"I remember I used to go to the cinema and stay there till midnight and after that walk home" said Ahmed Ibrahim, director of SOS Children's Villages Somalia. "At the time of Ramadan people spent the whole night out, some going to the mosque, some to entertainment areas, like cinemas, until late night, because after that we used to eat the last meal, and people were moving everywhere, like it was daytime."

It's hard to believe that Ahmed Ibrahim is talking about Mogadishu, capital city of Somalia, once a beautiful place of coastal Arabic architecture with a sublime quality of light. Looking at Mogadishu today, ransacked, ruined and war-ravaged, it takes a leap of faith to believe that Ahmed is talking about the same place. As Ahmed remembers his childhood in Mogadishu his face looks sad. He recalls how peaceful it used to be "even compared to Nairobi today - Mogadishu was more peaceful than that. Shops used to be open until 11 at night and people were moving around meeting each other, greeting each other. Mogadishu was a peaceful place."

Always hopeful

Then came the war in 1991. Ahmed divides the 16 years between 1991 and today into two distinct phases. The first phase was 1991 until 1995, when despite the fact that some people left and some people stayed, everybody had hope. "Even though the government had been overthrown", explained Ahmed, "another government came and all the time hope was building up, slowly by slowly". When that government ended the UN intervened and, continued Ahmed, people still had hope that the UN would establish another government in Somalia that would look after the infrastructure and the Somali people.

Attempting to restore hope

The UN established Operation Restore Hope (supported by the United States), a programme designed to feed the over one million starving people, a situation exacerbated by the hijacking of food donations by local warlords. However, in Ahmed's opinion, the UN had no plan, nor mandate, for a political solution and compounded by clannism (areas of Mogadishu were in the control of two specific clans) the situation continued to deteriorate. In 1995 the UN withdrew and the number of warlords in Mogadishu increased so that the city was divided into four distinct areas each controlled by a warlord. Road blocks were set up all over the city and access was granted only through payment. At this point, Ahmed said, many more people started to leave the country often as refugees to Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden. They did this, he explained, because they had now lost all the hope that the UN had, ironically, set out to restore.

SOS Children's Villages sets an example

How did Ahmed survive during this time and why did he stay? "Okay, it was really difficult but being with SOS Children's Villages before the war, and after the war, and seeing that SOS Children's Villages was doing something for the people in the most difficult time, I really convinced myself to stay and do my best for my people. This is something I have learnt from SOS Children's Villages, because when you have expatriates, like the Italian Sisters (three nuns lived in the village doing humanitarian work) and the regional director, Willy Huber, staying, that convinced me to stay, too. It really came from my heart."

Ahmed Ibrahim came out of Mogadishu two years ago and now heads the Somalia project from Nairobi, although he goes back frequently. "But I don't want to stay in Nairobi for ever" he said. "I'm almost in Mogadishu anyway, because I am so much in touch with them. My feeling is to still be there and to support them through the most difficult times like now." During the latest fighting when the SOS children and mothers were moved from the village, Ahmed was in touch with a network of people, so that no-one felt alone, even though children, mothers and co-workers were spread throughout the city. "Although we were all in different places", he said, "we were still working together".

A dark future

So what are Ahmed's thoughts about the future? Does he have any hope left? To talk about the future Ahmed had to analyse the present. First, he said, today there is foreign interference, something Somalia has not seen for at least ten years, and which has other interests; then, he continued, there are other new factions that were not around previously. In the past clan elders used to solve problems, but the solutions to today's problems, he feels, are beyond the reach of Somalis. Third, he said, people are getting desperate and new tactics, such as suicide bombings, are emerging; and finally, and perhaps most devastating, in the latest fighting many tertiary educational establishments have been destroyed so that the young people of Mogadishu have no place to study, leaving them without education.

Ahmed's verdict? "It seems that the future of Somalia is getting darker and longer", he concluded. "There is still so much work for SOS Children's Villages to do."