Somalia
I am in a refugee camp of 200,000 war victims on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The muezzin call to prayer drifts across a sea of plastic tents set among coconut palms and banana groves along the banks of the Shebelle River. Miles from here Ethiopian and Islamist insurgents are fighting in the streets and bombarding civilian districts with rockets and mortar fire.
Yet it was almost a relief to fly into Somalia after Kenya, just to take a break from the horrific sight of my home country committing a kind of national suicide this last month. I found it hard to leave the family at home, but apart from that I felt a huge burden of depression lifting as we got away from Nairobi.
As I sat in the refugee camp, beneath a grapevine planted by Italian settlers long vanished from destroyed Somalia, I began thinking.
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