February 1, 2019

I left Beledweyne in June 2009, soon after the graduation ceremony of my high school, to pursue a university degree in Mogadishu. I went back to the city a year later (July 2010) and stayed 11 days. In total, I lived in the city for three years of my life. These years were not without challenges. In fact, I lived through some of the most difficult moments of my life in Beledweyne. Floods, the emergence of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006, and the fight against Ethiopian troops when they entered in December 2006 to overthrow the ICU (while we were in the middle of a mid-term examination) were just some of the events I experienced in the city during those three years.