Summer Fun in Somaliland

Somaliland is a country that does not exist. It should; it really, really should, and this little scrap of land is doing everything right to prove to the world that it deserves to be severed once and for all from its failed brother state of Somalia. Law and order exist here, and there's a representative government, its own currency, flag, and free press. They just held a peaceful presidential election. Tourists are welcome! Yet the outside world ignores this place.

Daallo Airlines is back up and running, using its finest ex-Soviet flying heap for the 35-minute flight from Djibouti to Hargeisa. I get the business class section in the back with tons of legroom to throw my stuff around. No one bothers stowing anything, and yes, you can bring on your water bottles. The seats on my side of the plane look like they may have come from an old Braniff plane. The message on the seat back to keep my seat belt fastened in English and Spanish is this plane's only safety feature. Big porthole windows are fogged up so I see nothing. The flight is extraordinarily smooth.

We stop on the tarmac in Hargeisa, and everyone walks to the terminal since there is no other way. No cars are allowed to drive near the terminal, so porters carry every one's stuff out into the street. I splurge on the best hotel in town: the Ambassador. The taxi zigzags through road barriers of cement-filled drums to reach the gate where guards then check the car's bottom with mirrors. I get out and enter a special women's room where my stuff is checked and I am wanded. The hotel is great: satellite TV, room service, Internet, and a bedside light.

A driver takes me around Hargeisa in the afternoon. Wow, I am speechless. I wish it didn't take so long to upload pictures or I would post tons. Here is a friendly city trying to recover from a decades-long catastrophe. Streets are lively, store shelves are stocked. I wander around to take pictures, and because there are so few tourists in this place, you're treated like a rock star when you step out of the car. It's a very hard scrabble sort of place, but through the poverty and the shreds of blue plastic that the wind has spread across the city and beyond, there's an underlying artistic flair that is brilliant.

Soon a dollar will be worth only this.