistent with those communicated as being common with the Omicron variant. Though we were all PCR tested the day we left the US, according to the CDC, it can take a couple days before someone will test positive. So I could have contracted it, for example, at the Louisville basketball game or passing through a store (even though I have been masked whenever out and about). Even though everything seems to be sped up with Omicron, it’s unlikely that I would be symptomatic from picking it up during the US travel, where PCR tests and/or vaccines are not mandated, given that it was too recent.

We did a couple antigen tests over the span of a few days and they were negative. So it appears to be a common cold. I was almost hoping it would be Covid given that the symptoms are manageable, it might build me some antibodies and it would go away after a while.

* * *

Given all the dramas with the current new variant, the girls’ school has been in hot debates about starting off the year in class or online. Given the success of the school’s pivot towards online education in 2020, I was a bit puzzled to see the pushback from some parents about they possibility of going online for a couple weeks or so. Apparently some teachers are impacted by related travel complications (canceled flights trying to get back to Kenya) or have contracted Covid and are not able to travel. This whole thing is inconvenient for everyone but, as Priya told the school Whatsapp group, people need to exercise a bit more grace during times like this.

In any case, the girls are back to online school for now. There’s an upside to living where we do when normal school is happening. But our urban apartment is less attractive when the pandemic flares up.

Kiran and a classmate are using our dining table and Kinaya took the office. My office is on work from home status so Priya and I ended up being pushed a bit to the margins. I opted to spend a few hours here and there in cafes to carve out some space which isn’t terrible. There are loads of good coffee shops in Nairobi. It wasn’t the end of the world but thankfully school returned to “normal” and I have my office again.

Indiana/Louisville

Flying to Louisville mid-morning is both good and bad. It’s good that you can wake up at a decent hour but the downside is that you arrive late. Not only that, the later in the day you flight, the greater the chance of being impacted by some sort of airline delay that happens in the country during the course of the day, particularly in winter. Such was the case for us on this occasion. In the end, our arrival was delayed by over an hour.

they kinda know their way around airports

We had warned family that it would likely be past midnight and discouraged anyone from meeting us. We would hop in our rental car and meet up with them the following day. Alas, our plans were foiled as we arrived at the rental counter to find no one there. In fact none of the offices were staffed. An airport employee told me that generally they close at midnight. That was news to me. The rental company never mentioned it. I’d even received a reminder of my rental from them just a few hours before showing up to find no one to provide us a car. Moreover, I worked in the car rental business for several years and any reservation that was tagged with an arrival flight number, we would wait for the plane to arrive. It made business sense since you would make more off the rental than you would spend on keeping the office open an hour or so later. 

In any case, we had no car and it was approaching 1am. We checked into Uber but that would have cost us $150. Finally, knowing that Priya’s mom was awake, we called to have her drive the half-hour or so to come pick us up. We felt bad but we had limited options.

* * *

Having made it to bed at 3am, the following day would begin rather slowly. Thankfully we didn’t have any urgent events to attend so we took it rather slowly. It wouldn’t last long given that Christmas was two days away and we need to finish up the necessary errands. Again, we hadn’t done the holidays like this previously so we needed to adjust accordingly. We would be in high gear for a couple days and then hopefully downshift after the 25^th.

That’s sort of how it went though I don’t think there was any downshift. One thing that makes a big difference is that, unlike in Idaho, we would be in the same bed each night. That lessens the stress considerably.

 

 

The weather was considerably mild. One day it was around 70F/21C and I was in shorts. As with Idaho, larger gatherings didn’t happen (though we would bend our own rules and attend a couple of large events). Christmas was low-key but very nice. We attended a couple of church services, one of which would definitely qualify as a large event. The other, definitely not. For the former we assumed there would be a number of anit-vaxers and masks would be in short supply so we took necessary precautions, sitting near the rafters and avoiding the thick lobby traffic. It wasn’t ideal but we apparently came out unscathed.

Christmas Eve

Over the course of the time that we were there, we went to the Speed Art Museum, to a play at the Derby Dinner (though Priya and I only had the dinner part) and a University of Louisville basketball game. We took the girls bowling (again, something I was unable to do) and the family all got together for a bridge walk over the Ohio River, something that was much more pleasant given the mild weather.  

Derby Dinner - A Christmas Story

Louisville v. Wake Forest

Living in Nairobi, we don’t have the pressure to shop before we return as much as we did when we were living in Bujumbura. We’re able to get more or less what we need. There were a few things that we needed to pick up, partly because they’re just cheaper, but it makes it easier not to have a dozen bags.

view of Louisville walking back to the car

Given the need for us to arrive in time for the girls to go to school on Monday, we opted to travel on Dec. 31. I’m not a big celebrator of New Year’s Eve so it didn’t matter to me that we’d be in the air as 2022 began. Given my inability to sleep on a plane, it guaranteed that I would be awake this year for a change. I will say that it’s a bit strange given that it wasn’t clear exactly when the new year began for us since the plane is moving in the opposite direction of the rotation of the planet. Also, it can depend on the route of the plane given that time zones bend in some places to accommodate the preferences of the respective populations. At one point I tried to figure it out where we were when it was our 12am. I came to the conclusion that we were likely over one of the most sparsely populated time zones of the Atlantic, GMT -2. Admittedly, unimportant information.

Early in the flight, the KLM attendants announced that it was midnight in the Netherlands. They took a moment to do a rather stilted waltz through the plane wearing New Year’s hats, they played a Dutch New Year’s song and later served champaign. An enjoyable moment of levity given that the Dutch aren’t really known to be that playful.

I think the real travel miracle, other than the fact that all the bags arrived, was that we made it at all. Apparently 2,500 flights were cancelled the day we traveled, mostly in the US, due to weather and Covid. The only such impact we experienced was that we were delayed at the outset trying to get out of Louisville due to staff shortages. There were gaps pretty much everywhere, from baggage handlers to the people that guide the planes in and out. Given how long we sat on the plane, the pilot announced that he was on the verge of allowing us to disembark until it got sorted out. Not long after that, however, the plane began to roll and we were on our way.

* * *

Now back in Nairobi, we had a day to adjust to jet lag a bit and unpack. The Kenyan summer weather is sunny and warm. The snow seems like a distant memory. Work and school beckon. Back to reality.