Margie; Somaliland; Western Togoland; Uyuni

R.I.P. Margie, a kindly old woman who went to church with us. She was famous for sending greeting cards. Word has it, before she died she prepared several dozen Thanksgiving cards, and so we may hear from her one last time. We attended her funeral; Samuel was asleep when we arrived, but he soon woke up and had to be taken outside; he and I sat on the front steps and identified passing cars. “Sports car. Truck. S.U.V. Sedan. Truck. S.U.V. Police car.” This kept us busy until the last hymn.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Here’s another fine video from the YouTube channel Un mundo inmenso. This one is about Somaliland, the self-governing northwestern region of Somalia.

I hadn’t known that Somaliland is so stable, or that other countries and the UN refuse to recognize it as an independent state because they’re wary of lending credibility to other secessionist movements.

(The situation may well be more complicated than this. Even so, the video is a good starting-point; also, it got me reading about another “unrepresented nation”: Western Togoland, which has eleven million people and the world’s friendliest flag.)

But Somaliland isn’t as beautiful as “Uyuni, the Most Incredible Landscape in the World”:

One time, with David, I was looking at pictures of Bolivia, and he was like, “I don’t understand why this isn’t everyone’s main interest in life.”