A visit to Somalia

A visit to Somalia

The other day I flew to Somalia on the 67A bus to Stoddard Rd, that lively, concentrated zone of Africa and Islam in the low-income Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill, for a literary appointment as well as lunch. My destination was Banaadir, supposedly New Zealand’s only Somali restaurant. I wanted to try a certain dish. I had been reading about it in the pages of a novel that has been longlisted for the fiction prize at the Ockham book awards and ma…