Mogadishu Madness

Mogadishu drama started at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. I showed up at 6am for my 8am flight. At the entrance to the check-in, I am greeted by 5 Somalis, 3 women and 2 guys, with the luggage of 10 people. Chaotic, loud and all over the place. I decided to leave them to their business and rushed to the check-in to avoid the madness. It said on my check-in card to report at gate 3. It turns out, gate 3 is at a place not fit for humans. A room at the end of the airport and in what looks like a basement, where unwanted ppl are shoved.

The room has groups to 3 destinations: Mogadishu, Libreville, and Kinshasa, all the loud and trouble-makers of Africa, lol. We wait and wait in a hot and stuffy room. The 2 other groups are called and the rest of us, mostly Somalis, wait with no information of why our flight is delayed. Every time Mogadishu is mentioned, even tho it is an announcement for the private flights like UN and EU, most of the ppl in the room rush to the gate and are stopped by one of the unhelpful gatekeepers and told to ‘please sit and wait some more’. Around 9pm, we finally get called and my colleague, who is based in Mogadishu and does this trip often, warns me to stand close to her as it gets ‘real chaotic’. It took me few moments to understand what she meant. Bus 540 parked outside and even tho they have announced they will send a second bus if this one filled up, the men just rushed into the bus like it was the last one standing! I and my colleague were at the front of the line so we managed to get in and it was fascinating to watch how the men behaved. We were about 10 women and more than 80 men. Out of the 10, half of them had children, some babies. The men did not seem to care and rushed passed them to help themselves into the seats, I was shocked! So I asked the flight attendants why they don’t first let women and children get in. She says, “Sorry we expect the men to give up seats for the ladies with young children”,  right. One young man stands up and asks the others to kindly give up their seats for the women with children. Few reluctantly get up and the women take the seats, some of them get the children to sit on the floor of the bus. It is amazing how insensitive and selfish this whole thing is and am thinking, people are acting like this for a seat on a bus that will take 2 minutes to the plane, how would they act if there was a serious crisis?! It gave me a taste of what might be ahead in Mogadishu and I didn’t like it a bit.

We board the flight and take off shortly. Interestingly, during the flight, the women are loud and vocal, talking like they are in a meat market, shouting from the back to speak to someone at the front, lol. So the men are aggressive in action and the women in words, interesting.

We arrive in Mogadishu an hour and 19 minutes later. Last time I took this trip in December 2004, there was no airport, just tarmac and men with guns. To my pleasant surprise, there was a proper airport this time, with clean and proper tarmac and an immigration control. We had to wait for few minutes for some VIP politician to get off first and meet the official welcoming committee, who strangely were allowed inside the airport and were in a file outside with flowers! OK, at least no guns so am not complaining. Few minutes later, we get off and are escorted into the immigration room. I notice a lot of AU army presence, including women dressed in military uniforms and with no headscarf. Mogadishu is sunny, hot and humid, a contrast to the weather we left behind in Nairobi. The immigration room is packed with 3 disorganised lines, there seem to be no different lines for nationals and foreigners. So we join a random line and much later notice, there was a separate women’s line! Good thing we didn’t see it sooner. We fill arrival form with the Somali flag, I am mildly impressed that there is a proper airport, immigration room and now a form, nice! Lol. 

There are aggressive guys who come upto you, they can sniff a fresh fish from miles, and ask if you need help with filling the form?! Visa is one thing, now you get help to fill a form by someone who looks like he needs to go back to primary school, how did they master the art of filling an immigration form? Amazing miracle. We tell them, no thanks and try to stay calm in the sweaty hot and unbearably loud room. We get to the front of the queue and the guy smiles and takes my passport and 50USD visa fee. This is the friendliest welcome I get at any airport! Few minutes later he gives me back my passport and a receipt and says since you are Somali, I won’t stamp your passport! What, you mean I get a say in whether I get a stamp on my passport or not, damn, I feel proud to be Somali, lol. Seriously tho, this means a lot right now, coz that is the last free page on my passport and if he doesn’t put a visa on it, it means I can come back without having to reply for a passport for least 3 more times! Finally, something good comes out of being a Somali, lol. He also tells me I can get a Somali passport in few hours! Damn, I should have come here much sooner.

We get out and the nice work driver is waiting outside. He picks up and drives like 5 minutes to the hotel, with a car full of heavily armed militias following us. I can’t stand these guys and avoid eye contact with them. Luckily for me, that is the last time I see them until I am leaving Mogadishu.

Is Allah really gonna solve the Somalia problem?

In an answer to the common and passive Somali response to any tragic event in Somalia: " "Ilaahay ayaa Soomaaliya u maqan", which translates roughly into "Allah will find a solution for Somalia." Here is what Idilay had to say: "Allah got his plate full with Syria and the US elections…Somalia is not on this year's agenda. Try next year...There's an opening between Palestine and 'I don't give a fuck about Africa." LMAO

Dear reader, if you are a Muslim and offended by this, I understand and thank you for your tolerance to visit this blog and read the rant. However, no point in going ahead and quoting me a chapter from the Quran. Coz it won’t make a difference, so don’t waste your time. Just trying to make sense of this madness.

On the hunt for a missing exit stamp at Jomo Kenyatta Airport

Half a day spent with the nice ppl at Nyayo House searching for my multiple visa application, which seemed to have gone walkabout...Go to room 15, no room 19, no room 27 on the lower floor, no room 32.

2 hours and 4 rooms later, I get a letter with “sorry your application has been rejected”! Because, wait for this one, our system doesn't show evidence of your exit! If only I was invisible for real. But wait, don't you have copies of my last 7 entry visas and exit stamps? Yes we do but there is no evidence on our computer system. And why is that when I am always made to go thru security and my passport is scanned? Well mam, sorry but there is just no evidence of your exit and there is nothing I can do. Your only option is to reapply on your next trip. Can you at least give me back my application which has like 20 documents. Sorry mam, we can't do that, you need to get all those documents again.

And then room 15 smiles and says: I tell you what, now that I have met you in person, I can fix that problem. Yeah, how? Resuscitate the dead computer with my scanned exits? No, just bring a completed new application form with the supporting documents and I will “fast track” the application for you so you will get the visa before your Sunday trip! Er, thanks a million, but this sounds just a bit off. Because you have met me in person you are no longer concerned I turn into an invisible alien when exiting the glorified kiosk that is Jomo Kenyatta International Airport? Well, thanks mam.

I am traveling on Sunday and can’t wait to sneak past the heavily guarded 4 immigration booths with cameras, digital finger-print machines, computers and immigration officers with life-or-death expressions permanently fixed on their faces.

Somalia's Presidential Requirements - To apply, you must meet ALL of the conditions bellow.

DO YOU HAVE THIS?

CAN YOU DO THIS?

DO YOU WEAR THIS?

DO YOU HAVE THIS PHENOMENAN?

NOT THE LAZY EYE, THE FACIAL HAIR?

CAN YOU BREATH WITHOUT THIS?

If you have said yes to ALL of the above, then Somalia urgently needs YOU this August. You can lead this nation from disaster and suffering to peace and prosperity. Submit your Presidential candidacy urgently to President@OstrichNation.com

"Do they know it is summer...In Africa"

Dear pale and chopped-skin fellow humans in winterland, we have been following the news of this serious situation you are in and we have decided to extend a hand from a land called “Africa”.

The sun is so bright here you won’t survive without a smile, sunglasses and a chilled glass of rose by the sea. We hear u guys have to wear miserable grey suits to work in inhuman conditions, we can’t imagine what a winter + grey suit does to your spirits, poor things. But not to worry, we will do all we can to help you free yourselves of this misery. We are organising a charity concert: "Do they know it is summer…In Africa" and we are sure we can raise enough sun and warmth to cure your depression, miserable grey suits and pale skin.

Lots of sunshine and warmth from Africa.

First honest piece I have read about the endless Somali conferences on peace.

Saving Somalia? - Reflections On the Last 20 Years, and the Upcoming 'London Conference' [analysis] / African Arguments 08.02.12 by Richard Dowden


If I were a Somali I would thank Allah for the pirates. For more than 20years the world has stood by while successive civil wars destroyed thecountry, killing hundreds of thousands of people by bullets, disease andstarvation and reducing what was once a prosperous land to a war zone.

Butthe seizure of more than 200 ships by kids with guns in small craft haschanged all that.Britain, for whom shipping and trade around the Red Sea and the Gulf arevital national interests, has decided to take action. Pirates, thegovernment has realised, cannot be stopped as long as their land bases arenot ruled by a government. But on land the government is under attack fromIslamic fundamentalists who are recruiting and training terrorists. So a political solution must now be found for Somalia. So declared WilliamHague, the Foreign Secretary, clad in flack jacket and helmet, in Mogadishulast Thursday.

The search will begin at a conference in London on February23rd. At last.And what a conference it will be. Some 40 heads of government have been invited to Lancaster House. This was where traditionally former Britishterritories negotiated their independence, but in a curious irony ofhistory, this conference will instead discuss the take-over of Somalia. At least that is what the Italians, the former rulers of southern Somalia,want.

Somalia has been at war since the late 1980s when rebel movements foughtthe government of Siad Barre. He fled, but then they fell out with eachother and the country broke up. The North West, the old British-ruledSomaliland, re-established that state and declared independence. The rest of the north, Puntland, is also relatively peaceful and rules itself butawaits the re-establishment of a Somali state. So does some of the centre. But in the south and the capital, Mogadishu, there have been only twoperiods of peace. One followed the American invasion in 1992 after thefirst famine. But after losing 18 members of special forces - the BlackhawkDown incident - President Bill Clinton pulled out the US force and stopped supporting UN peacekeeping there. Somalia was left to stew.

The second peace period was a few months in 2006 when a united massuprising threw out the warlords and their rapacious armies. Governance wastaken over by local Islamic courts which gradually formed themselves intothe Islamic Courts Union. For a few months people were able to walk thestreets safely. Peace reigned and trade and investment began to flow. But with US support, the Ethiopians, who have no interest in a strong united Somalia, invaded, broke up the courts and installed a warlord as president.The wars resumed.

The cost of neglect has been immense. According to a recent report from theCenter for American Progress, a Washington think tank, the death toll fromthe wars is between 450,000 and 1.5 million and some 2 million displaced.The accumulative cost of Somalia's collapse has been more than $55 billion,including $22 billion from piracy. $13 billion has been spent onhumanitarian aid which is almost matched by the estimated amount Somalisoutside the country send back in remittances.

After the Ethiopians were forced to withdraw, the world handed Somalia overto Africa. Never has the phrase "African solutions to African problems"been used so cynically. Ugandan and Burundian troops under an African Unionflag, died protecting a few square kilometres of Mogadishu in the pretencethere was a government there to protect. There wasn't.

The so-called government lives in luxury hotels and apartments in Nairobi. According to a recent audit of the Somali government in 2009 - 10, 96% - yes Ninety Sixper cent! - of direct bilateral assistance disappeared, presumably stolen by corrupt politicians and officials. An official report by the UN Monitoring Group said: "The endemic corruptionof the leadership of the Transitional Federal institutions... is the greatest impediment to the emergence of a cohesive transitional authority and effective state institutions."

But it is these people who will becoming to Lancaster House on February 23rd. At the same time we know thatin much of Somalia there are very strong civil society organisations led byhighly respected men and women. They however will not be invited.

So perhaps the first thing this great conference should do is apologise tothe people of Somalia for ignoring their plight for so long. The second isto usher Somalia's professional politicians into the garden or off to smarthotels and bring in some Somalis who really represent the interests of thecountry and its long-suffering people.Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society.

Lost and found

I lost my bag on Friday and realised an hour after leaving Junction that I had left it in the ladies! Asked the taxi driver to turn around and while we were driving I mentally prepared myself for the worst and started thinking of what I could live without. I had my purse with almost no money, camera with so many pics but could live without, few ID cards with inconsistently spelled names that are incriminating, health insurance card, make-up (am trying to do the lady thing) and my beloved tweezers...I would chase someone to hell and back for these. I bought them from the Body Shop about 5 years ago and have had them in my bag ever since, I take them with me everywhere. They come handy, they are tiny, do a great job and come in cute case. I don't do much of beautifying but I believe in basic maintenance, like no old-Arab-man-look eyebrows and few hairs sticking out of my chin! I tend to rub my chin when talking or thinking and sometimes in the middle of a date, I feel a hair sticking out of my chin, eff...I excuse myself and go to the ladies with my emergency kit and pluck the annoying thing and all is well again. People come and go, I move coutries and change jobs, but my tweezers are loyal and I couldn't imagine life without them.

While driving back to Junction in the mad Nairobi rush hour traffic, I got a call from a colleague
with the message that a lady found my bag and has taken the trouble to call 3 people before finding my colleague using her Tanzanian number! Imagine that? This city famous for both violent mugging and petty theft and my bag lying in a public toilet for nearly an hour before someone took the trouble to track me down. I met her, an English lady working for Save the Children in Dar with her Tanzanian partner and their 2 kids. Gave her a big hug and offered to buy them drinks but they were in a hurry. I will meet them in Dar or Nairobi one day and we will have a drink, the least I could do to thank them for their kindness.