Only the flies...

are still alive. And some odd bugs. The rest of the country has fallen into a sleep like sleeping beauty. But it was not the poisoned needle which made the country sleep – it was the moon, which one night decided not to appear. The next morning the sweet shaa (Somalitea) was missing in the office, as the voices of my col- leagues were. Together with the moon every kind of life disap- peared from the streets. Goats are not anymore jumping around but idling in the narrow shade of broken walls. Camels stopped chewing the leftovers of the stimulating khat leaves (and the bags in which they are normally wrapped). Children stopped singing, and men stopped debating inside semi dark mefrishe (Somaliland teashops). Not even the khat lorries, which normally enter town accompanied by a full-scale orchestra of honks and metal sounds, are greeting Hargeisa. Life has stopped to be during daytime. Ramadan, the holy month of the Islamic world, has arrived.

I used to observe Ramadan in other countries like Tanzania and Kenya. The challenge in the first one, where I used to live as a student at the main university compound, was to get food else than “chipsi mayay” (potato chips mixed with egg, fried in cheap oil, accompanied by an unhealthy looking pink tomato sauce) after eight o clock in the evening. In the second country, Kenya, I experienced Ramadan from its best side, being invited several times for dinner in the house of a Swahili family originating from the Arabic influenced coastal settlements of Kenya. Here, in Somaliland, I learn to know for the first time what it means to live Ramadan. Having breakfast after six o clock in the morning? Forget about it! Getting hold of people after midday? No way! Drinking coffee in the afternoon? Wait until six pm!
At the moment I am in the middle of a fieldtrip, south east of Hargeisa. My mission is on one hand to collect data for a final assessment of a CARE project, which has been finalized last month, and to carry out interviews with female teachers on the other hand. Don’t ask me why I believed that Ramadan only affects major towns?! With my ambitious plan of meeting people form six am til six pm I was not much successful up to now. “Silly ex pat from Europe”, they must think when I ask them for meetings at three o clock in the afternoon. Maybe I should transfer my working plan into six pm to six am – chewing khat to keep me awake… at least I wouldn’t have anymore during the daytime the problem of being the only one to be awake and alive among my male work colleagues who accompany me on this trip

As much as I try to understand the idea of Ramadan, it doesn’t make much sense to me. I completely agree with fasting, but fasting in a hot and dry country like Somaliland makes people not only dehydrating, but also sleeping the whole day. It robs them off all energy and power and leaves them fainted under thorny trees providing little more than no shadow. But not only does the Ramadan rob off the energy of the people. The main generator, too, seems to be fasting. For three days power supply has been cut down to some few hours a day during daytime, especially in the towns outside Hargeisa. And while I should be working on my lap top by now, typing in the scarce data I managed to get from exhausted, dehydrated head teachers, I am sitting instead on the balcony of the Maansha Allah hotel, in sheikh town, looking around me in search of life. But it is only the flies, which are never tired in flying around and scratching on my skin. Soon nasty mosquitoes will join them.

But, Alhamdullilah, the pointer of my watch is approaching six pm. I can hear the Dolby surround of the muezzin, and together with their relaxing deep voices, life is coming back into the arteries of sheikh. Still people are praying, but soon men will sit around groggy plastic tables, eating tamarind fruits and crunchy samosas and sipping sweat shaa - and of course, sharing a bundle of bitter khat leaves.

Somaliland has never been more peaceful than during these days. Peace, a message that it has been trying to send around the world not only during Ramadan, but also for the last fourteen years. Yesterday, during dinner, a young boy told me: “when you go home, tell everybody how peaceful our country is. Tell people that this is Somaliland and not Somalia”. Inshalla, one day, this spot north west of Somalia will be a recognized state. In the meantime it remains a self declared independent state, sharing with greater Somalia, as Edna Aden, Somaliland’s foreign minister recently pointed out, only one thing: Religion. And at the moment Ramadan.
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