Nairobi, my residence between 2018 and 2022, is full of Somalis: Village Market, the upmarket mall in northern Nairobi close to the German expat enclave nicknamed „Sauerkraut Hill“ was not only busy with Western expats but teeming with Somali shop owners and shoppers alike. Eastleigh, justifiably called Little Mogadishu, is the part of Nairobi where at least a hundred thousand Somalis lived and shopped. By many Nairobeans it was somehow feared as an extremist hotbed. I loved strolling there for its palpable energy and as a great place to eat delicious camel meat. Both places, Eastleigh as well as the Village Market, show the great entrepreneurial spirit of the proud Somali diaspora whose homeland has been unfortunate that its various clans can’t stop fighting against each other since 1988 – some analysts say, generously funded by the international community,No wonder that my two trips  to Somalia have both not been a cakewalk. In January 2021 I arrived at Somaliland’s Hargeisa airport and was surprised that the Foreign Dignitaries arrival lounge at the airport of a country that is not allowed to exist was so posh. The air in the lounge was fragrant with frankincense and myrrh. 

The name of the road into the city center, Independence Avenue, bore witness to the great dream. Qat stalls mostly painted in green, full of men with inflated cheeks who hang around on the floor were at every corner. Qat causes greater sociability, excitement,, and mild euphoria – even when independence for Somaliland was on serious countries’ agenda. Chewing qat also causes loss of appetite but since we did not chew qat my travel companians and had to eat our first camel steak. It is low in cholesterol and high in important minerals like iron, potassium, and magnesium.

From Hargeisa we drove on a dirt track that connects the “capital” with Djibouti. We passed through a dramatic, almost blank landscape of black mountains, deep canyons, dry wadis, interspersed by an occasional camp of nomads and caravans of camel trotting quietly forward. The landscape reminded me of the trip with my former girlfriend to Yemen in 1996 on the other side of the Gulf of Aden. Just the villages were not as picturesque as in those days in Yemen.  We reached the village of Garbo Daadar only at sunset, after a tiresome 8-hours-drive for just 200 kilometers. As usual in areas with hot daytime temperatures of almost 40 degrees Celsius life was just about to commence. Now, after the evening prayers, the entire village seems to be afoot, strolling down the sandy main street, palavering in their aggressive gurgling Somali. Later my travel companions and me went to a food stall and enjoyed liver and onions in a flatbread – simple but delicious! The night was short. Sharp at 4am the muezzin called for the first time. At 5.30 he called again. But he did not only call, this time he gave a full sermon. The local colleague of the World Food Program explained told me about the message: It was just a wake-up call.

Along and through different wadis we continued our journey until we stopped at Waraabe Dareerey, the “village of hyenas”. In recent years the villagers had experienced the consequences of climate change: In 2015 and 2017 the area suffered a severe drought, the villagers had lost more than a 1000 livestock. A year later the cyclone Sagar caused extreme floods.  A tragic “Perfect Storm”. The village elders said that not even their grandfathers had reported those kind of floods. one villager lost all his camels in the floods and went mad, started to lash about like crazy. Without appropriate psychological treatment the village could not better help itself than by tie the poor man permanently up. He now lived under a thorn tree on the outskirts of the village.

1200km further south in Mogadishu the challenges were different. Once proudly called the “white Peatl of the Indian  Ocean” thanks to its elaborate white Italian colonial architecture, the city is now more of a nightmare: Full of derelict buildings falling apart by decades of neglect or more likely, ripped apart by one of the many bomb blasts, run by the rivalry of its clans and Al Shabab rather than by the government, it’s a huge no-go-area for explorers like me. I can not think of any other city where I felt as insecure Like alll expats and organizations who have rather unsuccessfully been trying to convert Somalia into a happier place to live, I was fortunate to sleep within the heavily fortified international area of the Mogadishu airport, well guarded city  Even a jogging path went around, passing for miles the Indian Ocean. For those with the keen idea of a swim, a fitting sign read: Beware of sharks!

But there is hope: When Overtourism finally will has conquered all other parts of the world, there will be one last man standing: Somalia! With its dreamlike, deserted Indian Ocean beaches south and north of Mogadishu, its marshlands between the Jubba and Shabeelle Rivers, and it’s age-old frankincense forests in the north lit will once be talk of the town at the ITB Travel Trade Show in Berlin.

Insh Allah.