Somaliland despatch from Cousin Andy

I've just received this wonderful story from Cousin Andy in Somaliland. Heaven knows what budgie smugglers are. An Australian garment that we whinging poms have no truck with!

What an adventurer! However I feel I must take some of the credit for his survival skills. A weekend at the rainiest Roskilde Festival in years with me and the gang must have been good training for flash floods in Africa.

Yesterday was Friday and is the Somaliland version of the weekend. Short but welcome. Two people were travelling to Berbera, which is the important port on the Aden sea to the North, and I squeezed in for the trip. As it happens they were a psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse going to Berbera to visit the mental health hospital.

Picture this. I am in the front of the first car alongside the driver. In the back are a psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse. In the accompanying car there is a driver, a medical intern and two policemen armed with AK47s or similar. We are heading for a mental hospital. Now isn't that always the way you thought I would end up?

It's about three hours drive and there is a road, albeit in desperate need of repair in places, so we make good but bumpy progress. There are two small communities on the way and some other small groupings of dwellings. Otherwise it is all desert scrub and very dry. We cross two dry riverbeds. However it is a gentle slope down from Hargeisa at about 1300 metres to sea level, so it gets hotter and more humid with every kilometre travelled. Berebera is the most uncomfortable place I have experienced due to the heat and humidity. We visit the mental hospital which is clearly very friendly, and the local hospital which could do with a clean-up. Then we got to the Mansour Hotel, which is posh, and have a great lunch for about $6. Then we go swimming. The girls have to go in practically fully clothed, being allowed dispensation only to remove head covering. I, of course, am wearing good old ozzie budgie smugglers.

Then we set off about 03:30 as THET, our sponsors, have curfew at 7 pm. As we approach Hargeisa we can see heavy clouds off to the East, where it is obviously raining but we get not a drop. Then about an hour from home we come to a dry riverbed. But no more. Now it is a raging torrent with huge standing waves and no-one can cross, not even the big lorries.

We phone home and are advised to wait. We go back to the last group of dwellings we passed through and are welcomed by a large corpulent gentleman named Dingal, who tells us that the village is named after him. He has henna'd hair and beard and is carrying a large metal wardrobe pole. Tea is drunk and conversation conducted for two hours when vehicles start to cross. We return and the waters have subsided to a fast flow and we cross safely and arrive home safely.

Isn't that the typical image of Africa? Floods in the middle of a drought.

Andy