´óÏó´«Ã½

After 20 years of almost non-stop warfare, Somalia's capital Mogadishu is not an easy place to get around.

We're tearing along a pot-holed street, squeezed inside one of the heavily armoured trucks that the Ugandan peacekeepers use to patrol their territory. In our flak jackets and helmets, we jolt against each other like beer cans in shopping bag. The reinforced windows bear the cobweb-like scars of bullets. The Ugandan troops stand, heads through hatches in the roof, manning three big guns.

Through the windows, two strong, conflicting impressions: Mogadishu is rubble, and Mogadishu is impressively busy.

Two decades of litter and debris cover the roads. Many buildings are in ruins, others pockmarked with an acne-rash of bullet holes. It is impossible to look in any direction without seeing a Kalashnikov - slung over a shoulder, resting at someone's feet, brandished on a street corner. Some men stand swaddled in bandoleers of bullets. In a side-street, an anti-aircraft gun sits welded to the back of a truck. It all feels - just like it did a decade ago when I first came to this city - like wandering into a Mad Max movie.

And yet, look past the guns and the ruins and there is also another city visible from the armoured truck. We pass a market - its stalls full of oranges and mangoes. A crowd of elderly men are sipping tea in the shade of a tree. Small shops are open. Goats foraging in the rubbish. Adverts for mobile phones.

After about 15 minutes, the sea comes into view again on our right, then we dip down a hill and our convoy of trucks turns ponderously up towards Villa Somalia - the country's once-elegant state house that is now home to the besieged inmates of an unelected Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that would probably be overrun within hours by al-Shabab, the Islamist mlitia which has links to al-Qaeda, if it weren't for the Ugandan peacekeepers manning the front lines a few blocks away.

A boom of artillery, and a few close pops of automatic gunfire greet us as we climb out of the truck. It might well .

Inside, in a dark, gloomy but elegantly furnished room, we are introduced to half a dozen members of the country's new, streamlined, technocratic cabinet. Many have just returned from years in exile in the hope that change is finally coming to Somalia.

I struggle to contain my scepticism. Ten years ago I covered my first major Somali peace initiative on a sweltering hilltop in nearby Djibouti. Everyone seemed convinced it would work - that this time, things would be different. The diaspora was thrilled. It all went nowhere.

But Doctor Maryan Qasim tries hard to convince me things have finally changed. She got off the plane four days ago from Birmingham, UK, after over 20 years in exile there.

"My family said: 'You're mad,'" she admits. "But my country needs me. I told them it's challenging but I have to make a sacrifice." After years as an English primary school teacher, she suddenly finds herself waiting for the transitional parliament in Mogadishu to confirm her as Minister for Women's Development and Family Affairs.

"If we are optimists and work hard, the rest will follow," she insists, claiming that "now is the right point. People have suffered a lot and now for 20 years they don't want this to carry on more and more. I have a big hope this is a turning point."

Doctor Maryan Qasim's family thought she was mad to leave Birmingham for Mogadishu

Sitting near her, the incoming Minister of Information, Abdulkareem Jama, may be toying with his worry beads, but he's pushing the same positive message. "It may seem to some that we're fidgeting. But there is a process," he says of the political wrangling that has deadlocked the TFG.

"The government has expanded control of Mogadishu to over half the city. The opportunity we have now is one that has not come along any time in the last 20 years. No two clans are fighting. The civil war is essentially over." Al-Shabab's forces, he declares, are not nearly as strong as they seem - just a few men with guns filling a political vacuum in most towns and villages. "We can succeed in bringing Somalia back to its glory days."

Next up, the irrepressible mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamoud Ahmed Nur. He's come back from London to try to breathe life into the ruins of what many regard as the world's most dangerous city. "It's not the most dangerous," he insists. "Baghdad and Kabul are worse - but they have lots of money. We have none because here there are no Americans."

The mayor may have almost no budget, and is constantly in danger of ambush by al-Shabab, but his talk of "mobilising the people" and "harnessing the business community" chips away at the edges of my scepticism. "If we get five years' peace," he declares, Mogadishu "will come closer to Hong Kong." That's a big "if", I point out. "Yes, it's a big 'if'."

Then it's time to grab a few words with the new Prime Minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who brushes aside my criticisms of the TFG's few accomplishments and endless political deadlocks. Instead he's anxious to remind me that Somalia's problems are the world's problems. He wants more money from the west, and more troops for the Amisom peacekeeping force:

"Al-Qaeda and al-Shabab cannot be defeated by the TFG. For sure. The international terrorists... have more financial resources. We are energising the population here now. This is doable. The only thing lacking is international support."

The armoured convoy is revving up outside, ready to take us back to Amisom's fortress beside the airport. I grab a last word with the new foreign minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar. He talks proudly of the 2,000 university graduates produced in the city each year; of the vast resources and skills possessed by the diaspora - now hopefully poised to return to the country. But is there not, I wonder, a reality gap between the government's ambitious plans, and the fact that they're stuck in a besieged corner of a ruined city? He sets me straight.

"There is," he says, "a subterranean iceberg of normality" here. An image to ponder.

More to come from Mogadishu tomorrow.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Dawn at Nairobi's international airport. A solitary giraffe outside the perimeter fence. Herds of foreign tourists heading on safari, draped in khaki and cameras.

At Gate 4, a noticeably sombre atmosphere - perhaps 60 Somalis preparing to board a scheduled flight for Mogadishu. One man recognises me and cameraman Phil Davies from a previous trip we made about seven years ago. He used to be a journalist but not now.

Camera? Check. Tripod? Check. Flak jacket? Check.

"Too dangerous," he says with a frown, then mimes the action of a saw, amputating his arm. He lives in an area of the Somali capital controlled by the Islamist militia, al-Shabab. "They lash people there. Every day - for the smallest thing."

He's now working for a foreign aid organisation - still a risky choice. "Al-Shabab call us the hands of the infidel. Their eyes are on us all the time." For a while he sent his seven-year-old daughter to a Koranic school in the city, in order to "try to fit in", but took her out when she came home saying she'd been taught how to "use a pistol... The world must understand what al-Shabab are. How dangerous they are."

We fly north-east for an hour and a half. First over flat, seemingly empty scrubland, then over a messy quilt of fields.

There's another old acquaintance on the flight, a senior western diplomat I've met in other conflict zones who has years of experience in - and apparent patience with - Somalia. He's coming here with, he says, a tough message for the Transitional Federal Government - the unelected, heavily western-backed, besieged administration that clings on to power in a chunk of Mogadishu, defended by some 8,000 African Union troops.

The TFG stands accused of wasting the last two years bickering among themselves and failing either to bring change to the area they control or to broaden their political base by reaching out to the feuding clans and groups across the country. The TFG's mandate expires next August and the international community wants a broader coalition assembled to take over, otherwise it may abandon the TFG altogether.

There's a growing consensus that the "top-down" approach to state building isn't working in Somalia, and it may be time to shift focus to the handful of local administrations that are actually making some headway. The northern region of Somaliland is a prime example.

As we come in to land, the plane swings out over the Indian Ocean, hopefully out of range of al-Shabab's guns, before landing on the beach front. Mogadishu airport sits in a sliver of coastal territory controlled by Ugandan troops. It's the second time I've been here in under a fortnight - the last trip was prompted by the release of the Chandlers, the British couple held by pirates.

This time, we're "embedded" with Amison, the African Union peacekeeping force. Curiously, after a period of little, or negative, international media coverage, they've taken the trouble to hire - via the UN - some British PR consultants to help arrange our visit.

Amisom, with their heavy armour and Ugandan soldiers, offer some serious protection from the snipers, the mortars, the roadside bombs and the kidnappers. But their forces are also the principle targets of al-Shabab right now - and because of none too popular with some civilians either. Would we be safer with one of the clan-based militia groups in the city? Probably not. The word on the street here is that al-Shabab are offering $1.5m (£1m) for a foreign/white hostage. There are no easy options in Somalia.

Speaking of options - the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has just unveiled the results of a new opinion poll conducted in Mogadishu. In a place as dangerous as this, the circumstances of the process may well be as revealing as the actual results.

Crossing the frontlines here, pollsters braved gunfire from rival militias to visit most of the city. In areas controlled by al-Shabab, it was considered too dangerous to ask people directly, what they thought of the group, instead they spoke of "the opposition."

Mogadishu has been left in ruins by two decades of conflict

• Ninety-two percent of households say they're are unable to meet their basic needs.
• More than half feel the world has forgotten Somalia.
• As for al Shabab - the opposition - a full 71% of respondents see them as a force for bad.
• Seventy-two percent are unwilling to see them in power.
• Just over half of all respondents believe African Union peacekeepers now controlling roughly half the city can end years of conflict in Somalia.
• Fifty-seven percent of the randomly selected households live in makeshift camps under plastic or iron sheeting.
• Forty-one percent are illiterate.
• In a country with nothing resembling a social safety net - only 27% of those interviewed consider themselves unemployed.
• And one percent, retired.

This is the first of five entries from Mogadishu this week.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

It should be a rather grand location, nestled in a park close to the city centre, below a steep hillside. But fell victim, many years ago, to the urban decay that still clings to so much of the city's heart. Today even Johannesburg's own official website concedes that the gallery - housing one of the continent's biggest collections - is in a "menacing" neighbourhood.

It's a huge shame for an institution gearing up for its centenary. I went there last weekend with my children, picking our way across piles of rubble and rubbish in the car park, and the only other visitor we saw was a woman sleeping soundly on a bench inside.

It's well work the trek. The gallery is showing two photographic exhibitions. One - South African photography 1950 - 2010 - is a familiar tour through the frontlines and headlines of the Powerful stuff. But nowhere near as gripping as a much more subdued display in two adjoining rooms.

Ernest Cole Boy in School courtesy of Hasselblad Foundation

In dozens of exquisitely composed photos, Cole manages to capture the banal, brutal reality of apartheid from an insider's perspective: A small crouching child, sweat streaming down his cheek, furiously concentrates on his schoolwork; a black housekeeper finds a rare moment of intimacy cuddling her Indian employer's baby; a disconcertingly calm gang of pickpockets surrounds their quarry on a city street.

JAG has other surprises too. No, there's nothing here to compare with any major international art gallery, but it's still a thrill to wander through a small, drab room and to stumble across a Dali sculpture, a Sisley, a Manet, a Van Gogh and then a small Picasso print.

The gallery staff run a small shop selling catalogues and postcards. They were extremely helpful but the gallery's security appeared to be laughable.

There are some other very interesting photography exhibitions in Johannesburg right now, including returning to the scenes of their crimes.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

Greetings from Mogadishu - a city I wish we could visit more often.

"This is a stinking dangerous place," said one American engineer, earlier on Sunday. He was sitting in the airport VIP lounge looking out on to the sun-baked, beachfront, heavily-guarded runway - a big surf breaking on the rocks beyond, and from time to time, the distant snap of gunfire.

He was summing up a wider sense of unease about the decision to bring the Chandlers to Somalia's capital, instead of flying them straight out to neighbouring Kenya. Out of the frying pan, into... well, into somewhere any weary ex-hostages would probably prefer to avoid.

To raise the stakes even further, Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) decided it shouldn't send the new prime minister down to the airport tarmac for a quick handshake. Oh no.

The news conference was good PR for Somalia's beleagured government

The Chandlers' small charter flight arrived soon after lunch, and the couple were immediately bundled off the plane, without even time to put on flak jackets. They were made to climb into one of the giant armoured cars belonging to Amisom, the Ugandan-led peacekeeping force that protects what little territory the TFG controls in the city.

They were then driven through Mogadishu's perilous streets to the presidential palace for a quiet chat, a brief news conference, and then a return trip on what Paul Chandler called, with the sort of jovial patience one might expect from a tourist - "the airport bus".

To be fair to the TFG and its ever-changing cast of characters, it does appear to have been closely involved, along with many other groups, in finally securing the Chandlers' release. Officials were understandably keen to take some credit, in a country with little to crow about.

A government official angrily accused me of "looking for bad news" when I suggested the airport bus journey was at best unnecessary. The information minister was adamant that "no ransom" had been paid by the TFG. And the city is a little quieter than usual right now.

As for the Chandlers, they were remarkably gracious throughout. Paul - not quite shaking off his tourist-image - carried a large camera around his neck and, before leaving Mogadishu, took some snaps of the airport while his security guard growled, yet again, at the handful of journalists trying to film the couple.

Paul's wife, Rachel, seemed intermittently more weary, but rallied during the news conference to give a bright and moving description of her elation, her enthusiasm for the people of Somalia, and her relief at no longer being surrounded by criminals.

An adventurous, resilient couple, then. They made a terrible mistake 13 months ago in trying to sail from the Seychelles to Tanzania.

They were treated badly - and beaten at one point by their captors. But the experience has clearly not broken them. I got the sense that the Chandlers aren't the sort of people to hold a grudge against a whole country - even one as relentlessly chaotic, and violent, as Somalia.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A bold attempt to connect with an increasingly youthful electorate? A cynical manoeuvre? Or just a cringe-worthy - dad-on-the-dance-floor - embarrassment? What to make of the outbreak of rapping that seems to be infecting state houses across the continent?

First up, Gabon's President Ali Bongo, set the pace with Extra credit for actually getting up on stage and apparently remembering his lines.

Now, hot from Uganda, , a former soldier who seems to be

And here in South Africa, while no politician can rival foot-in-mouth-firebrand has apparently produced a gospel-style song celebrating the

I smell a reality tv show... Presidential Pop Idol anyone? Although what I think the continent really needs is a more ambitious version of the "job swap" format, with countries voting to exchange their governments.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

It's taken me a while, but I think I've mastered the Nigerian finger-snapper. Now I'm working on the knuckle-bump-thumb-bender - apparently a local variation on the US - or is it Jamaican? - . Next stop, the double-click.

Is there anywhere in the world with a greater variety of handshakes than Johannesburg?

I've always liked the standard South African down-up-down greeting - widespread across the continent - where the grasp is effortlessly changed midway by both parties. It seems somehow more formal and more friendly than simply grabbing and shaking.

But the down-up-down is just the starting point - the blues chord that underpins a whole world of manual dexterity, complete with a soundtrack of slapping and snapping thumbs and index fingers.

And it's not just manual. A friend taught me the foot shake this week. Apparently it came here during the eighties - along with break-dancing - and still gets the occasional outing. Hold your right foot up and gently tap your partner's foot on both sides.

South Africa can claim credit for some of these rituals - including a few, like the "chip-in", that emerged from the notorious prison gangs - but most are a blend of influences from around the continent and beyond.

Zimbabwe has the cupped elbow shake - designed to show that no weapons are being carried - where the left hand supports the right elbow during the shake.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the head-bump - a personal favourite of mine - where you gingerly knock foreheads.

Then there's the ever-so-slightly aggressive Eritrean remix of the classic shoulder bump.
I've tried importing another personal favourite - the Chechen horse hug - where you stand beside your partner and lean in to put an arm around his shoulder as if you're both on horseback.

I'll let you know if it catches on here.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

You're in a sinking life-boat, surrounded by sharks. What do you do? In Somalia, the answer seems to be "don't paddle - just haggle".

For months now, the country's grandly titled, but barely functioning "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG) has been preoccupied with a level of internal political wrangling that even the decks of the Titanic probably didn't have to endure.

So could this mark the start of a more constructive period for the TFG, and the tiny, besieged patch of Somalia that it occupies?
Fresh from Buffalo, USA, the new Prime Minister faces a daunting task, with less than a year's mandate left to restore some credibility, broaden his bickering government's political base, tackle corruption and bring some concrete benefits to the beleaguered residents of Mogadishu. A tall order, says a Western diplomat, involved in the laborious international process of trying to resuscitate Somalia's state - as things stand, "I can't see anyone being enthusiastic about extending their time in office."

As for the TFG's enemy - al-Shabab - the group is stretched and divided but by no means beaten. A friend emailed me recently from Mogadishu, lamenting the group's latest move against the international money transfers that act as a life-support system for so many families. "They are spoiling everything," he wrote. "This is really very sad. It will affect everyone."

The African Union peacekeeping force protecting the TFG in Mogadishu should very soon be up to its full, but modest, strength of 8,000 men. But then what? No force in Somalia is close to delivering a knock-out blow. The lines shift, but the stalemate holds.
The AU's Ugandan troops are forceful, competent and keen to push forward, but they're being restrained by the paralysing incompetence of the TFG. There's no point, after all, in seizing more territory by force if there isn't a credible political, administrative and humanitarian entity to fill the vacuum.

On that front, there are some encouraging examples to follow - the Mayor of Mogadishu, for example, has shown a willingness to roll his sleeves up. But now the TFG, and anyone it can entice into a partnership, needs to do the same.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?