It was in December 1992 that I found myself in Mogadishu, Somalia, with Operation Restore Hope. Although I had spent many years in the Coast Guard and worked with all branches of our military forces, I was there as a journalist embedded with the 1st Marines out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Accompanying one of their chaplains, I was shooting Christmas videos from the troops for their friends and families back home.

One of those troops was at home. Hussein Mohamed Farrah had a few years earlier immigrated to the United States, joining the Corps shortly after graduating from Covina High School in California. He also happened to be the son of Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who at the time was the president of Somalia and fiercely opposed the intervention of the United States and United Nations.

Hussein's language skills made him invaluable. But battling his father's militia eventually made it too awkward to keep him in the country, so he returned to California. In 1996, Gen. Aidid was killed in battle -- or possibly assassinated -- and Hussein was elected to replace him. He went from being a corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve to becoming a more pro-West president of Somalia who has opposed al-Qaida in his region.

His is among the most dramatic of similar stories I have uncovered over the years. I've met folks who were doctors, government ministers and military officers in their nations of origin, doing whatever menial jobs were necessary here to survive. Some have returned to or known people in power at home. I've learned that the way they were treated while here can have dramatic impacts on future international relations.

Being in Somalia was also an awful affront to my American presuppositions regarding human civility. As a career first responder to various disasters, I had seen some pretty ugly things. But nothing had prepared me for this experience that left me with post-traumatic stress. I still dream at times of the horrific scenes of human suffering that so shocked my soft and presumptuous Western sensibilities.

A child died in my arms in the presence of the nutrition that could have saved her had she not been so malnourished. I covered the body of a young boy who had been beaten to death for trying to grab a bag of rice. My colleagues uncovered the mass grave of people who had been executed for wearing glasses. A warlord felt that people with spectacles were readers who may be too intellectual to be controlled, therefore needing elimination.

One scene burned into my conscience is of people living on the edge of what was once a reservoir. The earth berms on either side were dotted with graves so shallow they were oozing the decay of rotting bodies. The stench was so incredible that it permeated my clothing. People and animals were using what little water was left at the bottom. Their hopeless situation was matched only by my own desperate sense of helplessness.

Hussein relinquished the presidency in 1997; the situation has since been slipping back into chaos. I'm therefore writing this to remind all of us that our new Somali neighbors are here because they want to live -- literally! They are motivated by the survival instinct that would motivate any one of us who might face the same conditions. In Somalia, I was profoundly saddened by my inability to help. So to those who have made it here -- welcome!

Craig Conrad is a marriage educator, mediator, minister and retired Coast Guard officer who lives in Greeley.