Seventeen Trips Through Somáliland: A Record of Exploration & Big Game Shooting, 1885 to 1893

The inhabitants of Somáliland may be divided into four separate classes:—The nomad Somális, who keep sheep, goats, cattle, and camels, and who breed ponies; who live almost entirely upon milk and meat, and follow the rains in search of grass for their animals. The settled Somális, who form a comparatively small community, living in or near the coast towns, and who are principally occupied as abbáns or brokers. Certain outcaste races, living in a precarious way, scattered about among the different Somáli tribes, engaged principally gathering gum and hunting. The traders, who bring large caravans from the interior to the coast at certain seasons.

The most important trading caravans are those which come to Berbera from Ogádén and Harar. They bring hides, ivory, ostrich feathers, rhinoceros and antelope horns, prayer-skins, honey, coffee, ghee (clarified butter), and gum; exchanging these products and loading up for the return journey with the beads, dates, rice, cotton goods, and other articles which form the cargoes of dhows visiting the ports. The traders have portable huts (gurgi) which are packed on the camels, and can be pitched or struck in about an hour. These they erect on long halts, and when staying at the coast towns in the trading season. The rer or kraal (karia in Arabic) is formed by unpacking the gurgi and pitching them in a semicircle, surrounding the whole by a thorn fence or zeríba. The huts are carried on camels in sections, and consist of a framework of bent gipsy poles, over which mats and skins are sewn when a halt is made. While on the march the mats do duty as packsaddles for the camels, the skins being tied over the loads to protect them from sun and rain. While the caravans are at the coast, generally during the greater part of the cold weather, the camels are placed under the care of the nomad Somális, to be fed and tended until the return journey to the interior in the spring.

The nomadic tribes also form zeríbas during their constant wanderings, staying in camp for a month or two at a time. Each nomad clan wanders in an orbit of its own, and reoccupies its former zeríbas at the different pastures year after year. Their zeríbas differ from those of trading caravans by being made in a double ring, the outer circle of which is often twelve feet high, to keep out lions. Inside the double brushwood fence the space is divided into pens for cattle, camels, sheep, and goats, the ponies being hobbled and allowed to graze abroad by day, while at night they are tied to the outside of the huts or to thorn trees, and for their further protection fires are lit round the inside of the zeríba and in the huts. At the coast towns the arrangements are not so formidable, a low single fence to keep in the animals being deemed sufficient. The huts are put up by women, while the men form the zeríba and cut logs for the watch-fires, using an axe (fás) consisting of a block of soft iron, worked into a ring with a forked stick inserted—much like the axe of jungle tribes in India. The men are extremely lazy, and consider that their dignity is lowered by tending anything but camels, cattle, and ponies. Thousands of sheep and goats are looked after by a few women and small children; while the donkeys and water-vessels which they carry are the particular care of the oldest and most decrepit women.