Herds of camels and blue plastic bags stuck to thorny bushes gird the road from Ethiopian border to Somalilands capital Hargeysa. The Ethipoian visa is under new legislation issued only for three months. Easiest way to extend the visa is to take a trip to a neighbouring country.

Long and strenuous journey took us to he town of Berbera by the memorably picturesque gulf of Aden.
With 3,5 million people Somaliland is a country neighbouring Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia and is about three times the size of Estonia. In every reach of the city there are building bombarded to ruins which vary with huts with roofs crafted out of pieces of cloth. First floors on the ruined building have been turned into „new homes“ with handy materials. It is hard to believe that from the horrors that took place here over twenty years has passed. If there wouldn’t be cheerful cries of „Hello! Where do you come from“ coming from the ruins and goats and sheep walking about everywhere it would be hard to believe that it has been peace around here for twenty years. Refugees returning to homeland have brought along the white mentality from Europe that begging is not going to make anybody’s life better. Due to the lack of legislation making money is also much easier than in Ethiopia. Local currency exchange means a heap of money in the middle of the street.

Contrary to Ethiopia, where money is always expected from white folk and promises are never kept a week here has been completely opposite.The breath of fresh air that we came here for has truly been given to us in triple amounts. Coffee is not drinked in this country. Everywhere you go it is replaced by the Somaliland tea with camel milk. Chat (young sprouts that contain stimulants) is being chewed here all day long and and every once in a while mouths are rinsed with the camel milk tea. The harder twigs and stems are of course thrown onto the streets. These with the cardboard boxes lying around are the only food for the goats. Truly an exceptional sight to see goats eat cardboard. There were huge amounts of this stuff on the sandy streets. A privilege for the camels walking freely about was to eat the lower branches of the trees. Since the country has no government there are no roads connecting towns and cities. The nature has with wind and sand and with a little help from the human hand arranged something similar to a road into the deserts. While in Ethiopia women can walk around with their hair uncovered then here we had prepare ourselves for a new culture. It is one hundred percent Muslim state and a white person here is even more rare than in our hometown of Soddo, Ethiopia. What was surprising though was, that the many people we spoke to knew of Estonia and even our capital. The reason probably being our similar historical backgrounds. We were welcome everywhere and joyous of everything that was different from Ethiopia.

Having been eating injera for four months in Ethiopia all the food we had here was particularly tasty. The cuisine is a mixture of Arabic, Turkish, and Mediterranean cuisines. On every corner there was a pot boiling camel bones, rice and pasta. In the mornings veal pastries fried in oli, in the evening corn and lentils with hot boiled camel milk. Whether the local menu varies, remains a question. We had tried everything we could in three days. A few times we had to pace away from the food pot to keep your appetite for the next few days. After obtaining the visa, in good health and richer in knowing yet another culture we started our journey back to Ethiopia.

MERLE

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