A basketball player's story during the one year of change

I have been trying to come up with a suitable title for this post in the past 10 minutes. For some reason, it turned out to be harder than it ought to be, perhaps it's because I have not really understood what my message is here.

This post is about a rather different story of a basketball player, the personal account of a basketball player that played for Col Gaddafi in Libya before and during the uprising. I came across this story on BBC World Service looking for something different, and what a story it turned out to be.

You can find the original BBC story by clicking on the picture below.

What I find really sad from all of this is the crimes that human beings can inflict on each other once the state is overthrown and there are no rules. Why is rape, torture, murder, and destruction the first things that happen in these situations? Are our citizens just pretending to be law-abiding all their lives just because there are consequences for breaking the law, and would show their true nature at the first opportunity?

Experience like this changes you forever. Experience like this is also often far from most of our reality and yet, for millions it is the world as they know it. This is a reminder that at this moment in time, people are living out their lives, their unlikely stories unfolding, stories and hardships that we can't even imagine.

To my expat friends that work in the less stable parts of the world (perhaps this also applied to a lesser degree to some areas of the UK..). This is also a reminder just how quickly things can happen.