From Miami to Mogadishu; from blues skies, pastel perfection, grilled red snapper, key lime pie and margaritas to blue skies, a bombed-out cityscape, warm beer and boiled goat (the main dish in ‘the Dish’).
From Miami to Mogadishu; from blues skies, pastel perfection, grilled red snapper, key lime pie and margaritas to blue skies, a bombed-out cityscape, warm beer and boiled goat (the main dish in ‘the Dish’). No question Mogadishu could use a lick of paint and a spot of rebuilding. I drive through it in the back of a Casspir, a landmine-resistant armoured personnel carrier belonging to the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). This place makes Kabul look like Manhattan. Clan-based warfare has ripped Somalia apart for most of the past 20 years. Twenty per cent of under-fives suffer from acute malnutrition — 15 per cent constitutes an emergency, by international standards. Half the population requires humanitarian assistance. Life expectancy hovers around 50 to 55 years. A jihadist insurgency now threatens to make Somalia the sun-kissed destination of choice for al-Qa’eda. One day, they might get over all this. In the 1970s, it was tourists, not deluded Muslims, making a beeline for the sensational coastline, the longest in East Africa. I have been camped a few hundred yards from it all week, in a sand-filled tent just off a runway. The swimming is much better than Palm Beach.
If anyone is a victim of textual harassment at work, it would have to be Major Bo-Hoku Barigye, the charismatic Ugandan spokesman for Amisom. He reckons he has received 900 abusive text messages from Al Shebab, the local terrorists in this neck of the woods, in the past two months alone. Most threaten to kill him.
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