Photojournalist Dan Eldon Sends a Short Note to His Girlfriend from Mogadishu About the Plight of Somalia

“I am in Somalia now,” photographer Dan Eldon wrote to his girlfriend on September 10, 1992.

The rains are coming, it’s a full moon and tensions are very high. A boy guard was shot dead at the airport and our guards at the house want revenge for the killing…. The UN are sending 300 troops into Somalia and we’re discussing with the General the details. This could mean hope for the people or more fighting and suffering.

A seahorse-shaped country on the coast of East Africa, Somalia was ravaged by famine and civil war in 1992 as despotic warlords and gangs of armed and intoxicated teenagers terrorized the capital of Mogadishu. Millions of Somalis—many of them children—were perilously malnourished, and a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions was developing rapidly. In the spring and summer of 1992 the United Nations coordinated relief efforts in the region, and in August President George Bush announced that the United States would airlift food to Somalia. Eldon, a world traveler raised in Kenya and later the United States, went to Somalia as a Reuters photographer to put a human face on the tragedy. A handsome, gregarious young man, Eldon befriended many Somalis and was nicknamed the “Mayor of Mogadishu” by the locals. But as the days passed, he became more and more exasperated by the violence and misery around him. Eldon wrote few letters while in Africa (he kept in touch with his sister Amy and his mom back in the United States mostly by telephone), but on September 14, 1992, he sent the following to his girlfriend in Nairobi, Kenya:

Hello, it’s me—two days later, still in Somalia, still scary. I went to the Red Cross hospital yesterday. So sad—I saw a 13-year-old girl covered in bandages—a grenade had exploded in her face. I also saw a really beautiful Somalia girl named Hos. Her hair was just like yours, and she had washed it. She made me think of you so much. She looks like she could be one of your sisters. I wanted to tell her about you but she spoke zero English. Today was the usual collection of psychopaths trying to threaten to kill me. It must be so tiring being a Somali and having to argue about absolutely everything. Honestly these people are really too much. I was talking to some last night who said they wanted to invade Kenya after their war was over. They are crazy. The nights are so boring here. It’s 9:00 and I’m already in bed—alone—thinking about you—

I hope there is a letter waiting for me when I get back to Nairobi.

Upon learning that much of the aid airlifted into Somalia was being stolen by the warlords and sold on the black market, the United Nations sent a U. S.—led task force to Mogadishu in December 1992 to oversee the orderly distribution of the food. Operation Restore Hope, as the effort was called, was successful and prevented mass starvation. The following spring the United Nations broadened its mission by attempting to break the warlords’ stranglehold on the country and help Somalis build a democratic society. On July 12, 1993, a failed UN raid on the headquarters of Mohamed Farah Aidid, one of the region’s most powerful clan leaders, resulted in numerous civilian deaths. A crowd of enraged Somalis, wielding guns and machetes, saw several journalists—including Dan Eldon—photographing the bloody aftermath of the attack and quickly surrounded them. After butchering three of his colleagues (Hansi Kraus, Anthony Macharia, and Hos Maina), the mob descended on Eldon. He was twenty-two years old when he died.