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Return to Oakland
"I feel more safe over in Iraq because I had ammunition and my flight vest and Kevlar."
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By Charles Handy
Last year, Youth Radio profiled Oakland teenager, Charles Handy, before his departure for Iraq. Now, more than a year later, Charles has returned home to Oakland, a place he feels more unsafe in compared to Iraq.
When I got here I wanted to kiss the ground. When I got to America, I wanted to but I didn’t. I just hugged everybody and I almost cried and stuff.
I see that being back in Oakland, I like Oakland, I love Oakland, and I’ve got friends and family. But at the same time it’s a lot of bad things here too, but I just try to stay away from all that stuff.
My best friend probably experienced more combat in Oakland than I experienced down in Iraq. He was telling me one night how he almost got shot and he dodged two bullets. He was just talking about how I got back from the war and things like that. I was over there with M-16s and going on convoys and things like that, but nobody ever shot at me. And he was over here just walking home one day and somebody shot at him. I was like ‘thank god that he’s still here,’ you know what I’m saying? I was like man…It was really just crazing me because I went to an actual war. I don’t know if people actually understand that, but I actually went over there to fight a war and he was just walking home one day. He got more experience in combat than me.
It’s going to sound crazy, but I probably feel more safe over in Iraq compared to Oakland because I had ammunition and my flight vest and Kevlar and now I don’t even have a gun or anything like that. I’m just on my own; you know what I’m saying? People just carry guns and that’s not my thing or whatever. But being over there I knew that if something happened I would have the license just to kill somebody if they went to try to pull a gun on me or something like that.
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