A 22-year-old photojournalist lies dead on a street in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. His corpse was unrecognizable from the numerous stones that had pulverized his body. The mob beat him to death, but that is only the beginning of the story.Lying in his room was the last of 20 journals written during his life. He wrote his first journal when he was 15, a British youth growing up in Kenya. Dan Eldon’s “The Journey is the Destination” is a collection of excerpts from those journals, painstakingly assembled by Kathy Eldon, Dan`s mother, a respected Kenyan journalist now living in Los Angeles.Eldon filled his journals with scraps from his crazed life: photographs, drawings and snatches of writing. On pages shown only to his closest friends, he created fantastic collages. He told stories of sex, travels, war and death. Above all, though, the book is about life.”As a person with long-term experience in photojournalism, I had a first reaction of `What the hell is this?'” said Dr. Tom Hubbard, an emeritus associate professor of journalism. “But as I sat there reading, I became more open.””The system of photojournalism is simple,” said Hubbard, a knowing grin showing through his white whiskers. “If a newspaper wants war, they want war. If they want famine, they want the worst pictures. I think Eldon was more complicated than that. The journal was sort of his antidote.”Eldon was born in England in 1970. Unable to handle the British boarding school system in which he was enrolled, his parents transferred him to the International School of Kenya at age seven. He made friends from around the world and earned awards as an outstanding student. He accompanied his mother on some of her interviews, receiving his first photo credit when he was 14-years-old.Eldon completed a graphic design internship in New York City. He went to college in California. He traveled through 46 countries during his life. He assembled friends and went on “safaris” into the African interior, bringing food and aid to the needy, as he had always done. It was on those journeys that he first saw death.He intensely felt the world needed to know what was going on in Somalia. Against warnings from friends and family, he went there to take pictures.Eldon`s pictures won him acclaim, drawing world attention to the famine. Reuters news service hired Eldon to cover the growing conflict in the country. Eldon made friends with everyone; the militia factions, the needy and the American marines; but when United Nations forces bombed Gen. Mohammed Farah Addid`s headquarters, he couldn’t talk down an angry mob.Eldon includes a quotation in one of his pages. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” wrote Plato.Dr. Isaac Mowoe, associate professor of African studies, commented on how Eldon showed the more brutal aspects of Africa in his journals. There was war, famine and death, especially among the young. “This book is sadly impressive,” he said. “One might hope that the human race finds its way out of its malice, its sin and its confusion.””The human race has turned stupidity into a science,” he said. “But every once in a while, you see someone who is so wonderful, someone who goes out of his way to help others and gives everyone hope that human beings can survive.” Mowoe turned to a page showing some of Eldon`s friends playing around. “This is the way teenagers should be,” he said. “This is the way people should be.”He then flipped to a page near the back, Eldon`s last journal. A Somali youth stands on a Jeep with an automatic rifle and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “This is not an image I want to see,” he said, “this violence.””Eldon has shown what ought to be and what ought not to be,” Mowoe said. Confined by simple photography, Eldon sought to tell the whole story of life. On his pages is a message, possibly a warning, as a big man revels in the sight of a dead boy; and yet on another page, a more light, airy leaf of writing, Eldon exclaims a more positive message.”Safari as a way of life,” wrote Eldon. “To explore the unknown and the familiar, distant and near, and to record in detail with the eyes of a child, any beauty, (of the flesh or otherwise) horror, irony, traces of utopia or Hell. Select your team with care, but when in doubt, take on a new crew.”Amy Eldon, Dan`s sister, produced a TBS documentary on her brother`s death, as well as the the perils that many photojournalists face. The piece originally aired on September 13, but will re-air on CNN. The first hour of “Dying to Tell the Story” will air on CNN Sun., December 20, at 7 p.m. The second hour will air at the same time on December 27.