It has been a while since my last update reflective also of
how my days in Mogadishu has started to get busier. I have already been on two
trips home on my Rest and Recuperation (R&R) breaks, which are every 4
weeks and trust me they are life saviours. One also realizes that most of us in
such duty stations are basically living from one R&R to another, practically
it makes sense to enable us to plan our time and work schedules and make our
bookings. But also it is a huge mental health issue where one bonds with
colleagues over discussions of R&R plans, the anticipation of the days
leading to it, the goodbyes and welcomes and the treats that come when someone
returns from a R&R.
In a dark humour anecdote, a rocket launched by Al Shabab
that landed on the room of a UN colleague and destroyed it, didn’t cause any
human harm as the colleague was away on R&R. Prompting some meme jokes
around “R&R Saves Lives”!
Speaking of saving lives, this period was also where I had a
very significant and perhaps life altering exposure through a security training
curated and delivered for the UN in all places where security risks are significant.
For reasons of privacy, I cannot divulge more about the training but it was
perhaps one of the best life skills coaching I had. For me personally being
selected the team leader and being responsible in a very real simulation of
security threats for the lives of 20 team members was both one of the hardest
things and most fulfilling things I have done in a long time. And the T shirt we received as successful
closure of the training with a slogan of ‘I Survived the S-SAFE Training’, kind
of gives a glimpse into the intensity of it.
And finally armed with my S-SAFE training completion, I could
finally start travelling locally. First stops were meetings with partners in
Mogadishu beyond the wire or green zone where all UN offices and living premises
are. Its quite an experience to travel in convoys of armoured vehicles wearing
PPE vests and being accompanied by security personnel who basically also decide
on how long you can be in a meeting or visit. Apparently not more than 2 hours
to even 1 hour for some locations. I felt a bit like the POTUS honestly.
However in reality this can be quite unnerving as well atleast initially.
Travel within the south central part of the country is also
similarly managed even to visit community sites. So I decided that perhaps my
first field mission to be to a bit of safer areas in the country where I will
not be bound by security and will really get some time to spend with partners
and communities. So I travelled to the northern western region of Somalia, known
as Somaliland and its capital city – Hargesia.
More on this in my next post……….
