Green and aware in Somalia. Letter from Baledogle
A reminiscence from my first visit to Somalia

December in Somalia can be unexpectedly green, at least inland from Mogadishu along the 100 km tarmac road to Baledogle. There are crops growing, there is grass and, beside the road, water lies in the hollows made, possibly deliberately, by the road builders years ago. Only the road-blocks armed by the young men, the one burning village ('just local clan fighting’) and the shattered town of Afgoy remind you of the violent past on a journey to or from the airport, one of three used by international agencies.
It was in December that we went early to the airport to catch our flight to our next destination. Gentle reader, you are invited to compare my pre flight experiences with yours in other places and consider how, even in Somalia, there is an awareness of some of the issues which concern us all, namely safety on the roads, consumer power in face of poor quality goods and last but not least, the preservation of the environment.
We left Mogadishu in two vehicles: one carrying the passengers, hired by the organisation we worked for, the other carrying four young men with guns, hired by the owner of the first vehicle, to protect our vehicle. We shall see the value of these young men later in this story. We drove at a fairly fast rate through the outskirts of Mog (as it is affectionately called by expatriates) diverted through Afgoy town because an endless camel train was crossing the bridge and I for one was delighted to recognise there the solidarity of people in the shape of the Bosnia Tea Room which has, appropriately perhaps, one wall blown off.
After Afgoy we returned to a speed with which the driver was comfortable and rocketed off towards the airport gaining energy from the frequent need to accelerate towards the armed youth at the road blocks, who were, it seemed, all capable of divining that we belonged to that category of vehicle which did not have to stop. This divining was done in the split second between our being spotted overtaking a lorry slowly approaching their barrier and the moment one of the youths was galvanised to raise the pole for us. Given that our vehicle looked like all the others and that we were coming out of the rising sun this was a remarkable experience. So we gained speed, we overtook everything in sight, even if the road was occupied by a lorry or a flock of sheep coming towards us, followed faithfully by our gun-persons, who all happened to be male, though there was no objective evidence that females have been excluded from this particular career opportunity.
Our driver, though, was aware of the responsibility, of his position and, as we approached a slight curve in the road, not, to my eyes, any worse than many we had previously taken with no reduction of speed, he turned and informed us all that; it was very important to slow down at bends. He may, possibly, have eased off on the accelerator a little though, since, he was not looking at the road at all, as he reminded us of this important part of highway code, I was not quite sure.
Baledogle Airport is one of the three airports serving Mogadishu. Like much of Somalia, Baledogle, a former military airport, does not have a single intact building, having pounded by force or another before, during and after the civil war. It is also littered with shattered and twisted vehicles and occupied and patrolled by a number of young men with guns.
We were aware that the chance of airport catering being available was fairy low so we stopped at the last village to buy canned drinks and doughnut without the whole like cakes known throughout East Africa as mandazi. When we had arrived 1 had thought hard about the canned drinks (imported from the Gulf), being worried about suitable and ecologically sound disposal of the can, but a quick glance around the airport premises convinced me that there was enough unrecycled material in the way of downed planes, dead tanks, other vehicles and bits of buildings to ensure that the can would for now not be noticed and that it would be recycled when the great clean up eventually started. In fact there had been enough waste of material (not to consider lives for the moment) at Baledogle alone to wipe out any of the gains made by recycling projects in half of Europe. As it turned out the can was swiped by a small boy almost before it hit the ground. He would probably turn it into a beautifully-made model Mig, to be sold in Mog to expatriates interested in traditional crafts.
At the airport there was a hitch. The militia who controlled the entrance would not let us is in. Apparently they had not been paid and it was their intention, we were informed, to shoot down the first plane that tried to land if their grievances were not settled. Since the first plane was likely to be the one coming for us this was not a little worrying and held, perhaps, more significance than the usual airport delay since we had no way, until the plane was much nearer, of telling the pilot of the 'reasons beyond our control' which would oblige him to return to Nairobi. So we sat at a tea shelter intending to wait for the plane to come into radio distance.
We shared our drinks (not too long expired') and started on the mandazis. They were unprepossessing in appearance and foul in taste and the consensus among those who knew was that they had been contaminated by aviation fuel (the cooking fuel of choice for anyone living near the airport). This abuse of the travelling consumer exercised our gun-people greatly and it was only when the thud of anti aircraft fire started that we remembered why we were there.
Think of the range of sounds at a busy airport, such as Heathrow. You can hardly hear the planes for the zing of cash-registers, the soft-tones of advertising and the ker clunk of the specialised three wheels working trolleys employed. The sound of an anti aircraft gun is not usually what one hears. What a rare privilege therefore to hear to hear this and directed, possibly, at ones own plane.
I got back to my office in Mandera one day to find my colleague Roger who worked for UNICEF telling me about an incident in the small town he had just come from in Somalia. After an altercation over allocation of project funds to one sub-clan or another, shots had been fired and, Roger said, some were meant for me. A faction had thought Roger was me and shot at him. Luckily I wasn’t there to be shot at.
Violence exists in Africa and it has certainly got worse over the years. It is not just a perception. In my first years, I rarely heard of a murder or of a robbery with guns. Just last month two of my colleagues in Goma were attacked by seven armed men in their house.