(ERGO) – Rahmo Mayow Abdi and her two young children aged two and five years old have been sleeping rough under a tree since 8 January, after they were forcefully evicted from Rabb Yassir IDP camp in Garasbaley neighbourhood on the outskirts of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
They were among 568 families living in the camp who were left homeless and are now lacking food, water, and toilets.
“I am sleeping out here on this open land. I don’t have anything to build a hut for myself. It is scary at night, there are thieves and a lot of other dangers. We are forced by circumstances to sleep here,” Rahmo told Radio Ergo.
The land the camp was on had been given to the IDP families by a businessman who claimed he was the owner. However, the real owners won a court case and then ordered the IDPs to move off.
Rahmo had been living in the camp for just two weeks when the eviction order came. She fled there from the rural areas of Dinsor in Bay region on 22 December 2021 looking for a better life, as her family lost the 15 goats and six cows that they depended on for a living in the drought.
She left her three older children with her husband in Dinsor, planning that they would join her in Mogadishu later after she had settled and found some help.
In the camp, she slept with at night with 86 other families in the camp’s madarassa. They used to receive one free cooked meal a day from the camp leaders.
Since their eviction, she has been doing causal laundry jobs for about half a dollar.
“I leave my home in the morning to search for laundry jobs.,” she said. “The money is only enough to buy us bread and tea.”
Rahmo said she worries about her other children in the village as her husband has no job and she promised she would send them money to buy food.
“I told them that I would be a cook and send them money. But now, I have nothing at all! I can’t even send them a little money to buy a kilo of sugar or rice,” she said.
Other families who had lived for some time in Rabbi Yassir were given temporary land near the camp to set up shelters for themselves.
Fadumo Ahmed, a mother of five, lived in there for nine years. She has built a flimsy hut made of clothes and wood she collected from town. She had no support from her husband and used to provide for her children by working as a potter in Bakara market making two to three dollars a day. The eviction has disrupted her ability to work.
Fadumo also supported her widowed sister and her four children and can no longer send them money. She and her children are surviving on one cooked meal given by neighbours who can afford to buy food, as the local shops banned her and the other families from buying on credit.
“We are totally heartbroken. The shops we used to get credit from told us that we move a lot and they are not sure if we will remain here so they can’t give us anything,” she said.
The leader of Rabbi Yassir IDP camp, Farhiya Ahmed Hayle, told Radio Ergo that the evicted families are now struggling to make ends meet. More than 300 families have no shelter and are sleeping under trees.
Rabbi Yassir IDP camp had a health centre, a madarassa, and a school.
