SOMALILAND IS PEACEFUL AND DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY

... if we heard it once, we heard it a dozen times - from the very first Somalilanders greeting us at the Djiboutian border, to the curious college students who came to share dinner and conversation with us, to random adults we met on the street: "Somaliland is Peaceful and Democratic Country!!" Someone has done a very good job uniting the populace towards the importance of national presentation.

On one hand, it's easy to see where the anxiety comes from, and you can't blame them- with their rogue parent state of Somalia making international crisis headlines every other day, Somalilanders are naturally anxious to establish an ironclad distinction of their own peaceableness. Couple this with the fact that the fledgling nation has yet to be officially recognized by, well, ANYBODY, and their preoccupation with international image makes even more sense. (The foreign minister, by the by, assured us that they entertain hopes for Ethiopia.)

Unfortunately, a wicked fly in the form of cross-border Somalian suicide attacks has occasionally landed in their Peaceful Order ointment. I don't think it was coincidental that important government buildings were surrounded with heavy concrete barricades, and indeed the president narrowly survived an assassination attempt a short time before our arrival.

Imagine, then, as the Somalilanders apparently have, what would happen if a couple of the precious few foreigners in their country, highly prized Western tourists, were to be harmed somehow during their visit. Imagine the headlines. "AMERICANS MURDERED IN FORMER NORTH SOMALIA," reporters would race each other to declare in urgently solemn tones, and audiences would cluck their tongues - "Former Somalia? Well really, what did they expect??"

It is this very impression of lawlessness (although somewhat legitimate) that Somalilanders are desperate to eliminate, and it has given rise to some strange behavior on their part towards foreigners. Namely, a bizarre zeal to protect them from any contingency of danger or bodily harm.

This attention was sometimes comforting, but it had an annoying side, as when David and I were almost unable to travel around outside the capital because we refused to take a police escort. (The escort would have been funded out of the travel funds of yours truly.) The Minister of Tourism, our student friends, and random helpful adults were all scandalized at our stubbornness and tried desperately to dissuade us, but (as I pointed out with some bluntness), if someone really wants to kill us, what is one policeman going to do anyway? ("Probably run away," was David's quick reply.) They conceded the validity of my argument, but no one seemed to be terribly comfortable with the concept of Visa Numbers 0048 and 0049 setting off into the desert with only a carload of other strangers to keep them alive.

This wasn't to be the last we'd hear about the escort, either; at every military checkpoint along the road, guards panicked and urgently phoned their superiors to report our risky unarmed travellerhood, and several times flatly refused to let us pass. David of the silver Arabic tongue managed to talk our way past each time. (It really is useful having him along.)

However, the officious protection did have its endearing side, as when I was left with our luggage for a few minutes on a well-traveled street while David ducked in to a hotel to check room availability. A concerned crowd quickly gathered and, led by a matronly old lady, bodily escorted me to a more secure location a few meters away where they could protect and observe me more effectively (and post lookouts for the odd potential troublemaker). Indeed I was so well-protected that upon his return, David couldn't actually figure out where I had gone, and only the crowd's eagerness to unite us both in the same place for safekeeping established my location.

I was more than a little charmed.

Somaliland is really a unique little treat of a country, and while I'm not sure I completely believe the repeated universal assurances of its PEACEFUL AND DEMOCRATIC qualities, I confess myself falling for it anyway. Perhaps I should (as I have several times been exhorted to do) write Obama and ask him to consider making Somaliland recognition a central part of his foreign policy..