By Goth Mohamed Goth
The Ministry of Sports , Tourism and Youth Affairs representatives and other stakeholders were invited to witness the launch of Somaliland Tourism feasibility study report from representatives of Dunira Strategy sustainable tourism consultants which, in conjunction with local partners Horn Heritage, had been awarded a Comic Relief Common Ground Initiative Research, Consultation and Planning Grant for the research during in a simply event held in Hargeisa.
Dunira had been awarded a Comic Relief grant in conjunction with Horn Heritage to explore existing opportunities with the aim of developing cultural and heritage tourism in Somaliland, as a driver of social and economic development.
The grant is funding a feasibility study determining the development potential of cultural and heritage tourism in Somaliland.
Dunira always aims to align local needs and capabilities with the international community’s expectations and market desire. Such an approach is imperative to ensure the genuine sustainable development of destinations.
The specific focus for the project is the cultural and natural heritage tourism potential in the corridor between the port city of Berbera and Hargeisa the capital city , which includes the famous rock art site and ancient marvel of Las Geel.
SomalilandPress. Com
Who is doing the study? Our firm would like to. We work on tourism strategies all over the world. Our web site is http://www.chjc.com
Charlie Johnson, President. Johnson Consulting.
Somaliland has a lot to offer the adventerous tourist including hidden coves, vast empty tracts of land untouched by humn feet, endemic flora and fauna, diving out of this world, completely unexplored cave systems and trekking for the pioneering afficianados. It even has glimpses of culture once you dig underneath the cover of dust and aimlessness on the streets of Hargeisa. Afterall this is where every playwright, poet, every new music genre, every wordsmith, every avant-garde dance innovation in the whole Somali culture began. No wonder Hargeisa was universally known as the Mother Of Somali Arts.
None of that will takeoff now. Why? because a country once proudly, haughtily, unbending secular and black has been brought low by the dark, sinister clouds of Salafism coming over the Arabian Gulf. It is slowly sucking the life out of the place. Somaliland is no longer somaliland.
And why oh why do we put camels on everything about Somaliland? The beasts are the ugliest, smelliest, most despicable(they take delight in pissing in the water pools they are drinking from) creatures Allah has ever bothered to create. To the world they say things none of them particularly attractive: desert, Arabs, poverty, spitting..and now of course Somaliland.
To create a new iconography perhaps we should use something that truly reflects Somaliland of today: The image of man with a green slime oozing out of his qat-filled mouth trying to romance a woman completely covered in dark minqar(or whatever it is called) with a caption saying " Welcome To Somaliland..The land Of Qat and Minqar"
The country is basically under western sanctions. Once the inhumane treatment of this part of former Zoomalia is taken to task in an international manner, then we can have our own industries. But now even my own parents are not allowed to set foot in SL as it is considered Zoomalia.