Somalia’s graveyard of grand and beautiful buildings

By Mary Harper - Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, has regularly been referred to as "the most dangerous capital city on earth", but as a degree of stability returns to the area, places of peace can be found among the physical destruction and human suffering.

Article Keydmedia Online
5 August 2012

The atmosphere changed completely when we entered the cathedral. Things fell quiet. It felt almost peaceful.

The nervous, frantic movement of people, animals and vehicles on the streets outside did not follow us. The hysterical beeping of horns fell away, as did the sound of gunfire.

My five Somali bodyguards - wrapped in long, heavy necklaces of brass bullets - did not spring into position around me. They bent their heads towards the smashed floor of the cathedral and walked alongside me.

It was Ramadan in Mogadishu - the holy Muslim month - and we were inside the remains of what had once been one of the grandest Catholic cathedrals in the whole of Africa, built by Italian colonialists in the 1920s. Its last bishop, Salvatore Colombo, was murdered there in 1989 as he was giving mass.

I felt very tiny inside that building. Perhaps because the roof has been completely blown off, the walls of the cathedral seemed to stretch right up to the blue sky above.

Although we were in the carcass of a building, enough remained of the elegant stone arches and the shadows of crosses, for us to know that we were in a sacred place.

As we approached an outline on the floor where the altar used to be, taking care not to step in the human excrement dotted around us, the guards started asking me how the church worked. How Christians worshiped. How exactly did they pray?

As I explained how the priest administered bread and wine, we looked up. High above us, carved in the stone, was Jesus on the cross. Bullet holes scarred the carving, the colours faded and gone.

It was very different from the streets outside where people, optimistic about the new relative stability, are opening shops, their walls freshly painted with bright images of what is on sale inside.

My guards were especially upset by the statue of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. His head had been blown off and the sheep around him were vague shapes of shattered stone.

Livestock is a mainstay of the Somali economy, and very dear to the hearts of Somalis. The guards were unhappy that representations of animals and their saint had been so horribly damaged.

In one corner was what looked like a pile of discarded cardboard and cloth. Slowly, I made out the figure of a man, so deeply asleep he seemed not to be breathing.

During the rest of my time in Mogadishu, the guards were always hurrying me along. As a foreigner and white woman I stuck out somewhat from the crowds, and they did not want any trouble. I was a potential target, so it was not wise to stay in one place for long.

But things were different in the cathedral. We took our time. All of us seemed hypnotised by the place and found it difficult to leave.