Remembering a trip I took to Berbera, Somaliland in 2016. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Part 1: Safari

The investment conference was over. Most of the expats were in the lobby of Hargeisa’s Mansoor hotel checking out. They settled their room bills as discreetly as possible, hunched over the front desk with wads of American cash. If a guest asked for change they were given a large stack of Somaliland Shillings that they stuffed into worn envelopes or tucked into a money belt.

Donny, the forum’s solar energy expert from Colorado, was eating a Somali pancake in the dining room adjacent to the front desk. When I arrived for breakfast, he waved me over and I sat down.

“I’m staying a couple of more days to check out some of the panels they put up at the university. How about you? Going home today?”

“No, I’ve been assigned to a project out in Berbera tomorrow,” I said. “I am getting some footage of the fishing companies we work with. I’m making a video for the foundation’s website.”

“Ah, that’s on the coast, right?” said Donny. “I’ve been wanting to get in some scuba diving this trip. How do you get there, do you take a bus?”

I looked back at Donny. Being an American in Somaliland, a breakaway region not recognized by the international community and shown on most maps as part of Somalia, one does not simply go to the beach on an impromptu scuba diving trip, let alone take public transportation.

“For the record, Somaliland is one of the safest places I have visited in Africa,” I told Donny. “Generally, I feel welcomed by the locals. Nonetheless, there are certain rules you have to follow as a Westerner.”

I went on to explain that ever since a group of Australian tourists were kidnapped and executed by Al Shabaab in 2001, visitors to Somaliland traveling outside of Hargeisa must be accompanied by an armed security detail. My visits to the region required me to take a two car convoy.

“In the vehicle up front, there is a driver and two government soldiers; although, depending on where you are in the region, these guys could just be part of a local militia. Also in the front of the vehicle is the lead security expert, a plain clothes agent who runs intelligence with the European firm that manages everything and is the face of the security team to clients.”

The clients — me, usually accompanied by a Somali coworker, rode in the back seat of the second vehicle.

Donny was undeterred.

“Mind if I tag along?” He asked.

Around that time, Amit, a Somalilander and business development specialist with the foundation, came to the table. We would be traveling together and he would help connect me with the clients to interview in Berbera.

“Is it okay if Donny comes with us to Berbera?” I asked him.

This made Amit visibly nervous. It was bad enough that he had to keep tabs on one American, let alone two.

“Let me ask A–,” he replied.

Amit walked off to a corner and made a series of phone calls. After a while he came back to our table.

“It’s okay,” he said. “A– says Donny is a guest of the foundation. He can come too.”

Shortly after, the three of us were squinting in the sun outside the hotel as we packed our luggage into Mo”s SUV.

Mo’ was the most trusted driver I knew. He was in fact a private hire but worked with the security team at the special request of the foundation. It was a good thing too. Our security acted preemptively and often with their own agenda. Mo’ was older, wiser, more professional, and able to stay cool in a crisis if needed.

Once, on a previous trip, we were driving back from a filming a farmer tend to his bees. It was east of Hargeisa, when we came across a matatou on the highway. The young taxi driver was flirting with a girl in the front seat, one of the many passengers in his sedan. He got bold and started showing off to her by weaving his car in between our two vehicles.

In reaction, the SUV with our security team quickly sped up into the other lane until it was parallel with ours. Then the plain clothes agent raised a fist out the window and Mo’ grasped it from his side. Together the SUVs blocked the road and slowed to a halt. Immediately the security team got out of their vehicle, pointed their kalashnikovs at the taxi, and yelled at the driver in Somali. A few punches were thrown to teach him a lesson and then we were back on the road to the hotel.

The security team arrived at the Mansoor and gave a brief wave from their vehicle. There were a few smiles exchanged but no further introductions between us and the nameless serikales. Then we exited through the double-guarded gates of the compound and drove through the bustling city streets.

As we meandered out of town we passed donkeys pulling water carts and goats with their owners’ phone number spray painted on their sides. The security team guided us to a roadside market so they could buy khat.

Then we drove to the outskirts of Hargeisa to a modern-looking gas station to fuel up for the trip. I went inside and bought sodas and cookies branded in Arabic packaging and dispersed them amongst the team. Our security drove ahead to get us clearance at the city’s checkpoint, an old rope strung across the highway, manned by a few sleepy guards dressed in fatigues. 

Finally we were out of town and in the desert.

The way was dotted with pristine boarding schools and mosques that sparkled with new whitewash. They were gifts to the Somalilanders from the Saudis. We passed the two hills that are the symbol of Hargeisa and affectionately nicknamed the “breasts” of the city. Now we were in the countryside.

Villages along the highway were populated with the traditional nomadic-style domed homes, created with branches, animal hides, and colorful plastic tarps. Donny remarked he was pleased to see small solar panels. They were propped up on jerry cans on the side of the road and connected with cables to charging cell phones. 

A woman in the distance herded camel. We turned the bend and passed a monument to the Mad Mullah. Then the sun dipped down into the horizon, smoldering slowly, growing bigger, and blisteringly brighter as it neared the edge of the earth. Then someone in the vehicle remembered that it was June 21, the summer equinox, and we all took out or phones to capture the end of the longest day of year.

In the gray light we passed the tall, solemn wind turbines near the airport and the long gated road to the port before arriving in the ancient town of Berbera.

Goats bleated, the smell of petrol and charcoal lingered; megaphones broadcast the call to prayer from atop minarets; heat mingled with dust; minivan taxis honked. People idled on the sides of the streets taking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and chewing khat.

And then for a fleeting moment, there were no buildings on one side of the road. The bareness exposed the fisherman’s harbor. On that particular evening the setting sun cascaded yellow and pink light that refracted in the gentle chop of the water. Then it disappeared behind the fish market.

All went black. The SUV’s turned their lights on but little could be seen in their arcs except big clouds of dust as the road turned into dirt and the landscape ran somewhere between desert and beach.

With the town in the distance, we traveled through a gate with the Mansoor Hotel sign on top. The road got dark and lonely. Finally a light appeared through the scrub and illuminated a group of compounds, some under construction. At the end of the road was a police barracks.

The security detail pulled up to our vehicle, said a few words to Mo’ then drove off in the direction of the barracks where they would sleep. Mo’ turned off the road and into the security checkpoint of the hotel. Silhouettes in the headlights barked out orders through the gate, Amit leaned over and relayed the guards wanted us to remove all of our belongings from our vehicle.

Security was strict in these parts. The Mansoor Berbera was more locked down than its sister accommodations in the capital. Before I left the United States, our security advisor at the foundation sent me a press clipping. It had been forwarded along by an intelligence analysis group with a militaristic acronym for a name. The story was about an Al Shabaab threat to our hotel that planned at around the same time as my visit. It’s not because the hotel was a popular Western tourist destination, far from that. It happened to be a favorite spot of the MPs and different government ministers and military leaders and, thus, a target.

The security advisor, a British retired admiral with a penchant for hostage negotiation, laughed off any attack on the Mansoor as unrealistic. The barracks were right next door, Al Shabaab were far off in the Golis mountains to the East and they had little capacity to strike. To the admiral, it was the equivalent of a crank call to the media. That didn’t exactly settle my fears nor apparently the hotel guards, who unpacked everything in my three bags, inspected my camera equipment, and asked questions about any contraption I had with a battery.

Donny didn’t pack so light either. Together, he and I were a picture of American gluttony: pale, pudgy, and burdened with too many electronics and too much performance gear. Amit on the other hand went through the gate in a heartbeat, having only packed a small, sensible gym bag with a change of clothes. Then the guards looked under our vehicle for explosives. After it was determined clear, Mo’ was permitted to pull up to the other side of the gate. We repacked our bags and put them back in the trunk.

The guards closed the gate with a clang. We were safe at last inside the compound.