Important_Places

Farah 1 Mustafa A. Farah Professor Lance Davis Writ 131 28 January 2010 I have experienced many things in my child hood, some good and some bad but those experiences are what made me who I am today. We were chased out of our country and had to flee for our lives. This event was the most memorable experience because of the things I have seen and what I have learned. This particular event took place in Somalia and went on to Kenya. We had traveled long paths and witnessed many miss fortunes but in the end were satisfied with our outcome. In this paper I am going to talk about the different events that took place on this journey as well as Utango a city in Kenya. This experience had taught me a lot about life at a very young age. My family and I had moved from the civil war in Somalia to Utango. We needed a new start and Utango seemed like a good place for that. The journey was one of the hardest and life threatening journeys we had went through. My family and I almost died, and it was not just once but numerous times. We took off from Somalia on foot because at the time cars were occupied by war lords and used for caring guns and explosives. We walked for days in the middle of nowhere and slept under trees. Our only means for food were found on trees and water dug up from the ground. We had to hide from both the Somalia’s war lords and the Kenyan border patrol because we Somalis were not allowed Farah 2 to get into some parts of Kenya at the time. My family had friends that lived in Kenya and so they had called them before we left Mogadishu to let them know we were coming, and so they sent some people over to the border of where many Somalis traveled together. After twenty days on the road we were very hungry tired and sick. Four of my family members had died to dehydration and malaria. About a hundred people out of the four hundred died on the trip. When we were finally in Kenya, people who had come to take us had brought buses. The people who were traveling with us had no choice but to go with us, majority of them were going to Utango because there is a large Somali population and the UN was providing food and health care for us. During the long trip, I become very ill and my parents were afraid I would die. At the time it was my sister and I, the only thing my parents could do was pray for me because the people who had come to us did not bring medication of any sort. We traveled in a bus for three days before reaching Utango. The first thing my parents did when they got off the bus was take me into the clinic where medication was being provided. The doctors examined me and found out I had malaria and could have died any time. They gave me medication and kept me in the clinic for three days to care for me. After I got out of the hospital, my parents and their friends were building a home for us. Our home was made of mud and had a grass for a roof. This was the happiest night for my family because for the first time in a long time we had a roof on top of our head and a bed to sleep in. We were so hungry and thankfully our neighbors had made food for us and so we ate and got well needed rest. I felt better after a few weeks later. Farah 3 The Somali people were having problems with the natives of Utango. They fought about the land that was being occupied by the Somali people and felt as that their resources were being taken away. They stole things from us and in return the Somali people stole their belongings back. The problem got so hectic to the point where they burned down some houses. If grass catches on fire it spreads quickly. They burned down one house and before we knew it the whole neighborhood was on fire. Our house got burned and then we had to rebuild. The neighborhood was rebuilt in a matter of days. We returned to our daily lives and tried not to get involved with the natives. One of our neighbors stole something from one of the native’s people’s home and they got so angry that they killed him. The Somalis rebelled by killing one of them. The natives thought it would be a great idea if they burned down all the houses in the middle of the night so that as many of the Somali people could die and they could have their land back. I remember going to sleep that night and my father waking me up in the middle of the night and telling me to grab what ever I could and get out as soon as possible. I looked out side to see that the houses next to ours were on fire and people screaming to get out. I grabbed my clothes and run with the rest of my family. We run far away from the houses and slept under trees. That night twenty Somali people died. My family could not take it any more and so they left Utango and moved to Thika, a near by town that was peaceful and had very little population. We rented a big house that had five bed rooms and a big yard for my sister and me to play in. In Thika we went to school and finally had a normal childhood where we did not have to worry about getting killed in the night. Farah 4 I remember this journey the most because it had made me a strong person and showed me the hardships my family hadfaced. This trip could have cost me my life but thankfully that did not happen. I had to take all this in and do what ever I could to help my family come through it. Even though I left my country in such a hurry and lost the things I loved, I enjoyed seeing many things that I would not have seen normally. My life would not be the same with out this journey. In later years my family and I moved to the United States and I started school. I finished school with full honors and went on to go to the University were I major in business admin.