The Horn of Africa

Addis is a breath of fresh air after Dubai. The land is green and hilly. It's 19 degrees and overcast. Earlier, it was pouring rain.

 

Before I left, I found a note on the internet describing how to get to the Somaliland Liaison Office here in Addis. The process involved finding the Awraris Hotel, which is across from the St. Gabriel Hospital, and then walking 200 meters down the dirt road that adjoins the hotel, turn right, walk another 200 meters. You'd come to an unmarked house, notable only because it has doormen. That's the spot.

 

As it turns out, this is no longer true. The new Somaliland Liaison Office is an unmarked compound in an entirely different part of town. I called one of the mobile numbers that Edna -- the founder and director of the hospital I'll be interning at -- gave me before leaving and seven stops for directions later, my taxi driver and I managed to find it.

 

As we arrived, there was a man standing at the gate, waiting to be let in. He and I started talking and he asked where I was from. When I told him I was American, he said, "You people need to not confuse Somalia and Somaliland." I told him I knew the difference and, as we walked into the compound, he gave a short run down of the history of Somaliland and how they deserve independence because they've held many elections, have laws and social structure, etc. It's all history I've been reading prior to this trip, so when he paused for a moment, I interjected that Somaliland has been stable for 15 years. He smiled at my knowledge of the history and shook my hand as we parted, me into the visa office and him into another building.

 

Inside, I was given a visa request form to fill out and told to return at 10a tomorrow because the consul was in an all-day meeting and he was the only one who could issue visas. I was a bit disappointed, having hoped to secure the visa and started heading east today.

 

As I walked out of the compound, I ran into the man from the gate again and he asked me what happened. When I explained the situation, he frowned and walked back to the visa office with me and spoke with the woman there. As it turned out, he was the Minister of Agriculture for Somaliland and got on his cell phone and called the consul on my behalf. Ten minutes later, the consul showed up with an entourage of business men, signed a visa for me, and then shook my hand and said, "Welcome to Somaliland!" as he left.

 

The first rule of travel is: be nice. The person sitting next to you on the bus might be a warlord. And the person standing outside the unmarked gate might be one of the countries ministers and have a lot of pull.

 

With my visa in the bag, I hopped a local bus for 40 cents and started heading across town toward the bus station. It was too late in the day to catch a bus, as it turned out, but I bought a ticket all the way to Jijiga for 66.55 birr.

 

The basic size and shape of getting to Hargeisa overland is: Addis to Nazret to Dire Dawa to Harar to Jijiga and then cross the border at _______ (I'm not sure) and then on to Hargeisa. When I mentioned to Edna that I was going to go overland, she said that people did it, but she wasn't sure how it would work for foreigners. I guess I'll find out in a day or two.

 

In the mean time, I think I'm going to go track down some delicious Ethiopian food before it gets dark. Oh, and it's true what they say about Ethiopian women: they're beautiful. Smiles, butts, boobs, sass, fashion of every sort in a rainbow of colors. They work, waitressing, cleaning, handling money, moving, shopping, arguing, bumping into and pushing past men. They're present in a way that stands in contrast to women in, say, Afghanistan or Dubai. In the former, they're invisible, like ghosts. In the latter, they're veiled child-minders, wholly ignored, set apart from "normal" society.