Has anyone on DU ever lived in a war zone? in the aftermath?

[Solly Mack]

By that I mean: You were a civilian caught up in a war zone (invasion, bombings ,subject to a foreign military, as well as any in-fighting going on - the deprivation, the fear, the possibility of death every single minute of the day, living in terror, etc)


If so, and if it is something you are willing to talk about, could you please share with us about your experience?

[Captain Hilts]

1. Moscow in 1993 is as close as I get. It was weird, and scary. nt

[Solly Mack]

3. Oh wow.....

I can just imagine.

[CabalPowered]

40. 1989 and 1991

Weird, yes. Scary, not really. Well actually the elevators were scary. Stopping half-way up a floor, intermittent stop and go, strange stuff. Other than that, we were treated like royalty everywhere we went.

[Captain Hilts]

46. I avoided elevators, but Moscow was full of Mob rule and NO police protection whatsoever.

It was open season on folks. I saw my first corpse within the first two weeks I was there. My first gunfight the first month, and my first riot at the two-month mark.

A girl never forgets her first gunfight or first riot.

[CabalPowered]

50. I bet!

Glad you made it out safe! It still amazes me how fast the country turned itself upside down.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. I haven't but here's something from someone who is, now.

I posted portions of this entry a while ago. She is 15 years old, living in Mosul. I haver her permission to post her blog entries here. This is just one entry. I suggest that you all read into her blog to see what real people are suffering right now in Iraq.

http://livesstrong.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 28, 2007
Can you live like that ?! CAN YOU ??????

I finished my exams , and finally I can rest now .. the questions were terribly hard , My dad's aunt is a teacher, she was shocked when she saw the questions !!.
I needed to concentrate and study hard in the last two weeks , but have a look to my diary!!.

On Wednesday , Najma's grandpa died , I felt terribly sad , he was a great man, may god bless his soul. Lately My grandma ,who lives in Baghdad ,seemed tired from her voice , whenever my mom asked her, she answered "it is hot you know , and we don't have electricity" , or" I am worried about you all in Mosul" ,or" I am fine , don't worry " , but mama didn't believe , my grandma is too strong. On Sunday , mama called her and asked her what was going on:

-what's wrong mama? Why dad isn't at his work? He didn't go in the last few days?

- yes , that right, honey , I am afraid that there are bad news. your uncle M. was murdered..

- WHAT ? WHY ? WHEN ? why you hide that from me ? who killed him? ..

while I was listening to their talk on the phone, it was obvious to me that someone had died, I started to think whom , oh god , I was terrified , I was thinking about 100's of relatives and friends in the same time .. When mama finished this sad call , she told me " uncle M. was killed on Wednesday , he was killed because he was trying to save important financial papers for the company he work with , the terrorists surrounded him with three cars and shot him , and took the papers"

I was shocked , my eyes filled with tears , It was hard for me to understand , I was joking in the morning and laughing , and that was changed in a sec , my bright day became cloudy. My mom was sad because she lost her uncle , and she wasn't there near her mom .. When ever he visited grandma , he used to say to me " come and sit here ,but he was fat and It was hard to find a space to sit next to him on the couch ,then he used to say" mashallah you are growing up fast", and I used to complain about that!. They killed him immediately , but they called his family , they said "if you give us money we will give you your brother" , they wanted 15000$ , as soon as his brother knew about the kidnapping story he had a heart attack, he negotiated with those terrorists while he was in the hospital . the chaffer lasted for couple of days. without saying a word about his death.. Then M's daughter knew from her university lecturer , that her father is in the morgue since Wednesday , she called my grandma and told her " it is over , end the negotiations " . Uncle M's dream was to see his daughter graduation , she is determined to accomplish her dream and her father's dream , after the funeral , she stayed in my grandparents' house to study , she couldn't concentrate in her house , her exams will start soon . I also heard about another relative , who was kidnapped but freed versus money..

Try to concentrate in such circumstances?! In addition to a hot weather with out electricity (46 C. ), Can you ?? the Iraqis are the bravest human being , we absolutely deserve Guinness World Records for tolerance and patience .. hehehee .

That wasn't enough , LARGE explosions occurred and caused huge damages in many parts of Mosul ,4 schools badly damaged , my school was among them , the way to my school is now blocked , so I had to walk with my dad , we walked among the policemen, national guards , and walked over the broken windows' glass and shrapnels .. the policemen drives really fast , and shoot while driving ! although there wasn't any car in the street because it was locked . I don't like that annoying noise " WAA WEE WAA WEE " and I kept hearing this voice all the time while I was answering the hard questions ,I was worried about my father who was waiting outside , I gave my papers without re-reading my answers ..

In chemistry exam , As usually I left home early at 6:50 am , to reach school before the exam starts , the way was blocked , but this time FAAAAAAR away from my school , we walked , me and dad alone among the damaged stores and buildings, with police cars everywhere , on burned ground full of windows' glass , shrapnels, what a good way to start your morning?! I reached school thank god , safe , but tired , and low spirited , the exam was delayed half hour because many girls couldn't reach school , then the headmistress said we won't wait for them ..

Some girls couldn't reach school , and many reached school at 10 am (the exam ends at 10 am), they were very exhausted, afraid and thirsty , they walked about 2 hours , alone , without adults to guide them , trying to find an open road ..

Can any teen in this world bear our life? Just going to school is a challenge, living each day is hard , specially when you lose the people you love, and feel afraid about the others .
Our friends' had a horrible night yesterday ,when the US soldiers exploded their doors , damaged their house and took their men at 2 am! my mom's friend is a doctor , she talked with the soldiers they said "it is obvious that this was a deceptive notification because we did not find any weapons or any thing suspicious but we have to take the men " .. they took her husband with his two brothers (one of them is a handicapped) , their daughter is my friend. I can't believe their kids feelings when they saw there house damaged and the soldiers taking their father , and uncles with blindfolded eyes and enfettering hands , just like terrorists while they are peaceful , educated , kind , caring people . I wish they will come back safe ..
The US soldiers took my parents cousin's husband, " deceptive notification " as well , he came back after 9 months !! his son was 2 months old when he was taken from his home , and when he came back he was one year old!

I am worried about my family and relatives .. please pray for us ..

I have many plans for this summer holiday, but all are inside the house , I'll take photos for my handmade work as well.
Sunshine...

[Solly Mack]

6. Thank you

[Solly Mack]

32. Reading some more....

I just can't begin to imagine living that way ...day in and day out, year after year

and for some of the children in Iraq...this is all they have ever known.

[lse7581011]

34. This Is Heartbreaking!

So very well written, makes me understand a lot more! Thank You!

[mitchtv]

4. I was in Peru' at a time of a student uprising

all busses out of town were stopped. We were on the border of Bolivia which had just had 4 or 5 presidents in 48 hrs, Food prices were going up hourly and troops were rushing all over the place. General Rene Schneider had just been murdered in a failed CIA sponsored coup earlier that month in Chile and Anericans were not welcome anywhere especially in Peru which is pretty insular. It lasted only a while and within a day Puno was opened up to traffic. Bolivia where I was headed calmed down temporarily, too.I heard and saw some gunplay in Bolivia, also, tho it seemed more casual and targeted. that is my closest except for my last visit to Medellin which is another story
** this is just after I was arrested by the secret police in Lima at coffee house, listening to classical guitar. They took a to some fortress that spanish forgot to take with them when they left. Luckily , I was with the son of a General and 2 aristocratic girls when it happened. They took my zigzags with the American Flag ion them.

[Solly Mack]

7. I'd have been more than a little worried

I've seen riots and have been attacked by white supremacists at a civil rights march....but that's really nothing compared to what others have seen and been through.

[IChing]

5. I was in Yugoslavia for two weeks right before it went to hell

and broke apart in 1991 the tensions were quite evident.
I was flying back to the states from Denmark and Yugoslavian airlines had the cheapest flight
but you had to stay in Yugoslavia because they wanted the hard currency.

[Solly Mack]

9. Bet that was unnerving...all that tension...powder keg ready to blow

[Mend]

8. Chicago Illinois in 1968....there were tanks on the streets, barbed wire every

where, machine-gun units. We, the people of the US, were the enemy I guess. It was really eerie but we were too angry to be afraid.

[Solly Mack]

10. Wow

I was 4 years old then.

[Mend]

18. the riots in the South and the war protesting were war zones, too, and Kent

State where they killed four students. TV doesn't always show the line up these goons with their tear gas, bats, and rifles going after unarmed citizens.

[Solly Mack]

19. It looked war like - with all the snipers and national guard

at the civil rights march where I was attacked...and it was scary and unnerving...doesn't seem real now and didn't at the time...yet I could go home...

[seemslikeadream]

29. Chicago

[leftchick]

59. I went through Detroit in July of 1968

that was pretty scary. Pretty much as you describe.

[hobbit709]

11. Me no. but my mother is from Vienna

She's told me stories about the war and some of my earliest memories are of seeing the Allied occupation troops on the streets of Vienna. It was interesting because we lived in the American sector but most of my mom's relatives lived in the Soviet sector. I had an American passport and my mother had Austrian papers, you can imagine the fun at the checkpoints.

[Solly Mack]

12. I bet you have lots of stories!

If you ever feel like sharing, I'd be happy to hear them.

[Captain Hilts]

39. Cue the zither music! nt

[RC Quake]

13. Personally?

No. But have been collecting information from my mother-in-law to write her biography/memoir. She was born in Germany in 1931 and witnessed the Nazis take her father from the home to work in the ammunition factory and her older brother taken to become a Nazi youth. She has given me many of her personal belongings from her youth...much of it with the Nazi symbol on it. I have many pictures of the devastation to Munich, where she witnessed many bombings, invasions, etc.

Sometimes as she is speaking, I can place myself in her world so clearly and easily. She has quite a story to tell and I'm glad I'm the one she chose to tell it to. It reminds me every day of how fortunate I am. No devastation in my life will ever compare to what she has seen in her life...most of it was pre-teen and teenage years. Talk about scaring a child for life!

[hobbit709]

15. Probably sounds a lot like my mother

She also was born in 1931 in Vienna and had just turned 14 a week before the war ended.

[Solly Mack]

21. You're a bridge too, hobby709

bringing the past to the present and the future.

You didn't just read about it....

[Solly Mack]

16. You're a bridge - from the past to present to the future.

It's not just a story in a book for you....

Thank you so much for sharing!!

[Nimrod2005]

14. I have, not too different from what you see in Iraq now...And they are at the aftermath yet!!!

Not good, I still have nightmares.

[Solly Mack]

17. I wish you healing dreams, Nimrod2005

[KharmaTrain]

20. Israel, 1969

My family was initially supposed to travel there in June, 1967, but things got delayed. Two years later, I spent 6 weeks living with a family in Tel Aviv. From speaking with those who've lived in the country since those were "the good old days" as the West Band and Gaza were "quiet". However, every night Israeli TV would show another dog-fight over the Suez Canal between the Eygptian and Israeli air forces and I remember military check points on the main roads.

Everywhere I went I could always sense tension...Israelis and Palestinians living under an uneasy truce and the storm clouds of the regional Cold War game playing at the same time.

I was also in Grant Park in Chicago at the "Days of Rage" riot of 1969...but I don't think that would qualify.

Cheers...

:hi:

[Solly Mack]

22. Lot of history lived by DU'ers

Thank you for sharing!!

[AllegroRondo]

23. DMZ in Korea is the closest I've been

technically, its still a war zone. Pretty creepy, but quiet, for the most part.

[Solly Mack]

24. Does sound creepy

My husband was in Itaewon years ago.

[seemslikeadream]

25. I wonder if anyone here remembers this

I wasn't there but....

[Solly Mack]

27. I was still pretty young at the time

[KharmaTrain]

28. Any Black Ghetto In The Late 60s

I vividly remember riding on the West Side of Chicago following the 1968 riots...seeing block upon block of burned out buildings. The whole time was surreal. Several years later I worked at a radio station that was located right in the middle of the riots. The station manager told me how the staff was stuck inside the station for several days while the neighborhood blew up around them...and the building was protected by national guardsmen. Just the thought of seeing armed guardsmen out the window would give me the shivers.

[seemslikeadream]

30. "Senator McCarthy's 15th-floor campaign headquarters in the Conrad Hilton Hotel became a hospital

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/ddd/gallery/conventions/215.html




"Senator McCarthy's 15th-floor campaign headquarters in the Conrad Hilton Hotel became a hospital within minutes after assault echelons of riot police in the street below clubbed youth volunteers, pressmen, bearded demonstrators of many categories, and those bystanders so foolish as to come on a summer evening stroll to the Hilton . . . " Self-Portrait: U.S.A., p. 197.

[KharmaTrain]

33. A Story To Go With That Pic...

I heard this from a famous baseball player who was serving with the Illinois National Guard at the time. He said he was stationed, along with another athlete, Dick Butkus, outside the Conrad Hilton. According to the story, someone from that 15th floor opened a window and dropped a bag of shit down on the guardsmen below...just missing Butkus. Supposedly he then got pissed and turned to go inside to go after where the bag came from but had to be restrained by several of his comrades.

The Days of Rage a year later was far more destructive...especially when the Assistant States Attorney ended up paralyzed in the mele.

Cheers...

[mitchtv]

49. People's Park was as close as I got

And a number of "free Huey" demos at 450 Golden Gate
The Police riot at Elephant walk was pretty scarey, too, Not like the Oakland BPP Hq , however, those pigs were playin for keeps.

[Stephanie]

26. Downtown Manhattan, September 2001.

Don't kid yourself, it was a war zone. All of lower Manhattan cordoned off below 14th Street, troopers on the street corners, figher jets in the skies, soldiers with machine guns guarding the Javits Center and Grand Central, fires, smoke and dust for weeks on end. It was war zone. And we have George Bush to thank for it.

[Solly Mack]

31. I'm fairly certain I'd still be having nightmares had I been there that day

[tkmorris]

35. Outstanding thread Solly Mack

Really a great idea. These stories need to be heard too, come on folks, recommend this.

:kick:

[Solly Mack]

36. The wealth of living history on DU is amazing

I would love to just sit around on some comfy chairs and listen.

It would be a well spent weekend - and we'd need a weekend (at the very least).

[grace0418]

37. My in-laws grew up in the Philippines. They had to hide from the Japanese during

WWII. My m-i-l and her family had to leave their home and live in the roots of giant trees in the forest. They couldn't cook food because they didn't want anyone to see their fires. My f-i-l grew up in the largest house in his village, so the Japanese commandeered it for their HQ and tortured his father just because. He too had to hide out in the forest after that.

You know, my in-laws are pretty messed up people. But when I remember what they had to live through as children I start to understand why they are so superstitious and generally afraid of their own shadows.

[Solly Mack]

38. Thank you for sharing that

The real history of nations is with the people that lived it...it's not dates or battles...it's how those notable dates and battles impacted the people and their lives.

It's the everyday struggles ...how people lived - history through the eyes of the people

[stillcool]

41. not the war, just the after-effects... n/t

[uppityperson]

42. Almost a couple times but decided not to join Peace Corps.

I was offered Nicaragua or Iran in 1976, decided to wait. Was offered Liberia late 2000, didn't go either. Had friends evacuated from all these places during their tours. I have been afraid to even consider applying since.

Best wishes and hopes for peace to any who were.

[Solly Mack]

53. Can't say that I blame you

Hope your friends were all OK!!

[uppityperson]

65. A bit shook up, bit more cynical, definetly smarter

I wouldn't want to be in an active war zone, don't want anyone to be in one either.

[sg_]

43. Closest I got was when...

my village was bombed by IRA...it was the police station they were aiming for but there was a lot of houses just across the road from it, not like they cared anyway. I shouldnt really laugh at this but my friends mother locked him in the garage right after it happened, we always had a bit of a laugh at that.

Also my dads friend and work college was blew up in a land mine on a van which killed ~10 by the IRA aswell in the early 1990s...all because they were working on an Army base (they were construction workers). Also in the village a few miles from me, the IRA shot and killed 3 people in a garage, 2 OAP's and 1 rally driver.

Hmm, the SAS also killed a handful of IRA scum just down the road from me. Put it this way, there wasnt much left of their car after it got pumped full of bullets.

There is probably many more things, but that is all thats at the top of my head at the minute as its late here.

[Solly Mack]

52. Wow

Damn

:(

Thank you

[bliss_eternal]

44. Would this count....?

The LA riots (Rodney King trial)...? At the time, I lived in a part of Los Angeles which was surrounded by the rioting.

I was at home with bronchitis watching the verdicts on television when they were announced. I watched as one of the first stores was looted (on tv)--which was also near the intersection where poor Reginald Denney was beaten. :cry: I sat home helpless wondering how bad it would get and if anyone would help that poor man.

I'll never forget the image of the National Guard roaring down the street several days into the rioting.

I didn't think in my lifetime I would ever see that "alert of the emergency broadcast system" put to use on tv. During the riots, there was one on television daily.

At least two weeks later, LAPD snipers were still on the roof of their station in full artillery. Being a pedestrian at that time I was intimately aware of what the vibe was like, the smell on the street of ash and burning embers. Seeing all the remains of burnt stores on street corners, boarded up businesses, trash in the streets. Some of the owners were even patrolling their buildings with guns, like soldiers. The intensity, fear and sense of confusion was palpable even some weeks after, I could smell it and feel it.

Let's suffice to say it was all completely surreal.

But still I can't compare it to what people that live in the midst of a warzone are going through. There was an honest fear regarding when or if it would end--but at least we knew (hoped)eventually it would. With the help of the National Guard, it did. There were no shells going off or awakening and realizing my entire family was dead, that someone I cared for had lost a limb to a mine. Too many have lived through that sort of reality, and I would never make light of the horror of that.

[Solly Mack]

51. Hey bliss!!

Incredible story!

I watched it unfolding from my TV. Not the same at all, I know.

Thank you for sharing that!!!

I was thinking about people in Iraq and Afghanistan when I started this thread. I then wondered if anyone DU - and it is very possible - had been in war torn areas.

There is a lot of living history on DU - people with stories of times of unrest and violence. It's those stories - the stories of how it affected the people that tell the real history - to my thinking anyway.

Thank you again!!!

:hug:

[petunia.here]

45. I don't have a story but this reminded me

of something I saw on Democracy Now! recently.
There's this blog called Raising Yousuf.

I am a Palestinian journalist who divides her time between Gaza and the United States, where Yousuf's father, a Palestinian refugee denied his right of return to Palestine, and thus OUR right as a family to live together, resides. This blog is about the trials of raising our son between Gaza and the US, while working as a journalist, and everything that entails from potty training to border crossings. Together, we endure a lot, and the personal becomes political. This is our story.

Might be of interest to get some insight to what it might be like.

http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

[Solly Mack]

54. Excellent. Thank you for posting that!!

[Jed Dilligan]

47. Nigeria, 1986 was as close as I've been

One year after a bloodless coup and still under military rule. I was just a kid but I remember checkpoints and machineguns everywhere. Also the occasional artillery barrage, but I think we were living near an artillery range. We were held at gunpoint by an officer at one point. It was nowhere near as scary as my adult dealings with American cops.

[Solly Mack]

55. Seems fairly scary to me

being held at gunpoint.

[Jed Dilligan]

66. It's happened to me many more times here.

It wasn't as scary in Nigeria because I was a kid, therefore I wasn't the one in charge of making sure the gun wasn't fired at me.

on edit: Getting raided by a troop of baboons--THAT was scary!

[Obamarama]

48. Kiryat Shmona, last summer during the Hezbollah rocket attacks.

I was visiting family there last July when the attacks started. It was harrowing. I shared my experiences here last summer and was appalled by the reaction by DU to not only my comments, but to the entire conflict. I found myself taking a long DU vacation after that.

[Solly Mack]

56. In conflicts, wars and periods of unrest...all quaint little labels

and I say quaint because - the labels don't begin to give the full meaning of what the people experience who are caught up in them.

War is an ugly word - but what the people caught up in them experience is far uglier.

I sit behind a keyboard...I can't judge what it is like to have artillery raining down around me. I've actually had it come very close due to a misfire (I live on a military post) - but that's not even the same by a - and pardon the phrase - long shot.

All I know is - it had to be scary...and even that isn't really knowing.

You have a "People's History" perspective - you actually lived it.

And to me, history is what the people went through...how events impacted them.

[HamdenRice]

57. Liberia 1980; South Africa, late 80s and mid 90s

Liberia wasn't yet a war, but a post-coup situation. Lots of road blocks by stoned, trigger happy young "soldiers" demanding "dash" to be allowed to proceed down the road. Most of the time, I was in a very remote, rural village and the unrest was pretty distant. Oddly, when I was in the capital, Monrovia, Sgt. Doe, the coup leader, was popular among the middle class and intellectuals. They actually thought he would turn things over to the professional classes. But we could see he was already being propped up by US special forces who took over a big base in town, and Liberia went from being one of the more stable, prosperous West African countries to civil war, to currently one of the poorest countries on earth.

South Africa was in a low intensity civil war when I lived there. Daily reports of ambushes and firefights on the border. That was creepy because I had to cross the border by car into Botswana. The most bizarre experience I had was that an Afrikaner farmer I met randomly in the Afrikaner town of Zeerust took a liking to me (we both knew the same royal Tswana family) and he bribed the security police with a bottle of liquor to help me jump to the head of a long line of mostly white South Africans to get through a border security check called a "police certificate." That was strange because I found white farmers to be generally berserk.

On one of my first days in SA, a news photographer who is still one of my best friends, took me to a political rally at a church in Soweto. The police showed up, surrounded the church and fired tear gas. Then they started pointing their shotguns. My friend grabbed me and we started running and jumping fences and walls and ended up a few blocks away at his sister's house, where we had a few beers as though what had happened was the most normal thing in the world.

There was also the occasional bombing in Johannesburg where I lived -- unfortunately, mostly in my old neighborhoods of Joubert Park, Hillbrow, Berea and Braamfontein, because that was where black people were being allowed to move into the city and the ANC operatives would not raise suspicion living there. There were crack downs when armored vehicles would suddenly swarm all around.

Toward the end of my stay in SA, I was caught in the middle of a firefight in front of Soweto's huge Barragwanath Hospital. I was in the parking lot waiting to hear about an old man I had delivered to the emergency room when the firefight broke out. Everyone else in the lot and I ran into the emergency room, and ducked down below window level because of the flying bullets. Then, when the shooting was over, they started bring in the dead and wounded, and for the first and only time in my life, I saw a guy die of gunshot wounds right in front of my eyes. He was covered in blood from several gunshots on one side of his body, and the (black, Asian) doctors and nurses had gotten an IV into him, but he started shivering violently and died. The whole room smelled like blood. Then the white security policy came in and pointed their rifles and shotguns in each person's face, including mine. The idea back then was that if you panicked having a policeman point his shotgun in your face, you were probably a "terrorist." That was the day I decided to give it a rest and come home to the US.

I was doing some volunteer teaching while carrying out my research and after I returned home I learned that one of my students had been killed in the internecine fighting.

It was actually crazier when I went in 1993 to study the transition. There was a complete collapse of order. I rented cars to get around, but had three stolen in the course of about a month. The very nice white police officer who came to the home where I was staying said that a lot of the disorder was because the civil war in neighboring Mozambique had ended. The soldiers on both sides there were not demobilized in any orderly way but just took off their uniforms and sold their AK-47s in the market at Maputo. Soweto gun runners would drive up to Maputo, buy a van full of guns for about $5 a piece, and return to Soweto to sell them. Everyone had a gun, even middle class people. You would put a loaded AK-47 on the floor of the front passenger seat when you drove around. There was a big discount store, like Costco, a friend took me to, and they had a little booth for you to check your assault rifles, which were not allowed in the store. At night you didn't stop at red lights because your car could be hijacked. I saw a white tourist couple almost kidnapped by gangsters on the street in broad daylight in downtown Johannesburg, but they managed to break away and run across the street. My friends from Katlehong Township had to move to Johannesburg because it was overrun with fighting between the ANC and Inkatha.

I heard a story about a very well educated, sophisticated professor at the University of Witwatersrand who happened to be of Zulu ethnicity and originally from KwaZulu. When one of his close relatives was murdered in the ANC-Inkatha fighting, he drove to the area, carried out a revenge killing, and was back teaching at the university in a few days.

I attended a number of the the constitutional negotiations at a "convention center" outside Joburg, with borrowed press credentials. Security was laughably lax, because they generally wanted the whole thing to be extremely open and transparent. As a result, the white, neo-Nazi, anti-constitution faction was able to steel an armored vehicle, drive it to the convention center, and crash it right through the glass walls of the conference center where the country's leadership was negotiating! I didn't see that, but when I was there, a whole exterior wall was made of plywood because of it.

The most amazing thing was that when I went back a year later, everything was perfectly calm. It's amazing how a political settlement can just end political violence over night. That's what happened in South Africa.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

60. mmmmWOW!!!

:wow:I'm about speechless!

You've had some incredible experiences!

[HamdenRice]

61. I left out something a little embarassing ...

The day of the firefight in front of Barragwanath, I did something really stupid. My car had been broken into a few weeks ago, and it had been expensive to repair it given my research budget.

So when part of the firefight moved into the parking lot, I saw a policeman take cover next to my car, and all I could think of was that if my car got shot up, I would not be able to continue my research.

So after the policeman moved away, I walked into the parking lot and drove my car to the other side of the lot before the firefight had ended. Then I went back into the emergency room.

Later that day, driving back to Johannesburg from Soweto, I had this flash of insight: I had gone crazy; South Africa was making me lose my mind or at least my frame of reference of what was normal behavior. I pulled over on the shoulder of the highway and thought about it a long time and realized I had to leave.

So it wasn't the firefight that made me leave SA; that wasn't that abormal. It was my reaction to it that made me leave.

Anyway, thanks for the comment.

[Solly Mack]

63. I can see that

"..least my frame of reference of what was normal behavior"

All too well...in relation to the events of today as well as it relates to all such times.

That's an incredibly important distinction/point you've made there.

[Solly Mack]

62. Incredible! I hope everyone reads your post.

Amazing - all kinds of amazing.

[slampoet]

58. I was born in Detroit during the Riots. But my Girl she has been in Chile when the tanks rolled in,

and has been to the rebel areas of Mexico a few years ago.

The advice she gives is to always have a pint or fifth of real good quality liquor on you.
Apparently it is the best bribe in the world.

[Solly Mack]

64. I'm laughing but it is not really funny

I bet she has some amazing stories to tell.