“…scorched, inhospitable terrain across the very northern tip of Somalia…Actually it is part of Somaliland…In physical reality it is a long way from anywhere…It was dangerous then and it was still dangerous when I visited the area. Literally to ‘lose’ your skin or your testicles was no longer very likely, but…”
- Somebody Else; Arthur Rimbaud in Africa 1880-1891 by Charles Nicholl, describing Rimbaud’s caravan route from the Somali port of Zeila up the Ethiopian highland to Harar
We were heading in the other direction, by land rover not by camel- down from Harar to Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland. An older gent from Texas and I had bought an ice chest of beer before leaving Harar, and we each had a bottle of scotch in there too. We knew we’d have to clear customs and switch vehicles at the Ethiopia-Somaliland border, but didn’t think much about it.
We should have remembered Somaliland’s strict prohibition on alcohol. But it was an easy thing to forget, especially after we had driven past the three story mansion rising up like a painted palace out of its scruffy mud hut and concrete block neighborhood in the town of Jijiga that belonged to Ethiopia’s biggest qat merchant, much of which he sold across the border. If they could chat and chew, I figured we could drink and drive.
A Somali porter carried our group’s gear across the no man’s land gap between the border posts and set it on inspection tables. O brother, this looked pretty official to me. Tafteesh kamil, as they say in Arabic- complete inspection.
Border guards in other parts of Africa love rummaging through tourist luggage, especially if they think it belongs to ladies and they might find, accidentally on purpose- with a “just doing my job, move along, nothing to see here” kind of excuse- a scanty top and bottom or two. But apparently not here.
Just as they were putting hands on the ice chest, I blurted out, Don’t touch that, it’s full of ladies’ underwear. Their grasping hands suddenly recoiled as if they’d heard a viper rattle its tail. The captain who spoke English asked a follow up question…”For how many women?” “A lot,” I answered, “for all the expat ladies in Hargeisa.” Knowing how much his country depended on international NGO income and expat development workers to keep the economy afloat, he waved the chest and all the rest straight through.
