Getting the jobNov, 1984
Western Union finally called while I was attending a meeting in California. I had been waiting for that call for several weeks and I received a message that told me to call them back and ask for a specific operator. The call was about a cable on its way that I had been impatiently waiting for, a cable that would open the door to work in the international family planning field that I had been working towards during the last few years. It was a long cable providing a scope of work for my consultancy in Somalia and details about the work. I had returned the call to Western Union from a public hallway in the LA convention center where it was noisy and a little hard to listen to an operator drone on with numerous details I knew I would soon be able to read with attentive care.
The operator laboriously read on, coming to the details of the work environment: namely that the pace of work was slow, and that the initial four week contract might not be sufficient to accomplish all of the work. Then she read suggestions, that turned out to be very useful: that I bring sandals for walking on the sandy and unpaved streets, a flashlight for when the electricity failed, sun block and light weight but modest clothing for the strong sun and intensely hot days, and most importantly medication for diarrhea. Then the operator paused for a moment and asked, “Are you sure you really want to go?”
That was never a question in my mind. It was my first offer for work in the third world and thus professionally an important first. Furthermore, I would work with Margaret Neuse whom I had worked with previously at URC ( University Research Corp) and who I both liked and greatly respected But the operator’s personal question made me pause and think again before I reassured her that indeed I was ready to go.
Getting there
On my day of departure, I had dinner with Jesse who took me to the Shoreham hotel where I picked up a taxi to National airport. The driver was a young Ethiopian student, who expressed surprise and delight when he learned I was going to Somalia. I struck up a conversation with him because of his African accent, light skin and Arab like features, suspecting that he was from the Horn of Africa. He still had family in Addis, but he said that his return home depended on the political situation when he completes his studies.
In Kennedy, I picked up a Pan Am flight to Frankfurt which was full of Indians and Pakistanis who continued on to Delhi and Karachi after the Frankfurt stop. Fortunately, the flight was not full and I was able to grab four seats to stretch out for a couple of hours sleep. The flight had a number of people who were part of a Red Cross contingent flying on a relief mission to Ethiopia. They traveled Business class and at the airport in Frankfurt they were met by a TV crew and cameras.
Since Lufthansia served as the agent for Air Somalia, I checked with them when I arrived in Frankfurt. Although I was still not confirmed through to Mogadishu they gave me a boarding pass to Rome and told me to check again, closer to departure. ( I was later to learn that getting confirmed flights to Mogadishu was rare, as the President of Somalia used the national airways as his private one). I felt a momentary panic when I realized the travel situation was so fluid. Since I had layover of several hours, my travel agent had arranged a day room for me at the Sheraton Hotel, which was in the airport. It was a lovely room and I luxuriated in a bubble bath, aware that I would not have this luxury again for awhile. While brushing my teeth, I thought how nice not to worry about whether the water was potable. The bed was extremely comfortable and I rested for a few hours. Returning on the connecting bridge to the airport, I shopped for some food items to bring Margaret including salami, wine, cookies and chocolate. It reminded me of how we hungered for particular foods when living in Israel under conditions of austerity. Then I stopped for a typical German lunch consisting of herring fillet in sour cream with onion and potato slices.
When I checked back with Lufthansa later that afternoon there continued to be uncertainty about whether the flight to Mogadishu would leave as scheduled. Finally the flight was called and then we were asked to identify our baggage as we boarded. I was thrilled to see that the Air Somalia plane departing from Frankfurt was quite empty, not knowing that this would last only as far as Rome, where Somalis going home joined us with more packages than one could imagine.
In the Rome airport I chatted briefly with a Brit who was training Somali pilots. He mused that in a couple of years his pilots will be trained sufficiently well to strafe Ethiopian villages in the continuing Somali-Ethiopia conflict.
After extended arguments about baggage allowances, among the Somalis traveling, the crowded plane took off and I arrived at the Mogidishu airport in the middle of a very hot and sunny afternoon about 30 hours after I left home.
Arrival in Mogadishu Everything about my arrival told me that this was really a developing country; paint peeled from the façade of the small one-story airport terminal, there was a gauntlet of armed military men between the plane and the building and people pushed and shoved on the plane as they identified and tried to reach their multiple pieces of hand luggage. As we disembarked the passengers were instructed to form a double line, standing in the blazing sun until the last passenger joined us. When the line was straight and orderly, we were dismissed and then we made a wild dash to the terminal. I looked for the USAID expediter who I expected would meet me at the airport but I was caught up in the crush of people waving their documents and jockeying for a position near passport control. Finally I spotted a small USAID sign held aloft behind the passport control barrier. I waved my arms frantically trying to get his attention and he signaled me to pass my documents through the crowd and identify my luggage.
Although there was a conveyor belt the luggage was unloaded by hand from the luggage cart and passed down a chain of men to the counter where it was piled on the floor, one on top of the other. I watched the luggage tossed onto the shifting mountain as bags were added and retrieved. I spotted mine, caught the attention of the baggage handler and pointed to my luggage. At that point the USAID dispatcher handed me a number of forms to complete in triplicate. I was covered in sweat, with droplets running down my face and neck onto the thin sheets of paper which totally absorbed them blotching the information I had provided.
We made our way out of the terminal through a crowd of children who swarmed around us. Directly in front of me were large and crude Russian style billboards of Somalis in uniform, including Somali women in traditional dress armed with machine guns. The signs said, “For my Country”, in three languages, Italian, Somali and English. As we approached the USAID vehicle there were children who offered such assistance as helping to direct us out of the airport, or cleaning the dusty wheels or wiping the windshield that would be covered in sand dust as soon as the vehicle started moving. The children were regulars. The driver knew them and gently shooed them away as soon as I had climbed aboard and my luggage was loaded.
As the expediter/driver started the engine, he looked at his papers and apologetically told me that he would be taking me to the Aruba hotel in downtown Mogadishu because the USAID guest house was full. I didn’t at that moment understand the need for an apology, but it did worry me a little as I had been told that the USAID Guest House, was the place to stay.
The Aruba Hotel The Aruba Hotel, designed in Islamic fortress style overlooked the Indian ocean. The lobby was dark and empty except for a commanding statue of a Somali war hero in the middle, and my heart dropped when I realized I was going to be here alone. The receptionist who appeared once we rang the bell, offered me either a room with air conditioning or one overlooking the ocean. I chose air conditioning only to discover that one needed to stand next to the unit to feel the cool air. When I later realized that the evenings were cooled by ocean breezes I changed for a room with a veranda and a view where I sat each evening after work, watching the sun set, and reflecting on my daily experiences and impressions.
The hotel reminded me of below luxury hotels in Egypt which all seemed to be in the process of construction. I particularly noticed the tiles in the shower that were all mismatched and poorly installed, and nothing ever worked quite right, probably an influence of both Italians and Somalis who had collaborated in its construction.
The hotel had one nice feature and that was its location, within a short walk of the US Embassy and USIS library. Out on a walk that first evening, a young boy came up to me to practice his English and told me that his father married an English woman, who was a Christian. When the marriage broke up, however, his mother left the country and he lived with his father’s family. His English was quite good partly because he spoke to his mother in English. As he approached me, I clutched my bag fearing his friendliness might be a ruse for a purse snatching, but nothing could have been further from the truth. As time passed I grew quite comfortable with my twilight strolls through downtown Mogadishu.
Dinner at the hotel was decent, though for a good part of my meal I was the only person in the dining room. Later I struck up a conversation with a Somali man who told me quite proudly) that he was one of 18 siblings from three mothers. When I sheepishly told him I was here to work on a family planning/child spacing project he was quite amused. From our conversation I surmised he was part of a small cadre of educated Somalis working with international consultants.
Working and living there They say you love the first developing country you work in and that certainly became true for me. Although the work was challenging and progress slow, I developed respect and deep affection for my Somali colleagues, who were drawn from the country’s small leadership elite. There was so much to learn; their customs, traditions, values and work styles, who were leaders you could count on and who just talked a good game; the ex-pat community, and how they lived there and related to each other and the Somalis, as well as the simple every day things like learning to drive a jeep, bargaining with taxi drivers, where to buy Western food, and the scoop about the best restaurants and places to see on the weekend.
But the relationships I developed with my female Somali colleagues, which took time to grow, was perhaps one of the most memorable parts of my Somali work experience. As they got to trust me, we shared our experiences as women. I learned about their lives as mothers of large families, as second or third wives, husbands who beat them, the effects of being circumcised and how infertility profoundly jeopardized their marriage and security as a wife. When I look back at my experiences, it is the personal relations that ultimately proved more enduring and satisfying than what I might have accomplished, particularly since within a few years, civil war broke out and the country descended into chaos and tribalism, from which it has not yet recovered…as of 2016.