The Horn of Africa

The Horn of Africa

Another trip, another blog. This time it's the Horn of Africa. I don't know why, exactly, except that there's been an interesting undercurrent of news about the HoA for months, even years, now and it's piqued my interest. It's like that old Beatles lyric, "...but I just had to look, having read the book."

I'm flying into and out of Addis Ababa. For those of you who never had chickenpox while in grade school, and thus no opportunity to memorize all the countries and capitals in Africa, that's the capital of Ethiopia.

I'd like to visit the churches at Lalibela in northern Ethiopia and I feel strangely drawn to Mogadishu, the "capital" (sort of) of Somalia proper. I'd love to poke around the Mog for a few days and get a real feel for what it's like on the ground, but it may be too dangerous to do so.

The only thing concrete is that, at some point in the trip, I'll spend two weeks as an intern at a hospital in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. Somaliland is a breakaway republic in the north of Somalia which declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 after a decade-long civil war. Today, there isn't a single country in the world that formally recognizes its independence.

If you had chickenpox before 1991, you're off the hook for that one.

posted by daviduri @ 12:17 PM