A day in the the life...weekday mornings in Hargeisa

During the week, my day typically starts around 5:30AM, after I have hit my alarm for the second time, noticing the silence after the prayer caller has let go of his microphone. Our week in Hargeisa begins on Sunday and runs through Thursday.  The regional office in Nairobi runs on a Monday to Friday schedule.

I have managed to continue to exercise four to five mornings a week, but usually just 40 minutes of yoga or 30-40 minutes on the treadmill. The past two weeks I have been mostly doing yoga videos in the morning because without the voice from my heart rate monitor program on my iPod nagging me about which heart rate zone I am in, it is hard for me to motivate to spend any more than 30 minutes running in place on the treadmill. I am trying to motivate to get another 15-20 minutes of workout time in by waking up with the prayer call around 5am, but no luck yet.

After exercising, the faucet games begin. I have lately spent about 15-20 minutes of my shower time attempting to find a bearable water temperature, somewhere between scalding my skin and freezing my butt off. The game also includes the ever-present reality that messing around with the faucet will often lead me to the same place it recently has each morning…a bucket bath. Somehow lately no matter how I attempt to coax a steady stream of water from the shower head that might actually wet my hair enough get it clean, my efforts have been in vain. This week in particular the fight with the shower head has usually ended with me using the faucet to fill up a plastic pitcher so that I can finally get clean and get to work.

After that battle, I look for some culturally appropriate clothing for work, which for me in Hargeisa usually includes pants, a long tunic to cover my offensive behind, and a scarf loosely wrapped over my head and around my neck to keep me from looking like a harlot. Since my wardrobe is rather limited, deciding what to wear is an extremely short process.

By the time I am dressed, I have “porridge” with flax seed and raisins hot on the table, along with some hot water for tea or coffee, juice, ground coffee in the French press, tea bags, honey and milk, if I want them. Yes, I am that spoiled. Nura (Nuriya) is Ethiopian and is working for us at the moment, cleaning, cooking, and generally being amazing. She keeps the house clean (and in order) and does things like surprise us with kettle corn and Ethiopian coffee on a Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, Somalilanders (and their government) view Ethiopians like many Americans view Mexicans in the U.S. and therefore won’t grant her a work permit. It seems that they believe that the Ethiopians are stealing their jobs, increasing crime rates, and generally disturbing the peace. As a result, we can no longer have her working for us, in order to maintain a good relationship with the government, and she will have to leave in about two weeks. 

After breakfast, whoever is at the house gets picked up in a DRC car to head to the office. There are four of us at the house now, two Americans, an Estonian, and an Australian. However, virtually every week someone is traveling for work or leave. So, it is usually just two or three of us headed to the compound, which is about a 10 minute drive, depending on traffic.

Driving to work is always an adventure, as most of the cars are British, with the wheel on the right side of the car. However, the rules of the road are at least, in theory, American. So, you will see all the drivers in the vehicles on the far side of the road, using their passengers (on the correct side of the car for right-side driving) to help them navigate.  As one might expect, even though there are “rules,” people don’t generally follow them. There are a lot of people cutting each other off, people passing vehicles while honking at the people on the other side of the road to steer clear, even though they don’t have the right of way. There are many games of chicken as well, with drivers speeding up towards on-coming vehicles in order to pass the vehicles in front of them and thus far, darting back to the right side just before impact. It pretty much looks like mayhem with cars all over the road attempting to pass each other, get ahead in the traffic line or to avoid speed bumps, potholes, people, goats, donkeys, a herd of camels, children, or parked cars. Never a dull moment in Hargeisa. ;)

Perspective

I was watching one of my favorite programs, The Stream, on Al Jazeera last week when I noticed that one of the guests was dressed a bit oddly. The Stream is an interactive program that has live guests, and guests on video chat who call in via Skype, to discuss a particular topic (i.e. the uprising in Syria). It is televised, as well as streamed over the web, with the conversation starting on the network channel and moving on-line for an extended discussion at the conclusion of the televised portion of the program. Throughout the show the hosts pose questions they have prepared, while facilitating the discussion with additional questions from participants from the various media sources (Twitter, Facebook, Skype, SMS, etc...). The show broadcasts from a studio at the Newseum in downtown DC.

So, I was watching the program and attempting to listen to the input being given by the guests via Skype, as well as from the in-studio guest. The in-studio guest was a woman. She was dressed in long black pants, wearing a black, bulky sweater. I couldn't tell if she was wearing a turtleneck or if she just had a scarf wrapped around her neck, but I was just struck by the amount of clothing that she was wearing. I was watching her and was so confused by her outfit. She seemed to have so many layers of clothing on, but she was in America. I couldn't understand why she was buried under this over-sized black sweater in a country where she didn't have to cover. I was staring at her and trying to make sense of what I was seeing on the TV.

Then I saw the street scene outside. The wind was whipping around the flags in front of the building next door to the studio. The ground was wet. It was cloudy and dark. The streetlights were on outside. After a bit I realized it was February, in DC...and it actually dips below 50 degrees there in winter. The woman was cold. She was just trying to keep warm, not conforming to some cultural norm. It is funny how quickly your perspective changes when you get outside of your cultural norm. :)

Chewing

Prayer call is a beautiful thing, but not in Hargeisa. Our prayer callers sound like drunk men trying to "out shout" each other with mouths full of cotton balls. It is possible they are drunk (yes, it does happen - even in Hargeisa, Somaliland), but also likely they have a mouthful of khat.

Khat is the local drug of choice in Somalia, a leafy stimulant similar to amphetamines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat) that is chewed seemingly incessantly by a majority of Somali men. More and more men are apparently chewing khat in lieu of doing anything else. Some have said that the increasing numbers of men spending time chewing khat has become an epidemic, only contributing to the myriad of other problems the country is facing.

Even if khat isn't destroying productivity, it may be destroying some Khat in Somalia, kola nuts in Mali, beetle nut in Burma, or coca leaves in Bolivia...helping people the world over speed up their tooth loss, or general mouth decay, one little old man (or woman) at a time.