By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

For Andrew Purvis, our correspondent in Mogadishu, mornings come early after uneasy nights broken by the clattering of combat helicopters on patrol. Just after dawn, Somali drivers gun their engines outside the Hotel Sahafi, signaling to Andrew that it's time to begin another day covering this demanding and often dangerous story. There was water in the taps, and electricity most of the time last week, and some cotton towels for a change, so things were looking up. More important, the fighting that had claimed 18 American soldiers the week before had subsided. There were tentative signs of peace in the city, and Purvis found himself covering an elusive political story, remembering that the streets could turn deadly in a flash, as they had when four foreign journalists were killed last July. Bullet holes in the stucco wall behind his work desk remind Andrew that two weeks ago an American rescue team attempting to save trapped Rangers blasted rocket-fired grenades into the third floor, destroying two bathrooms and obliging the owner to make some major repairs before the room was habitable. But once he is on the streets, he is on the move, following a tricky routine perfected by reporters since the first U.S. troops landed last December. ''Getting around depends entirely on your translator and the driver and guards you hire,'' he reports. ''The right translator makes all the difference. 'Said' saved my life in December by talking a gunman out of shooting me for looking like an American.'' (He's actually Canadian.) Guards are also important: several gunmen protecting Andrew fired back when his truck was ambushed in the Bakhara market earlier this year, enabling him to make a quick getaway. Andrew rides around Mogadishu in an old Toyota Land Cruiser with goatskin seat covers, Armed Forces Radio booming from the speakers, but that doesn't provide much relaxation. ''It took me months to figure out whether Somalis traditionally drive on the right or the left,'' he says. (It's the right.) ''With no traffic cops, anything goes.'' Swimming at the tempting beaches on the Indian Ocean isn't recommended: two foreigners were killed this year by sharks. Do the perils of this story get the Nairobi-based Purvis down? A little, he admits. ''The decision to come here can be trying, although I always feel better when I'm on the plane and the job has begun.'' We look forward to knowing he is on a plane home, his work well done.