The People of Mogadishu

Mogadishu, as you flew in and you looked at the city it was, it was fairly well demolished. Virtually every building had, if it didn’t have just pock marks in it from bullet holes or recoilless rifle rounds half the, half the building would be gone. The majority of walls that were still up they had, people had cemented glass across the top to keep people from crawling over top of it. There was, there was virtually no infrastructure left in the city. When you drove down the street, if you didn’t have something securely tied to the outside of your vehicle it was gone. It was taken right off, water cans, anything of any value. It was a, we knew as soon as we came in there this was a country that was without anything. They hadn’t, they didn’t even have the basic essentials of life. You have to treat it with a lot of understanding. You have to look at it as a life experience and knowing that you’re there, the reason that you’re there is to try to help these people. In some cases you’re dealing with people that did not want your help and just wanted what they could take from you. So you had to be very careful, you were on guard all the time, you were vigilant all the time you were in this, in the country.