WAR TORN SOMALIA -
12-09-2005, 07:02 PM
The year was1993, somewhere in Mogadishu, the capital city of war torn Somalia
I remember the year of horror that fell upon Mogadishu. It was at this time when bullets rent the air all through the city, day and night. A time when the sight of blood seemed like a familiar scene to come across. In this war torn country, I am still in wonder as to why the sun still shines upon us.
I remember the warlords with their guns
I remember them all too well. I remember the women and children as they ran to safety; though safety itself was as elusive to them as the wind. Many a times when I sleep, I hear them coming. I hear the militia running across the streets and every path they cross, is doomed to destruction. Its like an endless nightmare
a nightmare that I still carry so heavily fourteen years down the road.
They told me to join the militia; they even gave me an AK-47 to carry with me. I took it only so that they would let me alone. I remember Mohammed, my elder brother and how upbeat he was about receiving a new gun. Ali, yuah sopi ere mob( Ali time has come for us to fight our own war), he kept telling me. I looked at him and I pitied him really. Mohammed died in gunfire that night, and every other night I hear his voice telling me the same thing over and over. Every other day I visit the mass gravesite, where he was buried, just to pay my respects.
Everyday while I am at that mass grave in the outer part of town; I shed a tear for all the souls lost in battle. Funny that I am still alive. Funny that none of all those myriad bullets that seemed to hit every direction of town, did not get to me. What of general Aidid? What about him
well, I know for sure that that son of a gun caused it all. They never did find him. One man, yet so much destruction. From where the gravesite is, the beach can be seen two or three miles from where I stand. A beautiful beach it is, though full of sharks, but still ever so beautiful.
I have long wondered about Somalia. I have wondered whether we would ever have a taste of peace. Look at me now, 33 years of age, and yet feel so old and weary in my soul. Its the battle
its the gunfire
its the thousands of bodies that fell dead before my very eyes. All these are the cause of what I feel presently. Somalia,
a country that is well known to have spices and incenses in its plenty; but then again a country that is known to hold a million bullets in its soil, a thousand mass graves
.and a lot more horrific untold stories.
Abubakar, my long good friend, before he got killed in battle, told me that hope carries a man to his destiny. Well I am not sure as to whether indeed it was hope that carried Abubakar to the grave. Abubakar
I think a lot about him too. His dark domineering face and tall, lanky structure overshadowed mine and made me seem like a small version of him; like a miniature man to be exact. He too joined the militia. I remember the last words he said to me as the battle was getting underway. Ali, ugo pertero asi mepoo( Ali, you either got to die or die fighting).After that, I never did see Abubakar again
. Abubakar....a special friend he was to me.
What is there to hold on to? What is there when ones country and soul are torn into peaces. I look again to the beach ahead of me; where the horizon meets with the suns rays to exhort the next dawn. I look to the sky and stars, and then I think to myself, maybe God might be looking down on me too. Maybe he might be looking at where I stand; where masses of bodies surround me as though to form a parameter fence around me. He might be looking down here, where all hope seems to have been lost and sucked down in decades of civil war, and where all joy seems to have been erased forever from my heart. Maybe he knows. Just maybe, He is about to raise Somalia from her ashes of defeat and decades of devastating destruction.
The year was 1993, somewhere in Mogadishu, the capital city of war torn Somalia
..
A work of fiction based on true events of the Somali civil war that lasted decades ,which carried a thousands of deaths, yet still a new dawn of hope( like the hope Ali carries within him) awaits nearby.
Written by Caroline Ndwale Ndambuki
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