Visiting Somaliland: Impressions of Somaliland children

Dear Reader

you have been informed earlier that the TERRE DES FEMMES fotographer, Frank, will join us here in Hargeisa for about 9 days. The purpose of his work here is the idea for a campaign for 2014. Since the details are not yet finalised, there is not more information I can give you at this point. Only this much; for a real good campaign we need real good and professional picture material. This is why Frank was here.

With the help of Edna we were able to get in contact with a number of local NGOs and women and girls which we would have never been able to meet with AND take pictures of otherwise. Here you cannot just go out and ask women/girls for interviews and pictures. Aside from the fact that mainly men and boys are sitting around in tea-shops. Also, some people can get quite aggressive when they see a camera.

Anyway, we managed to organise a lot of sessions with women but in the end we had too few pictures of girls. Here, Khadija and Hassan, a couple with their three Kids living in Bern, were able to help out. They too, are spending their vacation here in Hargeisa, their hometown. We were in contact in Switzerland already so I knew where to find them here. We have been in contact since the first week of our arrival here and have spent several days together, among others the 1st of August. Khadija spread the word in her neighbourhood that all the girls shall come out to play and we will be taking pictures. And they came. Unforunately about 50 boys came too and they are much more eager to be fotographed. When we separated the girls from the boys, it took all but 5 minutes until the boys surrounded the 15 or so girls and scared them. We had to relocate the girls away from the boys so we could relax them and play with them and Frank could do his Job. Thanks god the sun played on our team and the afternoon was a full success.

I took a few pics myself from afar, here's the result.