Blogs

On 30 August 2021, my dear brother Abdikarim Abdullahi Hussein died in Buulaburte. It took me almost three years to put the painful feelings of his departure into writing. I was reluctant to write about the death of my beloved brother and the heavy emotions and pain I felt when he died.

My friend Mohamed Omer invited me to attend the Somali Youth Summit, which took place in Jigjiga between 25 and 27 November this year. I had never been to Jigjiga before, and I was interested and excited to visit the town and engage with its people. There is no direct flight from Mogadishu to Jigjiga. The two options I had were a transit to Addis Ababa or a flight to Hargeisa and then make road trip to Jigjiga. I wanted to maximize my travel experience and opted for the latter option.

I have previously written two blogs reflecting on ten-year milestones. The first, which was widely read and shared, was a reflection on the ten years I lived in Mogadishu. The second blog was about my ten years of teaching. Now, it is the ten-year milestone for my blogging journey. I thought it would also be appropriate to write a blog for this landmark. I published my first blog 10 years ago today – 15 September 2013. I reflected on my journalism experience. At the time I wrote and published that blog, I was a school teacher, not a journalist. I reflected on how, in 2008-9, being a journalist was my dream job but I ended up being a teacher.

This is the first travelogue I am writing for a trip outside Somalia. When I first started these travel blogs in 2014, my mission was to document and share my experiences and observations in the Somali cities I visited. Although I frequently travel to countries in the Horn, I often don’t write about these visits. Dar es Salaam Tanzania, unlike other regional cities I visited, has many similarities to Mogadishu, and this is probably my main motivation to write this piece. Someone familiar with Mogadishu and Dar es Salaam told my colleague traveling from South Africa to Dar es Salaam for the same meeting that Dar es Salaam is like the old pre-1991 Mogadishu.

I have been writing travel blogs about the towns I visit in Somalia since 2014. I was not, however, able to write about my previous visits to Garowe. 2014 was the first time I visited Garowe, but it was a short trip and spent only two nights there. While heading to Burco, I stopped over in Garowe for about an hour in September 2016. In August 2019, I stayed several nights, all in transition to three other districts – Badhan, Buuhoodle, and Gaalkacyo. In February 2021, I traveled to Garowe for a study I was working on with Somali Public Agenda and stayed for about a week. I did not manage to write a blog post on all these occasions. The time to write one for Garowe has finally come.

In the early morning of May 29, 2022, I woke up to the terrible news of the death of my friend, the long-time peace activist Abdullahi Shirwac. Following a sudden stroke, he was in a coma for about a week in a local hospital in Mogadishu where he died. It was entirely unexpected heartbreaking news for me as well as his close family, friends, and acquaintances. I could not digest the news for a while.