““After so much death, it was a wonder anyone remained in the country at all. No one really knows the population of Somalia but, during the past twenty years, somewhere between one third and one half of the six-to-eight million inhabitants had fled their homes. There were over one and a half million refugees abroad, many of them in the camps of Dadaab. The people who still lived in Somalia were the ones without the bus fare to flee, the ones with property to guard or money to make, or the ones who had simply lost their minds. Many were afraid to take the risk of running into the unknown and held to the adage, ‘better the devil you know’. Many more were so inured to the roulette of war, it had simply become the landscape of life. Guled was one of these.””
