At the same time, a rapid increase in brick houses was taking place in the centre of the city.

Such a faith understands that belief is a matter of hearts and minds, not of bricks and stone.

Three decades after being established, these camps are now villages of mud plastered houses with high walls around the compounds.

The larger sluices may be concealed under the roots of trees (such as crack willows), which have grown up from seedlings established in the brickwork.

MOGADISHU One of my earliest childhood memories is of swimming in a small gully near my grandmother s home in Yaaq Bari Wayne, a dusty collection of tin roofed adobe buildings huddled together in the plains of southern Somalia s Bay region.