Berbera

Berbera has been a Gulf of Aden port for as long as there are records of the coast. Classical accounts of Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade describe ports along this shore shipping incense, hides and slaves, and by the medieval period the town held a long annual trading season, when caravans came down from the interior and from Harar in the Ethiopian highlands and ships arrived from Arabia and India. Egyptian forces occupied it in the nineteenth century before withdrawing.

Britain took the coast under protection in the 1880s, chiefly to secure meat and livestock for its garrison at Aden across the water, and made Berbera the capital of the British Somaliland protectorate. Administration, garrison and trade concentrated here for more than half a century; the seat of government moved inland to Hargeisa in 1941. A deep-water harbour was developed after independence, and in the 1970s Soviet engineers built port facilities and an airfield with an exceptionally long runway, which passed to American use after Somalia changed allegiance in the Ogaden war.

The town suffered in the fighting of the late 1980s and again during the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, after which it became the port of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland. Livestock exports to the Arabian Peninsula revived the harbour. DP World has run the port since a thirty-year agreement signed in 2016, completing the first phase of an enlarged terminal in 2021, with Ethiopia taking a shareholding in 2018 and a road corridor aimed at landlocked Ethiopian trade; that investment now dominates the town's prospects and its politics.

Berbera is a port town, and its culture reflects centuries of coming and going across the Gulf of Aden. Arab, Indian and African traders left their mark in the architecture of the old quarter and in the vocabulary of trade, and families here have long-standing ties to Aden, Jeddah and the Gulf ports opposite. The town is Somali and Sunni Muslim, organised by clan like the rest of the region, with mosques at the centre of the week.

Heat governs behaviour. Work happens early, the middle of the day empties, and life resumes in the late afternoon and evening, when people walk by the shore and sit outside. In the hottest months families who can afford it move to the highlands around Sheikh, a seasonal migration that has gone on for generations and that once included the colonial administration itself.

Hospitality is close to obligatory: tea is offered at any visit, and a guest is fed. Dress is conservative for both men and women, and the beach is not a place for swimwear. Poetry and song carry the same prestige here as across the Somali world, and the sea adds its own body of work songs and sailors' verse. Many households have relatives abroad, and the summer brings visitors from the diaspora back to family compounds.

Berbera is small: an estimate in 1985 put its population at about 70,000 and no recent census settles the figure, but the town is far smaller than Hargeisa and its numbers rise and fall with the port's fortunes and with the season. Work is dominated by the harbour — loading and unloading, customs, haulage, fuel, ships' supplies — and by the livestock trade, in which animals are brought down from the interior and held in pens before being shipped to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, above all in the weeks before the Hajj.

Fishing employs many families along the shore, though the catch is mostly sold locally and the sector remains small relative to the waters offshore. The port expansion and the corridor road towards Ethiopia have brought construction work, new warehousing and expectations of growth, and with them arguments about land, jobs and who benefits.

The rhythm of the day is set by the heat, with an early start, a long pause, and a second working period from late afternoon. Electricity is expensive and largely privately generated, water is scarce and often trucked in, and air conditioning is a luxury. Many young people leave for Hargeisa or abroad, and remittances from relatives overseas support a significant share of households.

Fish is what distinguishes Berbera's table from the interior. Tuna, kingfish and reef fish come ashore in the morning and are grilled over charcoal or fried, then served with rice, with the soft flatbread canjeero, or with a fiery chilli and coriander relish. Lobster and shellfish are landed too, most of it destined for export rather than local plates.

Otherwise the food is northern Somali. Breakfast is canjeero, also called laxoox, with ghee and sugar or with liver and onions, alongside tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Lunch is bariis iskukaris, spiced rice with goat or camel, or baasto, pasta with a heavy meat sauce left over from the Italian period in the south, usually with a banana on the side. Muqmad, meat dried and kept in ghee, is the old pastoral preserve and still made at home.

Camel milk, fresh or soured, is drunk through the day, and dates arrive by the sack from across the Gulf. Sambuusa, fried pastries filled with spiced meat, are the evening snack, especially in Ramadan, and xalwo, the dense sweet of sugar, ghee and spices, marks weddings and Eid. In the heat, cold soft drinks and endless sweet tea do the rest of the work; no alcohol is sold.