Military History Photo Friday: The Technical, a Marriage of Economy and Firepower

Ah, the good old days, when you were allowed to have a machine gun on the back of your automobile without a permit! Actually, you weren't, but it wasn't long after the invention of the car before people decided to turn it into a weapon because, well, that's what people do.
This obviously posed shot is from the Easter Uprising of 1916, when Irish nationalists launched a failed bid to overthrow English rule while the British Empire was distracted by events in Europe.
It's significant because it is perhaps the earliest photo of what we now call a "technical", a normal civilian vehicle on which is mounted a large weapon such as a machine gun, recoilless rifle, or even a missile launcher. Technicals provide a good combination of speed and maneuverability for rebel groups and cash-strapped governments of the developing world.
They've also been used by commando missions such as in World War Two, and can now be found all over the developing world. Once when I was traveling in Somaliland, our car got stopped by a technical mounted with a huge recoilless rifle (basically a cannon). The troops inside informed us that the road were were going on was now off limits, even though it hadn't been the day before. We didn't argue, and no, I didn't take a photo. There's a difference between being an adventure traveler and being an idiot!

This technical used by the Libyan rebels carries a Grad missile launcher. Photo courtesy Al Jazeera English. Fortunately for the driver, there isn't much kick from this weapon. The Sahara is perfectly made for technical use, and some of the pioneers in tactics involving them include the Saharawi in their fight against the Moroccans, and the Chadians in their fight against the Libyans. The people of Chad used so many technicals to repulse Colonel Gaddafi's invasion in the 1980s that it has been dubbed "The Toyota War".

A technical in Mogadishu, Somalia, taken by a braver (or stupider) photographer than I am. I think the guy sitting in the back with the white shirt just noticed his picture is being taken. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Hoping to travel to South Sudan

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard that the Republic of South Sudan has just become the world's newest country. Welcome to the family of nations!

I'm looking into ways to get there in order to be the first travel blogger to write a series about it. My series about traveling in Somaliland, a country that doesn't officially exist, was my most popular ever, so I'm hoping the South Sudanese government will respond to my inquiries. With Gadling getting ten million hits a month, I could sure give them some good publicity.

I also have to figure out how to be the first Postcrossing member to get a postcard from South Sudan. . .


[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Lessons learned from my first photo exhibition

As I mentioned last time, this month a local cafe is hosting my first photo exhibition, on the painted caves of Laas Geel. It's running until the end of January if you happen to pass through Madrid this month. :-)

I'd never done a solo photo exhibition before and I learned a fair amount. The night went well and I even sold a photo, but things could have gone better.

First off, the timing was bad. In early January people are often still on holiday or out of town, and most people are feeling poor after holiday spending. Not a good time to have a show. I knew this ahead of time, of course, but with my travel schedule there wasn't really any choice.

Secondly, I could have done more to promote it. I told my writers group, distributed fliers, announced it here and on my social media sites, and put an announcement on Couchsurfing. That last idea was a good one because I got to meet some interesting Couchsurfers living in Madrid! Still, I could have sent out more invites and distributed more fliers.

Lastly, the frames were those simple glass plates with clips. While they're the cheapest option and actually look pretty good, they make the photos look smaller. I should have gone with more substantial frames. The photos could probably have been a size bigger too.

Throughout the night several people asked me if I was going to make a presentation. They seemed to have expected one. Perhaps I should have done one. I'm not sure if I should have given it in Spanish or English, though. About half the crowd were native English speakers, and in a couple of cases couldn't have followed a Spanish presentation. Vice versa for the rest of the crowd. The slide show I had running all night got a lot of attention, though, and became a focus of conversation with several people.

All in all, I was happy with the evening's attendance and have learned a lot about how to do my next event.

Thanks to my wife Almudena for taking the pictures of the event! She only had the instamatic that night so I'm looking a bit scary. Another thing to remember for next time!

Photo Exhibition: The Prehistoric Painted Caves of Laas Geel

Regular readers of this blog will remember that I visited the unrecognized state of Somaliland last year. One of the highlights of my trip was seeing the painted caves of Laas Geel. The paintings are up to 10,000 years old and rank among the best preserved in Africa.

This beautiful but little-known site is the subject of my first solo photography exhibition. I'm having the grand opening on Saturday, January 8, at Café Béigol Bagel, Calle Meléndez Valdés, 29. Metro: Arguelles or Moncloa. Yes, it's a bagel shop. A rather humble beginning for my photography career but hey, I'm a writer first. If you happen to be in town pleased drop by. I'll be talking about the site and Somaliland in general.

For more on the caves, check out my post on Laas Geel and my series on travel in Somaliland.

Photo Friday: Ancient cave paintings at Laas Geel, Somaliland

Welcome to Photo Friday, a series I started last week here on Midlist Writer. This week's pick is one of the 300 (!) shots I took of the painted caves of Laas Geel in Somaliland. On a rocky hill in the middle of the Somali desert are a dozen rock shelters covered with paintings of cows, hunters, giraffes, and other images. Somali archaeologists estimate the paintings to be from 5,000 to 11,000 years old. Many painted caves have come to light in recent years and an ongoing survey will almost certainly find more.

Somaliland is a breakaway region of northern Somalia. They enjoy peace, government, and the rule of law. While Somaliland has its share of problems, it's WAY better off than the rest of Somalia. I went there earlier this year and wrote a series on Somaliland travel.

In January I'm going to have a photo exhibition about Somaliland at a local cafe in Madrid. More on that later!

I'm interviewed on "Live Your Life Well"

Andy Hayes, managing editor of the excellent travel blog Live Your Life Well, has interviewed me about my twin loves of history and travel as part of his ongoing Travel Experiences Interviews. Hop on over there to hear me blather on about ancient monuments and achieving dangerous childhood dreams. Make sure to poke around the rest of the site too for other neat articles including one on candy around the world and a very cool piece on visiting Peshawar.

So what does the above photo have to do with all of this? Well, nothing really, but it brings back good memories of traveling in Somaliland. This guy is an Oromo, an Ethiopian people, but he works in the Somaliland capital Hargeisa as a street vendor making tasty samosas. So. . .an Ethiopian cooking Indian food in Somaliland for a Canadian??? That sort of randomness is one of the things I love about travel!

Looking back on this week's posts I notice that there's been a lot of self-puffery. So let me puff someone else for a change, fellow Madrid writer Sue Burke, who just had a short story published on Daily Science Fiction called Zero Hour. Check it out. It's only 900 words so you can take a look while the boss isn't paying attention.

A year as a professional blogger

"You have written 141,239 words on 303 posts since you started publishing 365 days ago."

That's what the user interface at Gadling told me yesterday. I've been working for the world's most popular travel blog for a year now and written enough to fill two books. It's been tons of fun and I've learned a lot, as I discussed in my post back in January when I reached 100,000 words.

The posts I'm most proud of are my three series, including one on hiking Hadrian's Wall, one on travel in Ethiopia, and the current one I'm writing on travel in Somaliland. These have all been adventurous trips that I've enjoyed sharing with the world. What's nice with the last two is that they've attracted a lot of comments from people in those countries. Ethiopia still has a reputation as a famished nation, and most Westerners confuse Somaliland with Somalia. I'm glad to play a small part in setting the record straight.

I also like to poke our readership with a stick by causing a bit of controversy. This is remarkably easy. All you have to do is upset their preconceptions. The one that got the strongest reaction was when I told them to leave their cameras at home. I got an avalanche of negative comments, none of them realizing I was trying to get them to question their assumptions. I even had one needy fellow look up my blog here and email hateful messages to my public address. I laughed at him and blocked his mail.

Sometimes this doesn't work as well as I hoped. My post on how the swastika is a symbol of peace and harmony in most parts of the world got only a few comments, and when I questioned both religion and atheism in an article on the sunken churches of Lalibela there wasn't even a peep. Ah well.

While I do like provoking people, the series are by far my favorite. As writers our job to entertain people and teach them something. I like to think that maybe I'm helping people understand each other a little better. Judging from some of the comments I get, I've succeeded with some readers.

And for a writer, there's no better reward you can ask for than that.

Writing on the road

After a two-month hiatus, this blog is back up and running. I've been in Ethiopia and Somaliland for work and what with slow Internet connections and the distractions of seeing two fascinating countries I haven't had time to post here. I'll be posting regularly from now on.

I was in Ethiopia to research a book on the Battle of Adowa for Osprey Publishing. This decisive victory over the Italians was one of the greatest defeats of a European force at the hands of an African army and made Ethiopia the only African country never to be colonized. I met a lot of historical experts, including Dr. Hiluf Berhe of Axum University, who wrote his thesis on the battlefield. He and I spent a long, enjoyable, and exhausting day walking the battlefield and climbing up mountains. I also found some books on the period that are unavailable outside of Ethiopia and did some research at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, housed in Haile Selassie's old palace. I've never worked in a palace before! This book is going to be a good one, and would have been impossible to do properly if I hadn't gone to the country.

I'm also doing a series for Gadling. My travel articles on Ethiopia are already going online, and when that series is done in about a month I'll be doing another series on Somaliland, a breakaway republic in northern Somalia that has created a haven of peace and commerce while the rest of former Somalia continues to suffer chaos and bloodshed.

Writing on the road is something I've always loved, since it combines my two great passions. I left my laptop behind and wrote longhand. This kept me stress-free about losing my computer and allowed me to get reacquainted with good old-fashioned paper.

As tired as I was, I still wrote every day. This is an important thing for writers to do, not only to keep in practice and accrue a large body of work, but to stay in tune with your muse. Of course, staying in tune with your muse isn't exactly difficult when you're meeting nomads, exploring ancient cave art (like I'm doing in the photo), and visiting medieval walled cities. Sharing my travel stories is what got me into writing in the first place back in my zine publishing days.

Sometimes I think that writers never get vacations. Even so, it's a hell of a fun job!

This photo shows me at the cave art site of Lass Geel, Somaliland, and was taken by Swedish photojournalist Leo Stolpe. Thanks Leo!

Leaving the laptop behind

I'm headed to Ethiopia next week for a two-month trip. Hopefully I'll also be visiting the unrecognized state of Somaliland. That's their flag to the right. Somaliland is the northern third of Somalia. It's been independent since 1991 and is safe enough to visit with appropriate planning and caution.

I was planning to bring along an old laptop my boss at Gadling gave me. It needed a battery, though, so I took it to a local computer store that specializes in retooling old computers. They told me it would take three to four weeks to get one! I'm certainly not going to bring my new laptop along with me so now I guess I'll just have to do without a computer for two months.

The practical side of me is moaning. The writer side of me is celebrating. Freedom from the tyranny of the keyboard! A return to the intimacy and focus of paper! Salvation for the retinas!

Of course I'll be going to Internet cafes fairly often to upload articles and photos for Gadling, but the vast majority of my writing (and there will be lots of writing to do as I explore these old and fascinating lands) will be done with the time-honored method of pen on paper.

Another thing to look forward to.