10

Just Show Up

In August of 1992, the United States committed ten military cargo planes to airlift United Nations relief aid into Somalia. In the next five months, those planes delivered almost half a million tons of food and medical supplies in Operation Provide Relief. Still, nothing changed much in Somalia during 1992. Violence and anarchy still reigned in a country where the death toll by starvation surpassed five hundred thousand. Another 1,500,000 people had become displaced refugees. Many of the supplies now pouring into the country continued to be looted. Much of what was not stolen was store-housed in airport hangars. The United Nations didn’t have the organizational resources to deliver the aid into the hands of the people who most desperately needed it.

The international media reported on both the massive relief response and the struggle to get the supplies to the people. After ignoring civil war and famine in Somalia for years, the world community suddenly took note of Somali’s plight. Graphic images of suffering Somalis broadcast around the globe prompted a public outcry for action.

President George H. W. Bush committed American combat troops to lead the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), a United Nations-sanctioned multi-national military force that numbered 32,000 to support the relief mission. The United Nations accepted President Bush’s offer on December 5, 1992. That same day the President ordered 25,000 American troops to Somalia to spearhead the newly renamed relief effort, Operation Restore Hope.

Four days later I stood on the rooftop of our rented compound in Mogadishu and watched the nearby waterfront as the first wave of United States Marines waded ashore. The event was captured live by a gaggle of camera crews and reporters.

Despite serious concerns about the fragile situation, the strong military presence did immediately resolve some of the security issues that had handicapped relief efforts for months. Stockpiled supplies could now be guarded to reduce looting. And the Somali clan militias avoided direct confrontations with the United States Marines and other international forces that helped secure delivery routes and provided military escorts for our distribution of the supplies.

In effect, the United Nations divided Mogadishu into sections. We continued to provide mobile medical clinics outside the city, but we also intensified our efforts to establish and service five feeding centers in and around Mogadishu. Our team distributed food for ten thousand people each day at each center. That meant that, beginning in 1993, we were able to keep fifty thousand people a day from starving. In addition, we continued to provide medical relief and basic survival resources.

Most of the people who we helped were actually refugees who had flooded into the city from the countryside because of drought. They had no jobs, no money, and no resources. They slept in abandoned buildings, makeshift tents and hodge-podge shelters.

When our teams first arrived in the distribution locations, people often asked first if we had any white muslin cloth. We could not make sense of that request—until we were told that bodies are required to be ceremonially wrapped in white cloth for a proper Islamic burial. We then understood that people were asking for the white cloth so that they might bury their children and relatives who had died during the night. Once that responsibility was fulfilled, the people could deal with their other needs. We quickly learned that, wherever we went, we needed to have not only food and water, but also bolts of white cotton cloth.

I learned another lesson that was even more important. This lesson helped cure me of what I might call “loving arrogance.” The people I wanted to help were living in such horrible conditions that my natural response was to focus only on what they lacked. My normal questions revealed what I was thinking. My typical encounters with people would sound something like this:

“Do you need food? We have this food for you. Is your baby sick? We have medicine. Do your children need clothes? We have clothes for them. Does your family have shelter? We have blankets for you and sheets of plastic that you can use for protection from the weather. Do you need burial cloth? We have that as well.”

We soon discovered that those were not the most important questions. When we finally slowed down enough to listen, the people themselves told us what they needed most.

One day, I said to a bent-over, shriveled-up woman: “Tell me what you need most? What can I do for you first?” She looked ancient, but she may have only been in her forties if I understood the story that she began to share with me.

“I grew up in a village many days walk from here,” she told me. “My father was a nomad who raised camels and sheep . . . (and she told a little about her growing up years). I married a camel herder who did the same thing. He was a good man; together we had a good life and four children . . . (and she talked some about her marriage and family). The war came and the militia marched through our village, stealing or slaughtering most of our animals. When my husband tried to stop them from taking our last camel, they beat him, and then they put a gun to his head . . . (and tears began to trickle down her cheeks). I worked hard to care for my children after my husband was killed, but the drought came. When my neighbors left for the city, some of them gave me what they couldn’t carry with them. So I tried to make do . . . but there wasn’t enough. My oldest boy got sick and died . . . . When the last of our food was almost gone, my children and I began walking. I hoped that life would be better here in the city. But it is not—it’s harder. Men with guns are everywhere. They raped and beat me. They took my older daughters. I only have this little one left. There is no work for a woman alone. I don’t know how I will take care of her. I know no one in this place. But I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

So many people with similar stories desperately needed more than the help that we were prepared to give. What they wanted even more, however, was for someone, anyone, even a stranger who was still trying to learn their language, to sit for a while, or just stand with them, and let them share their stories. I perhaps should have known this, but I was amazed to see the power of human presence. In my pride, I thought that I knew exactly what these people needed, but I never would have thought to put “conversation” or “human connection” on my list. Once again, I was profoundly humbled.

I wasn’t able to listen to every story. There simply wasn’t enough time. But the stories I did hear taught me that there was much more to these suffering Somalis than their overwhelming physical needs. Their stories convinced me that it would never be enough merely to feed and shelter them. We do that much for animals.

Yet that was what the western governments were sending us to feed these starving people: animal food. Each day the Somalis would stand in the sun for hours so that we could dole out to them about five pounds of dirty, unprocessed wheat or the hard, yellow kernels of corn that we used to feed our animals back in Kentucky.

Those seemingly endless lines at the feeding sites were made up of individual human beings who had witnessed profound evil, endured horrible living conditions, and suffered so much heartache and loss that many of them had lost all sense of their own humanity.

Sometimes, we listened to their stories. Sometimes it was enough to remember that they had stories! By doing that, we were saying to them that they mattered. We were saying that they were important enough to be heard. Just by listening, we could restore a measure of humanity. Often, that felt more important and more transforming than one more dose of life-saving medicine or another day’s worth of physical nourishment.

Some days it wasn’t the humanity of the Somalis that I worried about, but my own humanity and that of my staff. It was nearly impossible for us to find the strength to get out of bed in the morning knowing that before the day was over, we would help bury twenty more children, and that there were many more starving people in this country than the fifty thousand who we would feed that day. If each soul is, indeed, a soul for whom Christ died, how would it be possible to endure the pain, the death, the inhumanity?

Clearly, we could not afford to break down every time we helped a wailing mother bury her baby. We could not let our hearts break every time we looked into the desperate eyes of a starving child the age of my sons. At the same time, we refused to let ourselves become people who didn’t share the grief and pain of those around us. We struggled to steel our emotions without hardening our hearts. That was not easily done.

Wrestling daily with such difficult dilemmas made relief work as emotionally draining as it was physically taxing. Most days there was no rest. During the day, the tropical heat was devastating. Being busy kept us from thinking about the tragic pain of the Somalis.

In the dark of night, however, there was no busyness to keep us from thinking about the pain. Often, I found refuge and relief by dragging my sleeping bag out onto the flat rooftop of the villa where we stayed. There, under the stars, an ocean breeze provided blessed relief from the oppressive heat and also kept the mosquitoes at bay. That breeze, plus the view over the compound walls of Mogadishu in the moonlight, provided a stark contrast to the fury of gunfire and the flash of exploding mortars that nightly lit up the sky over the city.

Human beings are adaptable creatures. Somehow, I adapted to this world. I learned to sleep through the gunfire and explosions. But I never let my guard down. Even at night, my senses seemed to stay alert and tuned to the smallest nuance of sound or movement. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but it was impossible to relax.

We knew that everything that we were doing required risk. Over time, however, it became difficult to determine which risks were acceptable—and which risks were to be avoided. Over the past few months, we had increased our staff. Other people had joined us to supplement our Somali staff and help us administer our growing relief work. At first, we relied on western workers from other African countries who we could bring to Somalia. We assumed that people with some experience living in challenging settings would be better prepared for the situation in Somalia.

One day I welcomed one of our first American staff couples to our Mogadishu headquarters. I gave Nathan and Leah a quick tour of the compound and then took them up to the roof for a look at Mogadishu.

As I showed Nathan the water tanks and the radio antennae, Leah walked toward the edge of the rooftop to get a better look at the compound below. “My goodness, listen to that!” she exclaimed. “The mosquitoes certainly are bad here!”

My heart clenched the instant her words registered in my mind. I realized that there would be no mosquitoes in the middle of the day. As I instinctively rushed toward Leah, I began to hear what she was hearing. As calmly as I could, I said, “Leah, those aren’t mosquitoes that you’re hearing. Those are bullets.” Before I could say more, Leah had already dropped flat and was belly-crawling back to the doorway. That was Leah’s welcome to Somalia; she had to adapt in a hurry and she did it well.

We struggled to remember what was normal. We realized that we were being forced to adapt to a situation that was impossible even to comprehend. We felt certain that we were exactly where we needed to be, exactly where God wanted us to be. But, almost daily, we wondered why God would allow such suffering and pain. The human element in that pain was clear: corruption and greed and sin were obvious answers to our question. What we couldn’t see quite so clearly, at the time, was the love and power of God. Was God in Somalia? Where? What was He doing? How bad would the situation have to get before He would dramatically intervene?

We made a conscious choice to be salt and light in a place gone mad. And we prayed that, somehow, the light would shine in the midst of this dark insanity.