I was speaking with a recent refugee from Somalia today. Its so facinating when I speak with new refugees because I sense that I immediately give them full credibility over all things Somalia related, an unwise tendency of mine. Everyone (including myself) who looks at the situation from the outside doesnt get it, we're just working with secondhand information and a lot of guesswork. But the new refugees, now they surely understand the situation best. Of course this is not always the case, but I still love asking questions about what life is like in Somalia today whenever I meet someone who recently left the country.
Today I met a woman who left Somalia three years ago, and my conversation with her was so facinating. She had a scary way of describing the mental condition of Somalis today. She said that in 1990 just as the war broke out, the people were afraid and struggled to make a living. When things did not get better and conflict spread in the mid ninety's, there was a lot of mental disorders taking hold, people unable to cope with the drastic change in their surroundings and the instability. Today, however, she says people are so used to the violence "you can even find people who don't look twice when they see a dead body, its become a normal thing." She said this so matter-of-factly that it made it all the more scary.
Her tragic description makes me want to look into the psychological impacts of this war more deeply. I'm wondering what type of government or leader can take hold of power in an environment so prone to conflict, and a population so used to it. What are the psychological factors that governance needs to take into account?
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