Today, I had an errand and oh what an exciting errand it was! Actually, it wasn't the errand that was so exciting, but, as is often the case, the journey surrounding the errand. Driving here is very nearly a contact sport.  Indeed, I think my driver missed his calling as a rally driver.  Travis Pastrana, if you're reading this, you may want to think about getting this guy on your team. Seriously.
Picture, if you will, a city not unlike Tijiuana. Mostly dirt roads, what paving there may be left on a road most certainly does not make it smoother than a dirt road.  Rubble and garbage is everywhere and, by everywhere, I mean everywhere. It lines the road side like a protective wall. Meanwhile, back on the road, it is like a video game come to life. Cars and trucks are backing out into the road randomly, pedestrians and goats and donkey carts wander back and forth.  The drivers just rip along as fast or a s slow as they dare (quite fast in my driver's case) and dodge and weave like Muhammed Ali.
The horn is used so prolifically here that after a while I began to wonder if the horns are perhaps used with more of a morse code-like purpose, communication amongst the bretheren.  At one point, my driver went to strike his horn and it did not sound off for him. I wondered how that wounded him: if it was akin to stripping an Arab trader of his haggling abilities, or cutting the hands off an Italian. Without his horn, he was rendered mute.
The neighborhoods have no obvious form of division.  Imagine a few Beverly Hills homes plopped down in the middle of Compton.  An Atherton mansion amongst the carports of East Palo Alto.  The few of Pacific Heights mixed in with the many of Hunter's Point. That's what Hargeisa is like.  There is simply no room for separation of economic class, not if you want an apartment that is convenient to downtown and shopping. The mansions are smashed in with the corrugated tin lean-tos and mud brick structures. The dividing factor being the broken glass-topped protective walls surrounding the nicer homes. And by "mansion," I don't mean a Shah's home. Rather, nicer cement brick houses with pretty windows. Outside of the broken glass walls is the same rubbish that covers this city as effectively as the ubiquitous dust.
Having safely arrived at my destination, I gazed out of the window at the breathtaking vista of a goat's ass, standing stop a pile of rubble, surveying his kingdom. Charming.
Back in the vehicle and racing back over the roads at top speeds, my driver nearly drifted through his corners, using the piles of rubbish and dirt (and probably a few goats) for berms. I suspect the goats didn't notice and my driver made it back just in time for noon prayers.