Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteSomalia's the wild Islamic frontier.
And I like the place.
For starters, it may have one of the least developed oceanic coast lines left on earth (Google Earth for that), and that's justification enough for affection as far as I'm concerned.
However, should the inner James Bond, Indiana Jones, Rambo, or Triple-X need a real adventure, then baby, right now, Somalia's the sandbox conditio sin qua non.
So what do you want?
Babes? Got 'em--but watch out: they ain't Vegas girls by a long shot.
Weapons?
Let's say the drive of choice might just be a four-wheel-drive "Technical" [3] outfitted for machine gunning and troop transport--imagine rolling that machine down the surf line!
You like your politics loaded with intrigue and surprises?
Well, first, there were the war lords (alt. expression: "Lords of War"),
and then there came the Islamic Courts Union (and it came to pacify Mogadishu and The South),
and then, threatened and leading with the counter punch, came the Ethiopean Army,
soon followed by the government in exile and the United States and a lot of bloggers (okay, maybe just this one).
Still . . . wow.
Who needs Nicholas Cage for entertainment when Shabelle.Net publishes daily?
On a more serious note (although much of the above rings true): Somalia is a gorgeous country, possibly equal in reality and certainly in the mind to the Polynesia of 60 years ago.
It may not look much like breadfruit and boobies at my desktop, but geophysically, it's got that austere face and monstrous tropical weather appealing to adventurers, aristocrats, and misanthropes.
It really does have an unspoiled coast.
It really needs environmental care as well as careful development.
And we need it, but not for its beauty or it resources, but rather to find better ways to live together, to put men to work without making slaves of them, to feed a people that finds peace in every corner and agricultural plenty from the sea and out of every flooded land.
At the moment, as I type, Somalia's chief contribution to the world, but please correct me if you have seen other news playing high on the Shabelle front page: war, refugees, and pirates.
As proto-paradise goes, Somalia need be neither an Al Qaeda nor particularly American nor capitalist or classic socialist war and politics petri dish.
Let Somalia be Somalia, sez I!
Rich or poor, made for backpacking ecotourists or Hilton snoots, Somalia could turn out one of the most desired business and ecotourism locations on earth.
1. Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/.
2. Shabelle.net: http://www.shabelle.net/news/english.htm.
3. Wikipedia: "Technical (Fighting Vehicle)": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_%28fighting_vehicle%29.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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