Untamed Borders has been guiding guests in Somalia since 2012. Recently, a private guest of ours was joined by German journalist Bettina Rühl, as they toured the city.
Bettina is an experienced journalist who has been visiting Somalia since 2001, but this is the first time she had been to the city and seen it through the lens of tourism.
Her experience with Untamed Borders and our guest, was turned into a German radio documentary, which was aired on Deutschlandfunk Kultur recently. You can listen to it here:
Here is an English transcript of the piece:
00:00:02 — Presenter
Deutschlandfunk Kultur, The Report, with Katja Bigalke.
Hi. Today we’re travelling to Mogadishu in Somalia. And I really am using the word “travelling” here in the sense of leisure travel.
Because although Somalia continues to be shaken by terrorist attacks and political crises — the latest unrest, a power struggle between the government and opposition, was only a few weeks ago — increasing numbers of tourists are now visiting the country.
00:00:31 — Presenter
For our reporter Bettina Rühl, that in itself is significant. She has known Mogadishu for 25 years.
When she first went there in 2001, there weren’t even any scheduled flights. Back then, she flew in on a plane bringing khat, the stimulant leaf, from Kenya.
Later, she watched as people from the Somali diaspora began returning. And now, after some time, the first tourists are also landing at the international airport and doing the kinds of things tourists normally do.
00:00:59 — Presenter
They look around Mogadishu, eat in restaurants and stay in hotels.
Even so, the question remains: what draws people voluntarily to a place marked by civil war and terrorist attacks, a place that many people consider far, far too dangerous?
For a long time Bettina Rühl couldn’t find anyone willing to talk about it. Until now.
Ben (Untamed Borders guest)
What do I expect? I’m simply curious. Whatever happens is fine with me. You learn what you can learn. You see and experience what you can experience. I find everything interesting.
00:01:28 — Bettina Rühl
Ben — whose real name is something else — is sitting in an armoured SUV.
For security reasons, he doesn’t want his name to be revealed. He wants to stay under the radar. Anonymity is the condition under which I’m allowed to accompany him for a day in Mogadishu.
Ben is British, in his early sixties, slim and athletic. You can tell that he likes running marathons.
00:02:01 — Bettina Rühl
The white SUV is followed by a pickup truck, also armoured.
Four men are sitting in the back with Kalashnikovs and well-stocked ammunition belts. The men work for a security company hired by the travel agency Ben is travelling with.
Ben is a tourist and arrived in the Somali capital yesterday morning.
Since then, the armed men have never taken their eyes off him whenever he leaves his heavily secured hotel.
00:02:33 — Ben
Yesterday afternoon we went out. We went to the beach and passed through several checkpoints.
Bettina Rühl
The people at the checkpoints — mostly men — are armed with assault rifles. Some point their weapons towards the passengers in the cars, while others carry their Kalashnikovs loosely on straps over their shoulders.
They wear blue-and-white or beige police uniforms, or the green camouflage of the army.
00:02:58 — Bettina Rühl
At the moment, Ben and I are driving along a broad road beside high walls. The sky is blue and the road is fairly empty.
Ben
For security reasons, of course, I’m staying in what people here call the Green Zone, in other words an area of relative safety.
There are lots of checkpoints here and a lot of barbed wire. I think these measures are something of a historical relic, but they’re still everywhere.
00:03:28 — Bettina Rühl
A few years ago, the security situation in Mogadishu was much worse than it is today.
At the beginning of 2011, the city — which at the time had been almost completely shot to pieces — was almost entirely in the hands of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militia.
Anyone who could avoided Mogadishu. Aid organisations and the United Nations had their offices in neighbouring countries.
00:03:50 — Bettina Rühl
As recently as five years ago, with around 100 serious attacks a year, Mogadishu was considered one of the cities in the world most frequently affected by terrorism.
Compared with that, the situation has improved significantly. The tally for the previous year: in early summer, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a military base and killed at least ten recruits.
00:04:14 — Bettina Rühl
In October, the Al-Shabaab militia attacked a high-security prison very close to the presidential palace.
There were also several smaller explosions, foiled attacks and exchanges of gunfire. To this day, the terrorist group controls large parts of the country. Militarily, it has once again moved close to the capital.
00:04:38 — Bettina Rühl
And yet the number of tourists continues to rise. Most recently, 10,000 tourists came in a single year — according to figures from Somalia’s Ministry of Tourism, twice as many as the year before.
Ben is the first one I have been allowed to accompany. He tells me that he is self-employed and works in advertising. Because business isn’t going particularly well at the moment anyway due to the many global crises, he is using the time to travel extensively.
Travelling is his passion in any case.
00:05:11 — Ben
I’ve already worked my way through the countries of the world. There are 193.
On top of that, the United Nations has divided the world into 330 territories. These include larger islands such as Réunion in the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Islands between south-east India and Myanmar.
I’ve already been to 305 of those regions. I want to visit the rest. In a way, it’s silly. It takes a lot of time, energy and money.
00:05:38 — Ben
On the other hand, it’s wonderful. When you travel, you get a bit of everything. You meet people, encounter their culture and their food, and see new landscapes. When I travel, I get everything that I love.
Bettina Rühl
Mohamed, Ben’s tour guide, interrupts us. We have reached the first highlight.
00:06:04 — Bettina Rühl
The Mogadishu fish market.
The old hall stands just a few metres from the Indian Ocean. Fish are lying everywhere on the floor and on rough wooden tables. Most of them are enormous: tuna, king mackerel, swordfish, sharks.
Traders sharpen their knives, remove scales and cut up the silvery bodies with practised strokes. It’s loud. The floor is slippery and covered with blood, scales and water.
00:06:33 — Bettina Rühl
One of the armed guards never leaves Ben’s side as he squeezes his way past the stalls, looking around in amazement.
Equally amazed eyes follow us. Two white people, accompanied by armed men, just to look at fish?
Ben’s tour guide Mohamed, whose main profession is journalism, introduces him to a woman who works here among all the men.
00:06:58 — Mohamed
This woman runs the largest women-led fisheries cooperative in Somalia. It’s impressive how she has spent the last fifteen years campaigning for women in the fishing industry. She is very well known.
00:07:25 — Bettina Rühl
More than 50 women belong to the cooperative. She campaigns for women to be able to work in the fishing industry. Even though women in Somalia are not yet able to work as fishers themselves, she does what is within her power. She campaigns for greater representation of women within the sector.
The woman, whose name Ben does not learn, does not speak English. Mohamed has to translate.
00:07:52 — Bettina Rühl
Like all the women here, she wears a loose robe and a headscarf that covers every last strand of hair.
Somalia is a very traditional, strictly patriarchal society. Men traditionally dominate within the family, politics and public life. The continuing conflicts, political instability and frequent displacement make women even more vulnerable.
00:08:18 — Bettina Rühl
That is particularly true for the millions of internally displaced people who have fled political violence, droughts and flooding for the cities — most of them to Mogadishu.
Ben clearly knows something about this background. In any case, he seems impressed by meeting this woman who has managed to assert herself in a male-dominated world.
Ben strikes me as genuinely interested. He doesn’t seem at all like somebody who is simply looking for a thrill.
00:08:49 — Bettina Rühl
Outside the fish market he stops again and talks to a few people about music and football. Those are subjects you can use to strike up a conversation with half the world, he says with satisfaction. He really seems to enjoy these conversations.
Ben
We’re in a place that is completely unfamiliar to me. But what I hear and see doesn’t actually feel all that foreign. I see people cutting up fish and selling it. Basically, they’re simply living their lives.
Approx. 08:49 — Ben
It actually feels surprisingly familiar. You see people working, selling things, talking to each other. People are just getting on with their lives.
Of course, I’m aware of where I am. I know that something could happen at any moment. So yes, there is always a certain amount of nervousness in the background.
But when you actually meet people here, when you look around, much of it feels very ordinary.
Bettina Rühl
Ben is enjoying himself. He talks to people outside the fish market about football and music. These are subjects, he says, that allow you to start a conversation almost anywhere in the world.
The armed men remain close by. However ordinary the scene may appear, Ben cannot simply walk away on his own. His movements have been planned in advance. The security company knows where he is going, and whenever he leaves the hotel his guards travel with him.
The German Foreign Office advises against travel to Somalia. It warns of the danger of attacks, armed assaults and kidnappings.
Ben knows that. He came anyway. The contradiction is striking: a tourist doing tourist things — visiting markets, talking to local people, taking photographs — while men carrying Kalashnikovs watch over him. Yet he tells me the danger itself isn’t what interests him.
He wants to see the country. He wants to meet people. And he wants, ultimately, to complete his personal map of the world.
Approx. 10:15 — Why travel somewhere considered dangerous?
Bettina Rühl
The company organising Ben’s visit is called Untamed Borders. I speak digitally with its founder, James Willcox. Willcox is British and, like many of his clients, a passionate traveller himself.
James Willcox
I was interested in travelling to places that were difficult to get to, places such as Afghanistan. They were places that fascinated me personally, and eventually that developed into organising journeys for other people as well.
Bettina Rühl
That was around twenty years ago. Today Untamed Borders offers journeys to countries including Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya — countries for which Western governments often issue strong travel warnings.
James Willcox
The people who travel with us aren’t necessarily people looking for danger. That’s an important distinction.
Generally, they’re interested in places that they otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to see. There can be culture, history, landscapes — all sorts of reasons to go. The fact that somewhere is considered difficult or dangerous isn’t necessarily the attraction.
It’s simply part of the reality of travelling there.
Bettina Rühl
His customers are not exclusively young men seeking adventure. According to Willcox, men and women travel with Untamed Borders in roughly equal numbers. Somalia, however, is unusual even among the company’s destinations.
James Willcox
Somalia is the one where we use an armed security team. There are obviously risks in other countries as well, but Mogadishu requires a particular security setup.
You have to look at the situation very carefully.
Bettina Rühl
In other words, Ben’s armed escort isn’t theatre put on for tourists. It is part of the security arrangements that make this kind of visit possible in the first place.
Approx. 13:00 — Through Mogadishu
Bettina Rühl
Our sightseeing tour continues. Again, the two vehicles move through Mogadishu together: Ben and his guide in the armoured SUV, the armed security team close behind.
The city outside the windows changes constantly. There are newer buildings and heavily fortified compounds, but also visible reminders of decades of fighting.
Mogadishu was once one of the Indian Ocean’s important port cities. Civil war transformed much of it. After the overthrow of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia’s central state collapsed and different armed factions fought for control.
Later Al-Shabaab became the most powerful Islamist insurgent organisation in the country. The group continues to control or influence large rural areas and has repeatedly attacked Mogadishu.
And yet the capital is also a very different place from the city I first encountered twenty-five years ago. There is construction, businesses operate, restaurants are open, people go to the beach, planes arrive every day.
And now, among all the other passengers arriving at Mogadishu airport, there are even a small number of conventional foreign tourists. Ben is one of them.
Approx. 15:00 — Mosque and old Mogadishu
Mohamed Mohamoud / guide
We are going into the old part of Mogadishu. There are some very important historic buildings here.
Bettina Rühl
One of the stops is an important mosque. Somalia is overwhelmingly Muslim, and religion plays a central role in everyday life.
For a foreign visitor, clothing and behaviour have to take local customs into account. Ben follows Mohamed through the site. He asks questions, listens and looks around.
Again I have the impression that what interests him is not simply being able to tell people later that he has visited Somalia. He wants to understand something about the place. He doesn’t rush.
And although his security team is always visible, ordinary city life continues around them.
Approx. 16:30 — The old lighthouse
Bettina Rühl
Our next stop is one of Mogadishu’s most recognisable historic landmarks: the old lighthouse. Today it is badly damaged.
Its crumbling structure stands as a reminder both of Mogadishu’s maritime history and of the destruction the city has experienced.
Ben looks around and takes photographs. The Indian Ocean lies beyond it.
Ben
This is the sort of thing that I like seeing when I travel. You have the history of the place, and you can see what’s happened to it as well. It’s not something that’s been packaged for tourists. It’s just here.
Bettina Rühl
That lack of conventional tourist infrastructure is part of the unusual nature of Ben’s visit. There are no crowds of foreign visitors following guides with umbrellas. No souvenir stalls designed for international tour groups.
Most of the people Ben meets are not accustomed to seeing Western holidaymakers at all. That explains some of the staring. And, of course, there’s the armed escort.
Two white visitors walking through Mogadishu accompanied by men with assault rifles are hard to overlook.
Approx. 18:00 — Fishing harbour
Bettina Rühl
We continue towards the fishing harbour. Boats come and go on the Indian Ocean. Fishing has always been important here, although the industry has considerable potential to develop further.
For Ben, this is another opportunity simply to watch people working. The harbour, like the fish market, feels less exotic to him than he had expected. People are repairing things, moving goods, talking and negotiating.
Again he comes back to the same observation: ordinary life.
Ben
That’s something I always find interesting when travelling. You can arrive with a certain image of a country in your head because of everything you’ve heard about it.
Then you arrive and you meet actual people. And people are people – they’re working, they’re talking about football, they’re interested in music, they have families.
Obviously there are huge differences between places, but there is also a lot that is familiar.
Bettina Rühl
That doesn’t mean Ben has forgotten the risks.
Ben
I’m conscious of it all the time, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly nervous. You know that something can happen here, but you can’t spend the entire time thinking about that either – otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in coming.
Approx. 20:00 — The beach
Bettina Rühl
At lunchtime we go to the beach – the image could hardly be further removed from the international cliché of Somalia. People are eating, young people gather with friends, families come to the coast.
The Indian Ocean stretches out in front of them – Mogadishu’s beaches are among the most beautiful natural assets of the capital. They are also places where the contradictions of life here become particularly obvious.
People want normality, they want to go out, eat and enjoy themselves. But restaurants and other crowded public places have repeatedly been attacked. Security is therefore part of ordinary life in a way that would be difficult to imagine in most European cities.
Ben eats his lunch by the sea and his guards remain nearby.
Ben
It’s beautiful. If you took away everything you already know about Somalia and you just looked at the beach, you wouldn’t necessarily imagine the country in the way it’s usually presented.
Bettina Rühl
He doesn’t mean that the security problems are imaginary – far from it.
What surprises him is that they exist alongside a normality that outsiders rarely see. Somalia isn’t only the images of explosions and armed men that appear in international news reports – there are millions of people here who simply have to live their lives.
Approx. 22:00 — A changing city
Bettina Rühl
Mogadishu has changed enormously since my first visit. When I came here in 2001, there weren’t even normal scheduled international flights.
I arrived on an aircraft transporting khat from Kenya. For years, foreign journalists, aid workers and diplomats were among the relatively few international visitors.
Then people from Somalia’s large diaspora increasingly began returning, some came to see relatives, others came to invest or to start businesses. Hotels, restaurants and other services developed.
And eventually another category of visitor appeared: people with no family connection and no professional reason for being here – tourists.
The Somali Tourism Ministry says around 10,000 tourists entered in the most recent year it recorded, roughly twice as many as the year before, although that figure also includes many people with Somali roots living abroad.
Ten thousand is tiny by the standards of established holiday destinations. For Somalia, however, the fact that leisure tourism exists at all is remarkable.
Approx. 23:45 — Can Somalia really be a tourist destination?
Bettina Rühl
There is an obvious question – should people really be encouraged to holiday in a country where armed escorts may be necessary?
James Willcox doesn’t present Somalia as an ordinary destination.
James Willcox
You have to be realistic about where you’re travelling, we’re not saying there isn’t risk. There is. The important thing is to understand that risk and decide what measures are appropriate.
People make their own decisions about what level of risk they’re comfortable with.
Bettina Rühl
This kind of tourism is controversial. One person’s adventure destination is another person’s home — a home in which the consequences of war and terrorism cannot be left behind after a two-day visit.
For Ben, Somalia is one stop on a much larger journey. For the people he meets, it is everyday life.
That difference never completely disappears. At the same time, tourism also creates encounters that otherwise might never happen.
Ben clearly values those encounters more than the simple achievement of adding another place to his list.
Approx. 25:15 — Into the bazaar
Bettina Rühl
By the afternoon we are in the narrow streets of Mogadishu’s historic old city. The vehicles can only take us so far, we continue on foot.
The armed guards come with us – it is busy. There are stalls and small shops, local spices are piled up for sale. There is traditional clothing, elsewhere there are sports clothes and jewellery.
People squeeze through the narrow spaces between traders. Ben attracts attention again.
Mohamed
People are curious – they don’t see many tourists here.
Bettina Rühl
Some people smile, some simply stare. Others want to know where Ben comes from. He tries to talk whenever circumstances allow. Football works again, so does music.
Ben
Those are useful wherever you go, you mention football and suddenly you’ve got something to talk about.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Somalia or almost anywhere else.
Bettina Rühl
There is something almost comical about the contrast. Ben chatting casually about sport while armed guards scan the crowd around him. But after spending the day with him, the juxtaposition has begun to feel less strange.
Mogadishu itself is full of such contradictions, security barriers and cafés, armoured cars and beachgoers. Buildings destroyed by war beside new construction.
A city associated internationally with chaos in which millions of people nevertheless go to work, shop, marry, raise children and make plans for the future.
Approx. 27:15 — Ben’s impressions
Bettina Rühl
Ben’s time in Somalia is almost over, he has been in Mogadishu for less than two days.
Tomorrow morning he will leave again and continue to Ethiopia. I ask what he will take away from the visit.
Ben
Probably the people, that’s usually the case. Obviously I’ve seen some interesting things — the market, the coast, the old buildings. But it’s the conversations that make a place real.
Before you come somewhere like Somalia, you know the headlines – civil war, terrorism, Al-Shabaab. Those things are real, but they’re not all there is.
Bettina Rühl
Has the visit changed the image he had before arriving?
Ben
Yes, I think so, it’s more normal than you imagine. That’s probably the main thing – people are living ordinary lives. You realise that very quickly once you’re here.
Bettina Rühl
And the armed guards?
Ben
Well, they’re also part of the reality, you obviously can’t ignore that. I wouldn’t wander around Mogadishu by myself.
I’m doing what the people who understand the security situation tell me to do.
Approx. 28:45 — Returning to the hotel
Bettina Rühl
We make our way back towards Ben’s hotel, again the gates, barriers and checkpoints. Again armed men. The hotel is heavily protected.
Ben’s brief excursion into everyday Mogadishu ends behind another security perimeter. The juxtaposition sums up his visit. For a few hours he can enter markets, walk through the old city and talk to people. Then he retreats to a fortified hotel.
Most Mogadishu residents don’t have that option, they have learned to live with uncertainty, but they also refuse to allow uncertainty to define every part of their lives. And perhaps that is what has surprised Ben most.
Approx. 29:45 — Final conversation
Ben
I wouldn’t say I came here because it’s dangerous, that’s definitely not the point – I’m interested in seeing places.
And if you want to see the entire world, eventually you’re going to come to places that are complicated. Somalia is one of them.
Bettina Rühl
Would he recommend it?
Ben
That’s difficult, everyone has to make their own judgement. I’m glad I came, but obviously it isn’t an ordinary holiday destination. You need people who know what they’re doing.
Bettina Rühl
Tomorrow, Ethiopia. Then more countries, more regions and more boxes on Ben’s personal map of the world. Eventually, if everything goes according to plan, all 330.
Ben
That’s the idea, whether I’ll actually manage all of them, we’ll see, but I’ll keep going.
Approx. 30:45 — Bettina Rühl closing narration
Mogadishu remains a city marked by violence – the terrorist organisation Al-Shabaab has not disappeared, the political situation remains unstable, attacks remain possible.
Foreign governments continue to warn their citizens against travelling here – none of that has changed simply because a few tourists have started arriving.
And yet Mogadishu is also changing, lanes land, hotels open, people return from the diaspora, businesses are created, families spend time at the beach.
And occasionally, people such as Ben arrive simply because they want to see Somalia for themselves. His visit lasted barely two days – he travelled in an armoured vehicle and was protected by men carrying Kalashnikovs.
That fact alone says a great deal about how far Somalia still has to go, but Ben leaves with another image as well.
A fish market, a woman campaigning for a place for women in the fishing industry, conversations about music, football, people selling clothes and spices in a crowded bazaar.
Lunch beside the Indian Ocean. And above all, the discovery that behind a country’s frightening headlines are people doing something utterly unspectacular: living their everyday lives.
Approx. 31:40 — End
A report from Mogadishu by Bettina Rühl.