Dawn of the Epoch

Chapter XLII - Showdown in the Slum

In Somalia, the quartet decided to split up. Virgil and Tiyana would go to the city and seek out venal officials with loose lips, inside information, and an affinity for American dollars. Hunter and Hongo would hit the streets and get the inside scoop from the worst parts of town. Tiyana never would have let Hunter go if she had not seen what he could do back in Tibet. Also, he had Hongo with him. Tiyana had begun to realize that Hongo had a hard edge. He knew his way around a dangerous situation.

Hunter and Hongo walked the streets of Bosaso. Makeshift shops littered the sides of the streets. Their owners had pieced them together from haphazard pieces of wood and cheap corrugated tin sheets. Some of the more upscale ones were made from stolen steel intermodal freight containers. Many of the shacks had fiberboard and dried mud patching up portions of their frames. Their owners ran them without licenses or property ownership interests. They were all squatters and they were everywhere. They sold whatever snacks and basic necessities that they could get their hands on from glass-bottled coca-cola to locally-made gum crafted from eucalyptus tree sap. Salespeople accosted Hunter and Hongo with wares ranging from pirated digital video discs to live rabbits. Between the various kiosks, children ran rampant. They roamed listlessly in groups.

They begged for money saying, “dollar, dollar, penny? dollar, dollar, penny?”

That summed up the extent of their English. They mostly spoke Somali and Arabic. United States dollars, however, were the preferred currency. No one wanted any crummy Somali shillings. The rampant inflation of the shilling made it highly undesirable, even for beggars. Hunter’s heart crumbled as he saw young children with snot dangling from their noses sitting idly by the street. Long sleeves covered their hands and hid the bottles of potent glue that they kept under their tattered sleeves. Occasionally, they lifted their sleeves to their noses and took a long, hard sniff.

“They say the glue keeps the hunger at bay.” Hongo said.

“Tragic.” Hunter responded.

No words could capture the utter despair that he felt on the streets of this failed State. The poverty actually worsened as they continued their walk. The cobbled roads with potholes big enough for a car’s wheel to fall into gave way to partially smoothed out dirt paths. Parts of the road had rudimentary concrete sections that had been smoothed out by hand with old, rusted trowels. Beat-up jalopies rumbled across them in a zig-zag pattern as they avoided the potholes and attempted to drive on the smooth portions of the road. Hunter, Hongo, and a translator that they had picked up that morning walked directly into the industrial slums on the east side of town. As they walked into the heart of the lawless portion of town, the beggars thinned out. Instead of pleading eyes, they began seeing suspicious and menacing eyes. They passed building after building that got halfway to completion before the contractor quit. Young, thin men sat on top of the unfinished portions and chewed khat, a locally-grown, leafy plant with amphetamine-like alkaloids. They glared at the newcomers. Some of them were armed with AK-47s and other weapons. Once, Hunter saw a rocket-propelled grenade launcher sitting across the lap of a boy who looked to be about fourteen years old. Their translator looked nervous, but they had promised him quadruple his normal rate to accompany them, so he steeled himself as best as he could.

“We are here Hongo. I think we have gone as deep as we can get. What do you think?” Hunter asked.

“Let us start asking questions. Are you ready for this?” Hongo asked.

Hongo had seen many slums in his native country of Kenya, but he never felt as scared as he felt in this lawless part of the world. Not much scared Hongo.

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s do this.” Hunter said.

Hunter looked around.

“How about those guys. They seem alright.” Hunter pointed at a group of teenagers walking across the street.