When I still lived in Somalia, during year eight, all of us had to do military service. We were told on the radio the time buses would leave for camp and the place they would be leaving from. I could not wait to see all the year eight students who gathered in one place. I was always very interested to see the place we were travelling to. It was called "ELJALLE". ELJALLE is a kind of Military camp. This camp was built to train young students and to show them how hard military life is.

It was Saturday morning, the sky was very colorful, the weather was beautiful. I have never experienced such weather in Australia. My father gave me a lift to the place where the buses left from. When I saw all the students in one place, it was like a dream come true. It was the first time I had seen such a huge amount of people or students gathered like that.

When we started the journey to 'ELJALLE'. All of the students saw many things which they had never seen in the cities where they lived, such as monkeys, hyenas, different birds and many other animals which I do not remember now. Inside the buses students formed groups, and they teased each other.

In the first week, on the first day the civilian teachers were told to stay away from the students. All the programs were controlled by the Military. The next day we woke up in the morning at about 4.00 a.m. in the dormitory, the size of a basketball court. Someone had to check, in case students might have been left behind or did not want to attend training. There was no-one left behind and they made sure everyone was on the field. We had to jog from the camp to the next village and come back all the way without resting, which was very hard for most of the students.

When we had completed the running or jogging, we had to get ready and attend the breakfast hall. There were a lot of different rules followed by punishments when eating food or getting it from the cooks and you had to show a good attitude otherwise you would be washing dishes and cleaning the whole hall. As everyone finished eating, each school was told to stand beside the others. Each school was given activities to do, such as sports, arts, music and military training. Everyone had to choose their favourite activity from a selection of four. My friend and I were in the sports group. All of the sports group lined up in one area. Everyday you had to attend the programs you had been told to attend. If you refused to, you would be punished by the Military. One day we were having fitness training. All of the students were expected to turn up on time for the training and we all did, except for one student who came late during the training session. He was told to move aside and the trainers said to him, "you have two choices, do one hundred push-ups or shave your hair off and be bald." The guy chose to be bald and his head was shaved.

Life there was very boring, because things were different from your normal life. There were many groups acting like gangs. If they got you alone you would suffer. In the city there were many things you could go to at night, you might go to visit friends, go to the movies, or go out to dinner. But in camp there was only one entertainment every night. We had to go to the theatre and watch students acting in different dramas or singing. This was very interesting for most of the students as they played and sang the latest songs. This made the students feel happy in the camp, but still the majority of the students thought that this was not enough as we needed more entertainment.

In the last week of the camp, all the students seemed like real military personnel, in their attitude towards the rules of the camp. I appreciated the fact that the camp was ruled by the military very much. All the students were behaving exactly like adults, respecting each other and helping each other to behave well and obey the rules. After all this happened, I realised the main point of the camp, which was to make us think about the difference between a good and bad attitude to life.