Thursday, March 15, 2007
Amid chaos, young Somalis struggle to get by - International Herald Tribune
... Alin, 22, was one of the thousands of young militiamen who prowl this city. Now his family is on a death watch, with his sisters squeezed around his hospital bed, peering into his open, unregistering eyes, and his creased-faced mother leaning over him, shooing away flies.
...
Alin's journey from a tin shack where he slept on a dirt floor with four brothers and five sisters to the employ of a warlord was typical of so many young Somali men. It was not planned; it just happened, like the bullet that was fired at someone else last Friday but tumbled instead through Alin's brain.
His father, Issay, an off-again-on-again brick mason, was killed in a robbery in 1993 — two years after Somalia's central government collapsed and the country spun into anarchy — leaving behind no money, just a crusty trowel that none of his sons knew how to use.
His mother supported the family by selling qat in a neighborhood called the Black Sea, bringing in the equivalent of a few dollars a day. It was enough to buy two jerry cans of water from the donkey carts that jangled by every morning and the occasional meal of spaghetti and camel meat, Alin's favorite.
But it was not enough for school. So Alin and his brothers spent their days combing the city's bullet-scarred streets for odd jobs, like pushing a wheelbarrow or hauling fish. In the afternoons they worked out in their yard, curling a 25-pound tank shell found nearby, which by a quick, delicate inspection looked as though it could go off at any time. ...
... Alin, 22, was one of the thousands of young militiamen who prowl this city. Now his family is on a death watch, with his sisters squeezed around his hospital bed, peering into his open, unregistering eyes, and his creased-faced mother leaning over him, shooing away flies.
...
Alin's journey from a tin shack where he slept on a dirt floor with four brothers and five sisters to the employ of a warlord was typical of so many young Somali men. It was not planned; it just happened, like the bullet that was fired at someone else last Friday but tumbled instead through Alin's brain.
His father, Issay, an off-again-on-again brick mason, was killed in a robbery in 1993 — two years after Somalia's central government collapsed and the country spun into anarchy — leaving behind no money, just a crusty trowel that none of his sons knew how to use.
His mother supported the family by selling qat in a neighborhood called the Black Sea, bringing in the equivalent of a few dollars a day. It was enough to buy two jerry cans of water from the donkey carts that jangled by every morning and the occasional meal of spaghetti and camel meat, Alin's favorite.
But it was not enough for school. So Alin and his brothers spent their days combing the city's bullet-scarred streets for odd jobs, like pushing a wheelbarrow or hauling fish. In the afternoons they worked out in their yard, curling a 25-pound tank shell found nearby, which by a quick, delicate inspection looked as though it could go off at any time. ...
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