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Mogadishu,
Somalia, September 19, 2009 — Even in a country that has endured so much
suffering, few images could more tragically convey the senseless
violence gripping Somalia today than the expressionless stare of a
5-year-old boy named Omar.
As he slept next to his mother one recent morning, a stray bullet from a
nearby gunbattle struck him in the back of the head. He made no movement
or sound, so his family members didn't even notice at first. Later they
saw blood oozing from a small hole in his head and thought it was a
snakebite.
But an X-ray of his tiny skull revealed the terrible trajectory of the
inch-long bullet: how it entered on the left, tore through his brain and
wedged behind the right eye.
It's a miracle that Omar Osman Ali survived, doctors say. Recovering
from surgery to remove the bullet and his right eye, he lies quietly on
a thin mattress on the ground in a makeshift African Union hospital
tent. Doctors don't know the extent of brain damage because the
once-garrulous boy, who loved spaghetti and enjoyed helping his mother
with the wash, hasn't spoken since the surgery.
But he's awake, responsive and keenly alert. With his remaining eye, the
boy silently watches everything around him: the doctors inspecting the
bandages, his grandmother trying to coax a smile, even the body of a
13-year-old girl who died of malaria that morning, lying in the next
bed.
Each day his grandmother, Fatuma Ali, talks to Omar and searches his
face for a sign of recognition. He rarely displays emotion. No fear or
pain. But sometimes there is a trace of something else behind that
stare: anger.
"He never smiles, and he used to laugh so easily before," Ali said. "Now
he just watches. Just looks. Who knows what he's thinking?"
Children have long been the greatest casualty of Somalia's 18-year civil
war. One in five is acutely malnourished. Few attend school. Most spend
their lives running from violence, drought and poverty. Boys often
become child soldiers, and girls have babies as soon as they reach
puberty.
"What kind of life is this for children?" Ali said. "When I was young,
there was school. Children could play outside. Today there is nothing
for these kids but war. What hope is there for children?"
A third of the beds hold children at this facility, which provides free
health care to about 2,000 people each month.
"This place is filled with kids," said Florence Mohamed, a Somali nurse
at the clinic.
Malaria, tuberculosis, genital excision and fistula were once the
primary problems. But as violence in Mogadishu, the capital, has soared
to new highs, children are increasingly ensnared in the fighting between
government troops and insurgents. Now children are showing up regularly
with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, burns and other conflict-related
injuries.
"This is a very violent city," said African Union doctor James Kiyengo,
a surgeon from Uganda who operated on Omar. "The evidence is all
around."
In the next room is Abdi Rahman Sheik Nur. The 7-year-old had been
arguing with a young friend on a Mogadishu street last month and had
turned away in a huff to march home when he felt a sting in his back.
"I thought my friend threw a rock," he said. But he saw the blood on his
stomach and collapsed. A bullet — no one knows from where — had struck
him in the back.
Lying naked on a blanket with bandages around his midsection, the boy
put on a brave face. "It didn't hurt that much," he said in barely
audible whisper.
But the injuries probably will be permanent, doctors say. The bullet
pierced his colon. Now waste is escaping from the wound, and they lack
the capability to properly treat it.
In a nearby treatment room is Mohamed Abdirahman, 3, whose chest and
right arm are encircled by a plaster cast.
"He fell off a step," his mother said sheepishly.
Not true, a doctor later explained, pointing out that he had removed
mortar shrapnel from Mohamed's shoulder. "The mother is too frightened
to tell the truth," the doctor said.
Source: Los Angeles Times, Sunday, September 13, 2009
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