The Skin of the Earth

.....but there is no food!

If there were water

And no rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among rock

If there were the sound of water only

….

But there is no water

(T.S. Eliot: Waste Land)

I still remember the day, one of my colleagues told me, she was asked in an interview what type of food she fell in love first in

Somalia

. I tried to digest this question for a long time, to figure out, what I would have said, if I this question had been posed to me.

First, yes, we eat food - almost always. Second, yes, we fall in love. Third, yes, we fall in love with Somalis - sometimes. Fourth, do we fall in love with food? And fifth - do we fall in love with Somali food? I did not find the answer easily. Therefore I tried to encounter the question from different angles: What kind of food do I eat, is this food Somali, do I love it,  what kind of food do Somalis eat, and in which way does the Somali food coincide with the food that I eat and do I love the intersection?

To start with the first question, as a vegetarian I am a little bit limited, so in Borama I mainly ate cornflakes and oats, coming from England and Dubai, with milk from Dubai or Yemen, rice from India, Spaghetti from Italy, boiled with tomatoes from Ethiopia, sometimes with white bread made from wheat probably traded from WFP food aid supplies to Southern Somalia. I calculated that actually every meal I consumed travelled about 50 000 food miles. Then, what do Somalis eat? For breakfast they eat loxo. To explain what it is, some describe it as a Somali injera, but it is not fermented like the Ethiopian injera and therefore not sour, in hotels it is called Somali pancake or crepe, but in the hotels it is also not the same as the home made one. If it is nutritious it is made from sorghum flour, if it is less nutritious, it is made from wheat or maize. Loxo I like very much, but it is almost impossible for foreigners to get hold of it, since preparation takes a long time, is done very early in the morning and therefore is almost exclusively available only within Somali families. Since I was teaching also nutrition, I tried to encourage students to eat a lot of loxo from sorghum and not to be tempted by useless Western food like cornflakes. No need for that, since none of my students had ever seen any cornflake in their life at all. Next question: how do Somalis eat the loxo? Actually the most common way is, to pour very sugary tea on it and cut it into small pieces with a spoon, until it becomes almost a paste. Because there are so high diabetes rates in the country, I told the students not to use so much sugar. There is a rumour, that Somalis get 50 percent of their calorie intake from sugar. I did not believe that, however, after my neighbour told me, for her family of 19 persons she buys monthly 75 kg of sugar, also after I consumed all that tea, about which one of my Somali colleagues joked that it should better be called a syrup, I believe it now. Usually Somalis do not only eat sugar and loxo, they also eat the very tasty Somali rice with raisins, meat from goats and camels, and drink the almost magic "caano geel", the camel milk, which apart from its numerous medical values is said to make you feel happy and free, and which in fact made me feel happy and free. Yes in fact, there is meat in town and sometimes camel milk, imported food and also goat meat and camel meat.

Then, why do Somalis consume so much sugar? Here the food story almost finds its end. The answer is: there is hardly any more meat and milk, especially in the rural areas. There is no food at all. There were three consecutive droughts, people are watching their livestock dying and their water points drying up. Where there were grasses, they are covered by sand dunes now, due to heavy sand storms in the Xagga season, the windy dry season. Where there are still trees, their leaves are old and hard and no more palatable for livestock. Livestock is the food of the nomads, stored as a mobile entity which is fading out more and more with every day without rain. But there is no rain. There is an emergency call by FSAU for the whole country already since June. There are richer people, who can buy some food on the markets, like we expatriates and richer traders, farmers and pastoralists, there are some places in the Northern parts, which have received some rains recently and recovered. The majority of the rural areas has remained dry. . In these areas there is also no food on markets to buy even for wealthier people.

Then, where is the food I could fall in love with?

My Neighbourpoor

My house in Borama was located outside the centre at the edge of the village. My neighbours were the richest ones in the area, owning quite beautiful large villas in Arabic style, which are actually necessary to accommodate the usually large Somali families. Other people in Borama were living in these nomadic-type igloo-like constructs which are partly house, partly tent, built within half a day from wood and old fabrics. When I asked who was living there I was usually told it were Oromo refugees.

People are usually blind, and expatriates are usually blinder than normal people, and maybe I am the blindest of all, but I only realized that such an igloo was directly beside my house after I had been living in Borama for half a year. The fact why I had not discovered it before, was that it was hidden behind a fence in the front side, and that I never had walked at the backside of the house, because I hated to be followed by these SPU policemen who were “protecting” us, therefore I usually did not walk much.

Nevertheless one day after work we found an old man lying on the street. He was lying there because of weakness, unable to walk to his destination. We took him in our car to bring him home. He actually turned out to be my neighbour, living in that igloo-house directly beside my home. It was obvious that he was merely lacking food. I went home and brought him all the food I had. I am not sure if he even could eat it, because it was mostly tinned and factory-made food from

Dubai

he probably had never seen. Therefore I tried to give him additional money. He rejected. I found about 7 young children sitting opposite in a clay house, obviously his grandchildren, guarded by their grandmother. I tried to give the money to the grandmother. She rejected.

Then there was Eid. The Islamic habit at Eid is to slaughter a goat and to share the meat with poor neighbours. I thought my great hour had come. I would buy a goat – and since I myself am a vegetarian - share it among the watchmen of my house and the poor neighbouring family in that igloo. I told the idea to slaughter a goat and give the meat to my “POOR!!” neighbours to my driver, he was enthusiastic. We bought a goat from one of our SPU, who was running a small livestock husbandry and hired somewhere a man who did the slaughtering. Everything was accomplished within half an hour. Then it came to the point of dividing the meat. I asked my driver to help me with the distribution, especially transferring it to my “POOR!!” neighbour, since I could not speak Somali. “No problem,” he said, “ we will distribute to your neighbour poor!”. Swiftly he prepared various packages of meat for various stakeholders, distributing them to various villas around my house, one richer than the other, especially to his sister opposite. Before he took away the last package I stopped him, and I told him, the meat was mainly meant for my “POOR!!” neighbour, the old man, we once found on the street and his grandchildren. “Yes,” my driver said, “all your neighbourpoor will get a package.” Finally I understood. “Neighbourpoor” was a new word creation by combining the word “neighbourhood” with the word “poor”, allowing all neighbourhood to benefit from the blessings of distribution and redistribution according to the sayings of the Koran. Now I know better. When I want to bring some gift to a poor neighbour, I have to say: “I want to give it to my POOR NEIGHBOURPOOR!”

Radioactivity and Who are Modern Pirates?

Knowing someting and seeing something is different.

I am reading the book "Marie and Blanche" by per Olov Enquist, about Marie Curie and her assistant Blanche. I only just started the book, which says Blance was a beautiful woman, but she ended her life with a body without legs, and without her left arm, which had become the victim of her devotion to research on radioactivity. The book also reports that during that time many cosmetics had been produced with nuclear substances, leading to the deaths of many hundreds of people - caused unknowingly.

It reminded me about the nuclear waste deposits in Somaliland which I heard about, both on the land and in the sea. Usually Somalis justify their profusive pirate attacks by these alleged nuclear deposits, or pesticide deposits. Actually, I am aware that the West is using African countries as a waste deposit, and especially countries without much governmental control like Somalia are especially palatable for these kinds of activities. I just found it a lousy excuse for piracy. I also cannot say I am impressed that pirates seem to create the most job opportunities, which are even announced in the newspapers, I am also not impressed that they even pay taxes from the profits they make, and I am also not impressed that they get the most beautiful women, because they are the richest men.

Then, one day I stepped into one office. The director had a beautiful colonial map about pastoral movements. He said, for three years during the civil war he stayed in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. They did not have any material, so they gave them old documents to wipe their mouths after eating. The colonial map was one of these documents for wiping their mouth, but he put it aside. I really was shocked, I said this map is very valuable. He said, he put other documents aside, of which he showed me some. One was an agreement between some British colonial officers to send ships with nuclear waste to Somaliland, which was signed in the sixties - knowingly. I almost fainted.