Egal International Airport - little more than a pot-holed asphalt airstrip on the outskirts of Hargeisa - looks architecturally like a post-war British airfield. Walk through into the "arrivals lounge" and there hanging on the wall is a bronze plaque declaring that "This building was opened by HRH Duke of Gloucester in 1958" - just two years before Somaliland became the third African country to gain independence from the British. It was for a few days an independent state before forming a union with neighbouring Somalia, a former Italian colony...a move Somaliland has since regretted and, it the mind of its people reversed, but which the international community seems hell bent on continuing to enforce.
Thick clouds of cigarette smoke and loud, animated conversation filled the immigration hall. Waiting for me with a grin that exposed his three gold-plated front teeth was Yassin, better known as Yankee Kilo in Hargeisa circles. He grabbed my passport, ordered me to sit and duly returned five minutes later with the visa. Normally on this continent a country with few visitors charges top dollar for a visa. Not Somaliland, though, which demands an almost apologetic $20. From there I was shown towards a Toyota Landcruiser and onto Hargeisa's roads that don't appear to have seen a new layer of bitumen since the civil war.
The city of Hargeisa was razed to the ground during the late 1980s as Somali forces loyal to the military dictator Siad Barre repressed Somaliland's bid for renewed independence. 95 percent of Hargeisa's population fled across neighbouring borders. They could only return in 1991 when Barre was toppled and Somalia began its descent into state-collapse.
Hargeisa needed re-building from scratch. The West turned its back on Somaliland, which turned to the diaspora for help. Many of the people on board my Ethiopian Airlines flight had connected through Addis Ababa from the US. "For a family to survive you have to have a family member abroad" my neighbour Abib told me. He set up the first remittance agency in the US for Somalilanders and said the diaspora in the states sends home some $7 million a month.
Hargeisa is now bustling city of one million people, or at least it is in the mornings and evenings. In the afternoon it is like a ghost-town. Empty. All the men are inside chewing Khat, a mild natural stimulant...but I'll save khat and the colour of Hargeisa for another day and leave today's post as a brief history to the city.
quite some positive news,thanks for the post!
Posted by: Nairobian Perspective | June 06, 2008 at 05:14 PM
What the great it is!Hargiesa is what exactly you talked about. To me, this is not only brief,it is more! Keep on writing about us as fair as this.
Posted by: Abdikadir D. Askar | June 08, 2008 at 09:38 AM