SOMALIA - March 2006

Jambo from Kenya, folks!

Well, all here is good. Here's something for you to read when you're bored
on a Friday... This may be a mother of an email but I promise it's
interesting, and with pics for those of you who don't read and write too
good.

Wed 15th March - Been in Kenya for 4 days now. My plans have changed and I
can no longer go to two of the offices I planned to in Somalia as one was
evacuated 2 weeks ago, and the other just 2 days ago, after I arrived. The
first place, Garowe, was a political thing, with fighting and killings
between 2 politicians and their militia groupies, when one overthrew the
other. We were renting one of their houses, and were therefore a target.
The second was yesterday, in Belet Weyne, where one of our guards shot
another one (whom he had been playing cards and eating CHAT with all night)
all because he was late back from his breakfast. He shot him dead, right in
the staff house I was going to tomo... Weird, eh? This "chat / gat" stuff
is a leave that makes you really high. Around 80% of Somali's chew it.
It's like ecstasy, apparently, making you feel euphoric, happy and awake,
and you think you can solve all the world's problems. You also suffer from
cum downs too. Maybe why that guard shot the other one dead in the morning,
when he ran out of gat / chat. Now the dilemma is if the guy has the cheek
to turn up and report for work.. We can't have a murderer working for us,
but last time we sacked someone, 45 armed militia took over our office...
Not good! The guy is on the run for a couple of days though until the clans
talk and the family of the deceased decide if they will accept dia? /
monetary compensation (100 camels or the equivalent in cash), or if not, if
the deceased has brothers or an adult son, they have the right to bring him
out in public and kill him right then and there for all to see. I will
never understand traditional Islamic justice.......

Thursday 16th March. So, my day began with my alarm going off at 4.15am,
after only getting to sleep at 1am. Tired, sick and baggy-eyed, I took a
shower, grabbed my bags and left for the airport, to catch my flight, put on
by ECHO (EC Humanitarian Organisation) who along with the UN and Ethiopian
Airlines who are the only people brave enough to fly into Somalia. On
arrival I think we were the first people there. There was a special
unmarked check-in desk, and after protocols, I went through to wait on my
plane... Standing in the queue of 12 people at the gate, I suddenly
realised that I needed the toilet, and on enquiry, found that there was none
on the plane. But the Kenyan lady helping us assured me she'd show mw where
to go near the plane. On reaching the plane on the airstrip, I discovered
why. The Fokker plane was the size of a small bus (picture attached). I
actually felt quite important as it looked like a small private jet and I
got talking to some of the other NGO workers and they were telling me about
the evacuation procedures and how many times we've had to evacuate, and what
to expect etc. I was excited. Anyway, the "place" I had to go was basically
a bit of grass next to the plane in the middle of the airfield. Lucky I
didn't suffer from stage fright .. what, with 13 others standing watching
me.... not this time anyway... 10 minutes and a very bumpy take-off later
we were in the air and on our way... I decided to catch some Z's and slept
for the next 3.5 hours.

When I awoke we were coming down through the clouds into the Somali desert.
Barren, dry, hot with the odd bush... is how I'd describe it. It was bumpy
as hell, and a couple of times I was sure we were gonna flip right over.
Hence the doggie bags (which I was warned about), which were actually the
size of black bin bags. I wasn't afraid though... I thought "If I'm gonna
die, I want it to be somewhere interesting and something that people will
remember."

The desert airstrip was literally in the middle of nowhere, run and
protected by the UN, and when we stepped off the plane, MY GOD the heat!
You really did feel it burn your skin. It was about 40+ degrees!

I was met by our rep, did the immigration thing (NO CUSTOMS, as no law,
really, which was good as I was given 2 satellite phones to carry from
Nairobi) and escorted (armed) away in a blacked-out land-cruiser to our
office in the nearby capital of Somaliland, Hargeisa. Somaliland is
strangely beautiful. The semi-arid desert landscape, with the camels and
goats and dried out trees and bushes.... Oh, and passing decaying and rusty
military tanks and airplanes abandoned in the desert, all added to the
"ambience"! I stayed in a hotel compound that night, protected by the SPU
(Special Protection Unit), who are Somali nationals, armed, trained and
funded by the UNDP to protect and escort international staff in and around
Somaliland. Next morning was the 5 hour drive out to the field where I would
spend the next week, almost, visiting the projects and the children and
looking at the programme work we do there.
The drive was lovely, through the desert, over the mountains, tailed by our
armed escorts all the way, until we arrived in Burao, in the region of
Toghdeer. The office and staff house was in the same compound, and it was
like an oasis in the desert, although not big and free from trees etc.
enough for me to run around, so I was facing almost a week of no
exercise.... Not good. What was I going to do? Ended up having a bit of a
dodgy tum for a couple of days so that no doubt made up for the lack of
exercise, and therefore it all evens out in the end!
This next bit (in yellow) is really just what we do in Somalia... and the
findings I've just typed up from my meetings and visits in the past 2 days
of work so skip it if you're not interested down to the paragraph beginning
"Anyway........". It's pretty impressive though!
What we are doing in Somalia / Somaliland. We have 2 main programmes in
operation: an Education programme (with funds we received from the EU,
DANIDA, Comic Relief and Band Aid) and a new pilot Primary Healthy Care
programme (funded by URF - proposal to EU in the pipeline). When SCUK
arrived in the region, the situation with the education system and schools
in the region was wholly inadequate, the main problems being:
§ Lack of infrastructure, due to the heavy shelling / destruction of
most houses and schools in the civil war;
§ Uneven distribution of existing schools, with most in urban regions;
§ Overcrowded classrooms;
§ Mixing of ages, e.g. from 6 to 18-20 year olds in one class;
§ Lack / absence of textbooks and materials;
§ Lack of education policies and standard curriculum;
§ Corporal Punishment and breach of child rights per UNCRC;
§ Discriminatory attitudes towards girls, IDPs, minority groups,
working children, nomadic children / rural pastoralists (who move their
herds and families every few months depending on the seasons and severity of
drought, and therefore cannot access the formal education system);
§ Gender and socio-cultural factors, including:
o Preference to send boys to school due to fact that women become
property / family of their husbands in later life and therefore accept
responsibility;
o Lack of girl-friendly schools (distance, lack of female latrines in
schools, absence of female teachers / role models etc.);
o Preference for Qu'ranic teaching;
§ Lack of quality education (90% teachers not trained, experienced or
qualified);
§ A government / administration that did not pay salaries to teachers
(most teachers unpaid, except if by local communities).
We therefore piloted and targeted 17 schools in the Toghdeer region of
Somaliland as a test pilot scheme, which eventually proved so successful we
expanded to the entire region. The Education programme activities / work we
initiated and continue to do in the region include:
§ Building and re-constructing schools (to increase the number from 27
(pre-intervention) to the current total of 80);
§ Upgrading the skills of teachers through training sessions (on
curriculum development, participatory and child-friendly teaching methods,
child rights issues);
§ Building and establishing a university in the regional main town
that offers teacher training programmes and we pay for them etc.;
§ Providing teachers incentives (currently the "administration" in
Somaliland do not pay teachers) and salary and accommodation supplements
when opting for our training sessions during the school break periods;
§ Working in partnership in order to provide on-going support in terms
of training, capacity-building and skills development to the Regional
Education Office and ministry of Education;
§ Promoting UNCRC - to tackle the problems of corporal punishment
prevalence, gender imbalances.
§ Introducing Alternative Approaches to basic Education (AABE):
o Designing mobile schools (to tackle the 70% pastoralist / nomadic
population);
o Working with the religious leaders to introduce some subjects to the
Quranic teachings which is compulsory for ALL children and therefore will
reach ALL girls in the communites too (tackling the gender imbalance issue);
o Initiating flexi-time or shift systems into schools, including
afternoon shifts and night classes, in order to accommodate working children
(especially girls) - which has proved successful, with % girls attending
these classes averaging 60%, instead of the previous 44%);
o Working in vocational training centres and adding subjects to the
curriculum there (to reach those children whose parents do not see the
importance of traditional and formal education).
The impact of our intervention in the Toghdeer region has been profound:
Indicator Pre SCUK intervention Now Change Change (%)
No of Students 6830 13960 7130 +104%
No of girls 2097 4370 2273 +108%
No of teachers* 216 460 244 +113%
No of classrooms 167 376 209 +125%
No of schools 27 80 53 +196%
Girls as a % of enrolment total 30.7% 31.3% 0.6% +0.6%
*N.B. No. of female teachers has also increased dramatically and SCOTT
project will specifically fund the training and qualification of female
teachers in Burao and Hargeisa Universities.

In essence, we have significantly increased access to basic education in the
region such that the number of students, teachers, classrooms, schools etc.
has more than doubled since the start of our support. This, coupled with
achievements such as increasing the quality of basic education, introducing
child rights, establishing and enabling community education committees
(CECs), introducing participatory, child-centred teaching methods, creating
safe and adequate water and sanitation facilities, training and
capacity-building of the local staff and MoE workers etc., demonstrates the
significant value that SCUK is adding and warrants our continued presence in
the region.
Anyway... if you didn't read the above, Save the Children are basically
doing a sh*t-hot job here, and have made the area we work in the best in
terms of education in the whole country!!! Pat on the back for the
dedicated souls who brave it here (actually, once here, we mostly employ
nationals.... It's part of our strategy.. So not TOO many foreigners....).

So today (Sun 19th March), I went to visit one of the schools in the rural
communities, a couple of hours drive from where I'm staying. The drive was
long, and saw some interesting settlements and camels and dik-diks and LOADS
of sandy desert along the way... We arrived and got out of the nice
air-conditioned Land Cruiser we were travelling in and basked (or burned?)
in the baking 40-degree heat! Met with the headmaster and asked him loads
of questions, which received really long answers (in Somali), which
translated weren't that long... It's either a function of the Somali
language and its inability to condense points and ideas into short,
structured sentences, or he was saying things the translator (also from
SCUK) didn't want me to hear! My "benefit of the doubt" attitude forces me
to believe the former..... Hmmm!

Anyway, after that I met with the Child Education Committee (8 reps from the
local community who are like a PTA but with more power). I checked to make
sure there was adequate female representation, what challenges they faced,
what support (financial, technical and capacity-building) they'd received
from SCUK, how they envisaged their role developing etc. All was going well
until near the end when I asked the translator (Fatima) to ask these
community elders if there was anything they wanted to ask / discuss with me.
Well, Fatima entered into this HUGE debate, quite heated, for quite
sometime, and there's me, sitting there, smiling back at the agitated and
visibly passionate panel / group in front of me, when it dawned on me.. they
might think I'm sitting there like a smug b*stard, grinning at their
misfortunes and concerns.... Needless to say, my welcoming smile soon waned
and turned into a serious expression of concern. Until they laughed, of
course. Then I was smiling again.... Anyway after what seemed a life-time
of this awkwardness, I decided to stop Fatima and ask her to fill me in non
what they said. Basically one of the women were saying "We are contributing
to our children's education too", and also complaining about something to do
with the teachers salaries. I thought
"You ungrateful b*stards. If by contribution, you mean the kids have to
bring a pail of water to school a week, then fine... But if it wasn't for
our help (and the help we give to 79 other schools in this god-forsaken
place) there would be no school, no teachers, no water to bring and no
sanitation... There are plenty of other regions in this country who have
none of this, and ....". Then I shopped... Thinking, that is...
Instead I (professionally) adopted the official line, and explained that we
have done extensive studies in the region, and are MORE than aware of ALL
the challenges the country and communities are facing. We are always here
to help. We will and do wherever we can, and to remember that it is the
responsibility of the government and the communities to pay teachers
salaries, not SCUK. We are a global INGO, and will not be here forever and
therefore we look at implementing sustainable approaches to basic education,
and are covering salaries / costs / books and materials etc. in the interim
whilst the current emergency situation subsides, and the government (if u
want to call it that) pull their bloody finger out!

After that I sat in on a class to look at and assess the teaching methods
and see how the teachers were trained to deal with disciplinary issues. I
then met some of the children from the "Student's welfare association" that
we have set up in all schools in order to provide a forum for students to
voice their concerns and feel included. Basically, talking to them about
child rights, and if they'd been trained / taught by SCUK (and by their
teachers, who were trained by SCUK) on what their basic rights were. It's a
core part of our policy that I need to make sure all children, partners and
staff are aware of and have been adequately trained in. Feedback was
positive so that was good. They were actually really good, and even told me
some of the strategies they employed to try and mobilise the other children
who didn't / couldn't come to school.... Quite touching and inspirational,
seeing how proactive these underprivileged children were and what a
difference the organisation makes to their lives... so all of you who
decide to buy something for your mother for Mothers Day from SCUK can know
your money is going to good use!
Anyway, on the drive back, it was dead funny.... We got to a check-point
and realised that our armed escort at the back was nowhere to be seen. We
radio-ed and turned around and found them about half a mile back on the
desert road. One of the armed soldiers was leading a wee boy from the
bushes and into the Landcruiser. Hmmm... what's going on here, I thought?
Apparently, the boy had been throwing stones at passing cars... And just his
luck, the one he decides to hit is no other than the SPU's LandCruiser. The
poor boy was sh*tting himself. It was a shame, but funny at the same time.
Anyway the soldiers were taking him to the village at the checkpoint to tell
his parents. When we got there, they led him over, and the checkpoint
operator (of the same clan) took the boy, unchained a goat from the tree he
was sitting under, and chained the boy to the tree by the arm. I have to
say, it was quite funny, but then also a bit inappropriate, as alarm bells
in my head started ringing "Save the Children" or "Save the Child" in this
case... So I thought.. "Sh*t! What was I told in training?... Oh, that's
right! Don't directly intervene, and NEVER put yourself at risk.". My
ideas of jumping out of the car and stopping this from happening soon
subsided when I remembered where I was and saw the amount of guns being
waved about. Stupid Alex. Lucky for me, sober Alex, as I'm sure my thought
process wouldn't have reached the same conclusion in the time I'd taken to
mobilise myself to get out of the car. Anyway.. that was funny! I tried to
get a pic of the boys and the soldiers, but just managed the soldiers. See
attached.

Monday 20th March - It's now 10pm, and I've just had my dinner. I have had
a dodgy stomach on and off for the past 4 days.. Not good. Not good at all.
Thought it was over today at lunch, as the doctor here (one of the staff in
the house with me) gave me some pills, but No. No.... I began thinking it
was something in the water. Maybe I ate a bit of salad washed in local
water. Summat like that. Then I began blaming the cook here (Anub). She's
lovely, I thought, cooking my meals, washing and ironing my clothes,
cleaning up after dinner, and she tries to practice her English with me
every day. That's how it started. But as the days have gone on, she has
gradually become that suspicious one who is poisoning me slowly with rotten
camel and goat meat, and goat liver too. For breakfast. Seriously. That's
what I've been forced to eat every day. The others even asked me if I was
vegetarian at one point... "No, no, I thought! I just have very sensitive
taste buds, and human teeth, and cannot eat your meat without incisors, and
what, me, with my sense of smell and all.....". I have been experimenting
daily with the various treats she has brought, scientifically testing the
various different combinations of food groups and I've narrowed it down to
the meat and the fruit. Tomorrow I will have cracked it, and her game will
be up! She's been eying up my camera phone and Ipod. I'm onto her...

Anyway today I went to a health centre which we re-opened in an IDP
(internally displaced persons to the lay-person) settlement, to see what we
were doing to help there. We basically have re-opened the existing
structure that was there. When the refugees, or returnees, or whatever the
PC term is now (returnees these were called), were re-settled here from
Ethiopia after the end of the civil war in 2002, the UNHCR (High Commission
for Refugees) as per its mandate, provided water facilities (a tank),
latrines, 1 school and a Health Centre. At the end of its mandate about 2
years ago, it was passed to the Ministry of Health (which does not function
as you would imagine an organisation christened with the title "Ministry"
would), and it basically fell to ruin and closed. So as a pilot, we have
taken over and re-enabled 4 health post sites in the region in the past few
weeks, setting up community health committees (CHCs) to help and get a say
in the management of the place, providing training, drugs, immunisations
etc. It was amazing. The place is now run by 3 community health workers
(CHWs), non-qualified members of the community. We treat pregnant mothers
and children under 5. Whilst I was there, the whole village came out it
seemed. I watched as the workers there showed me what they do. They were
measuring the height of babies and children (on instruments that more
resembled Victorian torture devices - pic attached), then weighing them, and
referencing them to a nutrition chart. They were then registered in a book,
and classed as normal, malnutritioned or severely malnutritioned. Health
education and emergency medicines were given. Mothers were given advice and
iron for anemia. No blood tests there to test for that though. Merely a
quick look in the eyes. Much cheaper than our methods in the UK. I then
chatted with the CHC and CHWs and had the most amazing experience listening
to their stories, and concerns. I then got a lot of "appreciation", as a
SCUK representative, however had to deflect and push that onto my Somali
colleagues who are the ones who are working there every day. The whole
experience was a lot less hostile and more friendly than the School
committee I met the day before, let me tell you!

Now I'm onto the boring stuff for the next 2 days... having meetings in our
compound here and working, typing up things..... before travelling back to
Hargeisa (the administrative capital of Somaliland) for a day or 2 then
catching my wee flight back to Kenya, this time with UNCAS, as there's no
space for me on the ECHO plane. It's not too bad, I suppose, as it's really
hot and sunny here, and the compound is relatively peaceful. Can't work on
my tan as I'd like to, though, as taking my top off in a strict Muslim
country like this is a definite no-no. Day-um.... There's always
Kenya..........

Friday 24th March - Back in our offices in Nairobi. Nice to be back in this
environment and the decent hotel, with the great gym. I'm dead from all the
"catch-up" exercise last night.

Plane ride back was good. UN flight and got chatting to some cool guys, as
well as another consultant working for SCUK from London. The flight dropped
one person off in Somalia grand (1.5 hours away), then we hopped 45 mins to
a remote UN airstrip just outside of Mogadishu (where the film Black Hawk
Down was set) called K50) to refuel quickly (PIC ATTACHED), before hopping
to Ethiopia and finally onto Nairobi, dropping off 1 person here and picking
up 1 or 2 there...
Just heard that that murdering guard reported for work. Cheeky b*stard, no?
We're in a bit of a f*cked up situation now and have to have a crisis
meeting!

Tomorrow I'm off to the Masai Mara, armed with my proper SLR camera with a
decent zoom, for a 3 day safari in the wilderness. Chose to camp, as I love
the sitting round the campfire, drinking beer, and sleeping out in the
wilderness, listening to all the animal noises... That reminds me, I had a
beer for the first time in a week and a half.... Aaahhhhhh!

Hope you all have a great weekend, and see some of you when I get back next
Friday for some good ol' debaucherous fun...

Alex