Unlikely Neighbors

This morning in Hargeisa, my little girl twins from yesterday slept peacefully.

Twin A:

Twin B:

The students in the secretarial course practiced their English pronouns at the end of the hall, and the doctors went on rounds, and the midwives successfully resuscitated a newborn baby boy without any assistance from me.  The sun shone, and a breeze blew.  A stretcher met a sad end in a lonely corner of the hospital:

The mosques sounded their prayers intermittently.  Another baby was born, with a cleft lip, and I taught his midwife to teach his mother how to breastfeed him, and he successfully latched and fed after an hour and a half of work.  In other words, it was another pleasant morning in Hargeisa, with all of the ordinariness and little dramas of any other day.

Meanwhile, 520 miles south, in the country that Hargeisa is technically part of, insurgent fighting raged for the second day in a row.  While we were bustling around the hospital, insurgents stormed a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 33 people including 6 members of the transitional government's parliament and an 11-year-old shoeshine boy and woman selling tea outside the gates.  More than 70 people have been killed in the last couple of days. 

For reference, 520 miles is the length of the New York subway system, the length of boom deployed in the gulf as a barrier to oil in an attempt to protect the Gulf Coast, the distance from New York to Columbus, Ohio or New Orleans to Dallas or Auburn to Durham, North Carolina.  Which is to say, not really that far.  It continues to amaze me that this calm, democratic not-country exists in such close proximity to such a disaster of a country as Somalia, which is constantly "lurching from crisis to crisis" as the New York Times says. 

I don't know that anyone who reads this blog has 30 minutes to spare, but if anyone does, here is a very interesting take on Somaliland and its relationship with Somalia.  It's part of the brilliant BBC Series Holidays in the Danger Zone, from the season called "Places that Don't Exist".  It's below, in three parts.  The second part features Edna and her hospital.

Fascinatingly, Somaliland is NOT the most obscure place in this season.  I'd give that award to either Nagorno-Karabakh or Transnistria.  Mad bonus points to anyone who can name where those not-countries are in the world.  Next on my list: "Holidays in the Danger Zone: Holidays in the Axis of Evil."