SOMALIA 1972 TO 1975
My task with 2 engineers and an Aerial Rigger was to plan, install, commission and maintain the aeronautical services equipment at International and domestic airports throughout the country. Also to design transmitter, receiver and control tower installations, power house and equipment layout.Some major installations of note were employing local laborers to dig miles of trenches by hand.Luckily in those days very few roads were made up but some did pass by peoples houses and often we had to dig up parts of their garden. As with everywhere I worked overseas bribes were the norm which I did and after a few weeks the job was completed. They were happy and so was I.
My wife Danie has kept a diary since she was 15 years old and this has helped significantly in writing these stories. However when we were in Somalia it was stolen. As with most of the countries we stayed in it was often very hot .We didn’t have air-conditioning and left the car windows open. What happened was children were talking to her through one side window whilst another put his hand through the other and stole a bag with the diary in it. A lesson was learn t and it never happened again. This was without doubt the best and most interesting of all our postings overseas. The people were so friendly, Marcus Micaela and Leo all had a wonderful free and easy life, never having to dress up wearing swimsuits most of the time. Near the end of our tour Marcus went back to UK to attend boarding school.Danie could walk the streets both in the day and at night without any problem .There were beautiful sandy beaches for mile after mile and the sea was great for swimming, scuba diving and spear fishing which I did with Alberto Benciebenga an Italian Surgeon. He had a lovely wife Mariah who was a very close friend of Danie. Their son Paolo played with Marcus and they our still keep in touch. We visited them some time later when we went on holiday to Malindi in Kenya and flew back to meet them in Karen near Nairobi. Their house was a fortress enclosed in a very high barbed wire fence. In addition they had 3 guards and 3 ridgeback dogs plus an arsenal of weapons. They had 5 horses for playing Polo. We watched them both playing during our stay. We were very lucky Pam a wife of Allen Barnard an engineer working for me suddenly had an appendicitis, not a good place to have it. Alberto being a top class Surgeon promised her she would have no scar. He was true to his word.
Having mentioned beaches we found a lovely one about 6 miles up the coast. We put up tent there and fitted it out as you would a second home with beds, a gas cooker, canvas chairs with a table, fishing gear, all the crockery for 7 people(we would often invite friends along) We had this for 4 years and during this time nothing was ever stolen. We would always see and greet Bedouins.One problem however was at night being woken up by crabs getting in the crockery, knifes forks and spoons making a horrendous clacking sound. It was so relaxing and as with other places great for shell finding. We met the secretary of the US ambassador Mary Anne. Previously she had worked for Kissinger. She was a rotund very jolly lady who loved her food and was a very interesting person to talk to. She invited us round for party meal with a group of her friends and served a chocolate fondu. It was delicious and the first time we had eaten one. This was the in thing at the time and we gave many more fondu parties later on.
I shared a boat with the American Consul which I bought after he left. It was used for trawling and occasional bottom fishing. Often boat fishing was impossible due to very rough seas. When you did get out you did get out you had to be very careful coming back in and look behind to pick a long gap between the waves then full throttle to the beach. On one occasion I took out a guy who was on holiday and noticed the sea was getting up. Being concerned I told him that if we turned over to stay with the boat. I did look behind but it still happened a very big wave hit us on the way in and the boat overturned. I held onto it and landed on the shore. I was very concerned for my passenger and looked along the shore and couldn’t see. What a relief he turned up further down. In Somalia life jackets were the rule. I was very worried but he did turn up further along the beach. I lost the engine cover and although I searched could not find it and had to buy a new one. Directly I got back I flushed the engine with water, dried it out and it was as good as new. So much happened in Somalia I don’t now where to start but here goes, firstly we had a beautiful 5 bedroomed villa with a big outside patio on the first floor which we often used for sleeping or sunbathing. Our garden was as big as a football pitch We had a gardener and guard called Haloli. and a big dog called Sheba a cross between a Doberman and Alsatian who attached himself to him. They would sleep together at night alongside our a big entry gate. The house and garden were surrounded by a high together at brick fence. On occasions in the morning I would find at the bottom shoes and on 2 incidents a pair of trousers where somebody had climbed into our garden intent on stealing and had to rush out in a hurry. On numerous occasions we would see walking outside our wall lines and lines of camels. There must have been hundreds of them. We never found out where they were going but what a sight..
We had a covered deep well in our garden which provided all our water and a man would come round to clean it. There was a terribly disaster .He fell in it. It took 3 days to get him out and Haloli who was helping him was sent to prison. From then on all our water was supplied by a Bowser. Later on Haloli was released from prison.
Just down the road from us was a building called the Jolly Green Giant housing soldiers of the American Marine Corps. They were a jolly good bunch and I and visited their Mess many times becoming an honorary member. They took advantage of our big House and garden and held their 199 years anniversary there. I remember to this day listening and singing to very loud Chubby Checker music. still have a beer mat with their inscription on. I played a lot of tennis with the Albert from the US Embassy at the Golf Club just down the road and for one year I was Club Treasurer attending meetings every month. There was an English school near to it. Danie taught for the English Speaking Union at the Cultural Centre in town in the evening for two years and later on as a teacher for the Kindergarten section of the American School. We had a vegetable man call on us monthly on a small 3 wheeled vehicle. Not a very good selection but lovely long leafed spinach which was delicious. We eat spinach here but it never tastes the same.Its funny with names that stick in you memory we both remember in the town Hassan Framargio who sold cheese and Ice-cream and a butcher who sold mostly camel meat Abdi Jama.
Next door to us we had Vincenti the Consul of the Italian Embassy and his wife Anna. She told Danie that her husband had forbidden her to have children in order to keep her fine body. Mind you she was very beautiful and doll like.We learnt later on they got divorced. However she came over one morning screaming Danie there’s a crocodillo in my garden It turned out to be a monitor lizard which we often had. In addition there were baboons never desirably looking. They would steal our chicken eggs. I tried everything to keep them out of the coop but they were so cleaver and would climb over it. I even made catches on their boxes but they still got in. On one occasion at the bottom of the garden next to the well we had forty fits there was Leo with a baboon playing in the water. All our chickens had names. We called one Hackles because of the way she strutted around and flap her wings and make a loud hacking noise. The big advantage with the chickens was we had no more small snakes in the garden they were eaten and in the house a noted lack of cockroaches by leaving all drain covers open. The local chicken eggs very small. I had met with the 2 pilots and the Brian the loadmaster of Tradewinds operating from Gatwick. They would stay with us and in return would bring us goodies ie a small generator, we often had power cuts,car tyres a freezer and other goodies and asked them if next time they would bring us fertile eggs. Brian who lived in Gatwick also kept chicken brought us out 8 fertile Rhode Island Red and 1 Leg horn eggs. We put these under a broody local chicken and they all hatched. We gave away all the local chicken to Hiloli and his family and they made good eating so he said but I’m sure they were tough..
We never kept chickens again but it was another experience to remember. The food available locally was very basic. We never ran out of fish. It was very hard work when using a hand line I caught my biggest fish ever a 40 kilo grouper which took 1 hour and twenty minutes to land. When trawling we would catch Bonito, Dorado also called Mahi Mahi a beautiful coloured and excellent eating fish, sharks which you did not want who would often take the fish you had caught leaving just the head. At that time IAL ran Nairobi airport. I had many good friends there. In the town there was a very good butcher whom I met when I had traveled up to collect some urgently needed radio parts. I made an arrangement with him for me to collect meat etc from him. I would contact one of the Air Traffic Controllers by radio, give him a list of the goodies and the time and date I would arrive on Somali airlines. He would then pass this to one of the Engineers who would give this to the butcher. I knew most of the English pilots flying on Somali airlines and would hitch a lift in the cockpit of the early morning flight to Nairobi. Arrive at the airport, be taken by a friend to the butcher get my order, pay for it then be driven back to the airport and catch the same plane back with my goodies. I would repeat and usually travel up about every 2 months.
Having IAL friends in Nairobi came in very useful when later on Marcus my eldest son was in boarding School aged 9. He would under supervision be driven to Gatwick and put on the plane for Nairobi where he would stay overnight with one of my friends who would take him the next day to the airport to fly down to Maputo. He would take the same route back on his return, be met at Gatwick by one of his school teachers. On one occasion at Christmas Roberts Wray the headmaster had bought us a turkey which he had frozen and put in a freeze bag. When Marcus arrived for a night stop in Nairobi en route to Mogadishu he was met by one of my IAL friends, the turkey was put straight away in the freezer. We met him the next day at the airport and taking in account how much trouble we had gone through the customs took the turkey off him. Knowing how the system worked and how corrupt they were I asked what would they do with it. Burn it was the reply. Can I come and see I asked. You can guess the rest I gave them cash and we had turkey for Christmas.
We also had a very nice Beach Club which was a very popular meeting place, a lot of the Expats went there. One could see the docks and on many occasions hundreds of camel being loaded, probably the ones we saw passing our house. It was a shame because you often saw dead ones on the beach who had probably fallen off. Outside sitting on the beach were local women weaving baskets by hand beautifully coloured baskets. We met many new friends there. Also it had a very good restaurant, Abdi Jama who was the houseboy of the British Consul spoke excellent english and served behind the bar. Amazingly we met him again working for a foreign affairs officer in Saudi Arabia. it’s a small world.
However we also met a doctor working for British Aid and his wife. We cant remember their names. But some years later we were in Maputo Mozambique and drove 80 miles down the coast to a very small remote seaside town called Xai Xai to stay a couple of days in a bungalow belonging to South African friends of ours. Danie was on the beach in bare feet and stepped on some very nasty fish hooks. Out of the blue a doctor arrived. It was the same one that we met years ago in Mogadishu. Another unbelievable experience but true. We would often drive to a lovely town Afgooye. On the way we would pass along side the river Juba. At one point the river widened and Marcus was just about to go in. I rushed and grabbed him just in time and although they were well hidden it was full of Hippopotamus. Apparently in Africa they have the reputation of killing more people than any other predator. In this river there were the most beautiful snail shells We still have one.
We were looking on TV recently and Afgooye which was such a lovely town was just heap of rubble ransacked by the Somali Rebels. Also the town of Merca on the coast which was very popular with the Italian colonialists had the same treatment. We can still remember when were there a man running out and giving us deckchairs perhaps he thought things were about to change. On route to Merca there was a small butchers shop selling goats. In a yard there were the off cuts and Marabou Storks everywhere fighting to eat the pieces.
During this tour I made a very difficult trip down the road or rather track by Landrover to Kismayo. This would not have been possible without 4 wheel drive. No doubt during the Italian era the roads would have been maintained but when I was there nobody had a reason to go there. I crossed the equator en route passing through a small forest and saw these big black birds flapping their very big wings(I don’t know their names).I also saw a few wild Boer. After passing through the forest on the way to the town their were well worn placards written in English on the side of the road. This was probably for British Expats who were living in Kenya at the time being just across the border.
It was so sad when I arrived to see lovely houses along the beach completely deserted, a reminder of times gone by.
At the top end of Somalia next to Ethiopia was the town of Hargeysa. I was responsible for the maintenance of the Control Tower and Associated Equipment. A mountain range called Dialo Igyl was clearly seen when coming in to land. It was famously noted for its two similar peaks. They resembled women’s breasts. One can guess the nickname.2T. A lot of the people spoke English.
Years ago it was British Somaliland. The Air Traffic Controllers all chewed Cat an Amphetamine similar to LSD. Their excuse was that it increased their ability to perform intellectual tasks. A load of rubbish all it did was give them a feeling of well being but they still managed to land aircraft safely. Cut was easily available because it was grown from a shrub Catha Edulis which was abundant locally. They were great characters and easy to get on with and I enjoyed their company.
On one occasion when we were in the bush looking for flowers we came across an old man with a baby lion. From what we could gather its mother had been shot. He insisted in giving it to us. When we got home we discovered it had only one eye. We named him Ali and brought him up as you would with a puppy. He had a liking for peoples shoe laces and would chew them to shreds. Unfortunately he got too big and we gave him to a very good Zoo in Mogadishu. We visited him from time to time being very pleased to see us.
