(ERGO) – Young Somali mother, Jijo Sheikh Abdalla, gave birth to her second child in a bus as she was fleeing her village in southern Somalia’s conflict-stricken Lower Shabelle region seeking help in the capital.
Jijo, 28, told Radio Ergo that she fled her village of Gumaysi-did, in Janale district, on foot on 29 March. She walked to the town of Afgoye, a distance of some 70 km, heavily pregnant and carrying her small son, aged one year eight months.
In Afgoye she boarded a bus to Daynile, on the outskirts of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, where she hoped they would be able to find help.
She gave birth to a baby boy on the bus, assisted by other passengers.
“The day we got onto the bus, I felt the labour pains starting and I knew I was going to deliver. The people in the bus helped by pulling the baby out. I had nothing to wrap the baby in, no water to wash, a girl helped me with her hijab, and then we came to this place,” Jijo told Radio Ergo.
Jijo and her small sons are among the 280 families fleeing conflict in Lower Shabelle, who have arrived in this suburb of Mogadishu since the beginning of April.
They have settled in an abandoned internal displacement camp called Horyal, hoping to find assistance.
“We need food and shelter. We need water facilities and latrines. At night we are just sleeping out in the cold,” complained Jijo.
The new families in Horyal are mostly women and children, whose husbands and fathers have been killed in various conflicts. The new arrivals are in dire need of everything – and at this time their problems are compounded by the fear of Coronavirus that risks leaving them forgotten.
Raliyo Sufi Ibrahim, a mother of five children, the youngest aged three, told Radio Ergo that she walked for three full days from Janale.
“We need a place to sleep, we don’t have proper clothes or shoes, nor do we have food. The makeshift huts we’re building lack proper covers,” said Raliyo.
Another young mother, Hamdi Amin Nur, said she lost her husband in the recent conflict in Janale. She came with her baby son to Horyal camp to find humanitarian assistance.
“We have problems, hunger, lack of shelter and clothing. We don’t have latrines; we go to a latrine owned by a man who lives nearby. We ask for food, water and milk for my baby,” she said.
These families are pleading for quick assistance, but local government officials say this is not likely to happen.
Omar Khalif Hassan, Daynile district’s head of humanitarian affairs, told Radio Ergo that all they could do for the displaced families is to let them settle in the area where the previous IDP camp used to be.
“They have come at a sensitive time when everyone is afraid of the Coronavirus,” he said.
“The people and agencies who would normally have come to help the displaced families are staying in their homes and we can’t allow crowds to gather like this. We are facing extraordinary challenges.”
Fighting has flared recently in Janale between Al-Shabab and Somali government forces.
