Nice to finally meet you Mogadishu...

Six months after my last post, I am sitting in my office in Mogadishu typing this, wondering how I can inject wit into a narrative about my experiences in Somalia. After having worked on Somalia in various offices, I can barely believe that today is my fourth day here, and not surprisingly I already have a lot of material to draw from. My stay here is for two weeks, and I wonder how people manage to stay sane if they are permanently deployed here. That said, it really isn't as grim as I thought it would be. My accommodation is a single room within a concrete building, and is lavishly furnished with a single (obviously) bed, a fancy flat screen TV, DSTV satellite decoder, DVD player and safety deposit box - none of the last four items work, so basically I have a bed :) Many of my colleagues are housed in containers, so am happy to have four solid-ish walls instead.

All meals are mess-style, with strict mealtimes to be abided to - if you are late, then you have to wait for the next meal, so breakfast @ 7am, lunch @ 12.45 and dinner @ 18.15. It is very meaty, but thankfully the chef is preparing fish for me - so by the end of my stay I will look like a fish. Today I am skipping lunch as I have had a dodgy stomach and the feeling of nausea is just hideous. I paid a trip to the clinic, and the doctor was so excited to have a patient, telling me I was the first of the day - talk about attentive, he prescribed Hyoscine, Loptil, Metoclopramide and Paracetemol! He was concerned about my blood pressure (88/57) so I am under strict instructions to return later today to have it re-taken.

I have been running with a friend in the evening, she is a tall beautiful Sierra Leonean lady who hardly sweats and definitely doesn't turn red after physical exertion. We pass lots of soldiers along our route and they insist on stopping to have their photo taken with her - it is hilarious and sometimes they stand in between us beaming at the lens, but normally they ask the short red sweaty member of our duo to stand aside. Last night we were running alongside the airstrip when we heard something overhead - it was a drone, I couldn't believe my eyes and then spotted two guys landing it with a remote-control. "Oh how nice" she says... "they have a toy plane they are playing with!" I nearly pee-ed my pants I was laughing so much. They then picked up the large-ish device opened a padlocked gate and swiftly, but discreetly left the airstrip. Quite a highlight, until 3 minutes later we passed a snake on the road. Immediately after we quickly made our way back to camp as in my experience things normally come in threes and I had seen more than enough for one evening.

On Sunday we were planning for a high-level US visitor (Secretary Clinton), but sadly she was a no-show, so instead I acted as note-taker for the meeting between Secretary Sherman and my boss, which was fun, but it would have been cooler had it been Clinton. We were all very surprised as the plane door opened and out stepped a total stranger - everyone was looking at each other bemused initially, but then SS turned out to be quite a player herself and the discussions were interesting. Whilst we were waiting the daily khat flights landed - both planes just have one seat for the pilot apparently and an enormous space just for packing the khat in. According to Wikipedia, khat chewing has a long history as a social custom dating back thousands of years. It has natural amphetamine like qualities, which are addictive, and Somalis love it, *men and women, but aren't allowed to chew together - women have their group and men theirs. Hence there are two flights a day from Kenya, as it doesn't keep well and has to be consumed quickly. Our Somali national staff all have mouthfuls of dark brown teeth, of which they are very proud of. Good enough?...