Each day, every day, from five years old until I was fourteen, I took our sheep and goats out to graze in the wilds of Somalia. With my walking stick, I chased off jackals and hyenas, kept my balance while walking up steep terrain, and kept the animals together. All alone, each day, I had much time to reflect, think, and contemplate. In my busy life today as a nurse working for the Mayo Clinic, with three children, and completing my Bachelor's degree in nursing, I sometimes long for the solitude of the wilds and the sheep and goats. They had a peace about them that kept me calm - they were my company and best friends for many years. When my day gets hectic and crazy, I just take a few minutes and escape in my mind to herd the animals for just a few minutes.
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This is what my home looked like until I came to America at twenty one years old.
Below is what war brings - everyone scrambling for their lives.
In Dadaab refugee camp, I’d pass other huts, many of them, hundreds of them, with children playing outside in the sand wearing a small t-shirt if they were fortunate, but most were simply bare naked. The look of malnutrition was the norm, as was hopelessness on the faces of their parents, mainly mothers, as fathers would be away either fighting in the war, or trying to make some money in the larger cities. It was that look of hopelessness in their mother’s eyes, and the sadness in the children’s, that haunts me even to this day. Everyone, including myself, had been uprooted from their homes, villages, and cities where life was pretty well set up, even if we were dirt poor.
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