Weather stories

Mogadishu was attracting more country folk daily. What was life like outside of the city? Sacks of USAid, vitamin, and fortified grain (not for re-sale) were being split open and the contents sold in smaller quantities in the market next to the bus station. I watched from behind the plastic, brightly coloured ribbons moving in the slight warm breeze of the café. I brushed the flies away from my mouth and eyes and laid a palm over the tumbler of cold milk. We would travel north with a vet from France against all the advice from the development community. Civil war was spreading.

The road just north of the capital was adorned by Mussolini’s fascist insignia, carved in stone and still standing, eschew. After the old, came the new Italy in the form of a two-laned road, mounted on a dyke above the sand, an impractical design. The rains washed away the sloping sides and inevitably the road subsided, in parts. Halfway up the country the Chinese took over. Their road lay flat against the earth and involved more manual labour; men in cone-shaped hats, protected from the sun.

The heat came from above and below, from the sky and the earth, like being in a fan heated convection oven. The ostriches stood panting at measured distances between the rocks and the thorn bushes. We chased one at 40 kmph over the shimmering sand before passing over a bridge. It was the noise which made us stop. Thunder? Bombing? “No. Quick the river!” We ran to the bridge. Around the bend in the dry river bed approached a wall, a wave of rocks, stones, tress, branches and fighting waters. Charging forward, respecting nothing, it passed under our feet. I felt the surge. On the other side I thought of Noah, the Red Sea and Pooh sticks all at once. Now I know that people can drown in the dessert.

Submitted online by Maris Bruce , December 13, 2003