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DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI- MARCH 2008.Saara Ali Mohamed comforts her friend Ayan Mousa Esmail in an overcrowded room of a transit house in Djiboutiville's Quatier Quatre. The two eighteen year old girls both escaped from Mogadishu after their homes were destroyed in an attack by Ethiopian forces during the recent wave of fighting. Hiding out along with twenty-two other tahrib, both are waiting to travel with smugglers across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. Having met on the road in an overland journey that took them three weeks, this new group of friends now refer to themselves as Òthe gangÓ and are hoping to continue the onward leg together. They know that it will be the most dangerous part but have consciously come via Djibouti in order to avoid the notorious smugglers in Bossaso that they have heard so much about. So far they have had only made contact with middle men in Djibouti via the owners of a small money exchange office but know little about the reputations of the leaders in who's hands they will ultimately place their lives. (KEYSTONE/NOOR/Alixandra Fazzina)