Hargeisa
Hargeisa is the capital of Somaliland, the republic in Somalia's north-west that declared itself independent in 1991 and has governed itself, unrecognised and mostly at peace, ever since: a highland city of a million people at thirteen hundred metres, rebuilt from the ruins of 1988 — a MiG-17 that bombed it stands on a plinth downtown as the memorial — into a place of camel markets, money changers who sit behind walls of banknotes, poets who are the country's celebrities, and a Cultural Centre with a library and, every August, a book fair that fills the city. The livestock market at dawn is one of the largest in the Horn; the twin hills of Naasa Hablood are the emblem on the horizon; and fifty kilometres north-east, in a shelter of rock at Laas Geel, cows were painted five thousand years ago in colours that have not faded, on walls that no one outside the valley knew until 2002.
The traveller flies in to Egal airport from Addis Ababa or Dubai with the Somaliland visa, sleeps in one of the city's decent hotels, and takes the city with a driver: the livestock market at first light, camels and goats and the shouting; the centre for the MiG, the money changers and the rebuilt Waaheen market; the Cultural Centre for the library, the poetry and whoever is reading; a bowl of camel milk tea and a plate of goat and rice; and, with the escort that the state requires for foreigners outside the city — arranged in a morning — the road to Laas Geel for the painted cows, and, with a day more, on to Berbera for the old port and the empty beach on the Gulf of Aden.
The Guide's honesty, gently: Somaliland is a different place from the Somalia of the headlines — calm, ordered and glad of visitors — and the Guide says so plainly; it also says that the prudent traveller checks conditions with their chancellery the week they travel, takes the required escort outside Hargeisa without arguing, and books through an operator who knows the ground; the visa is Somaliland's own and the recognition question is not one to raise loudly at dinner; cash is dollars and the mobile money that everyone uses; the afternoons belong to khat and the shops close for it; alcohol does not exist; and the poets, the money changers and the camel men are the reason to come — the traveller who is offered tea by all three has understood the city.