(ERGO) – Abdi Guhad Ahmed, 62, never imagined that he would be languishing in an internal displacement camp, struggling for survival with his family of nine children, when he left his village in southern Somalia’s Gedo region looking for water and pasture for his last remaining goats.
He and his family fled their drought-hit rural village of Karaban in Luq district in October 2021, after losing 300 goats and all their 30 camels. He was hoping they would be able to save their last animals by moving to Dollow.
But hundreds of other pastoralist families also converged on Dollow with their livestock around that time and the pasture was rapidly depleted.
All Abdi’s goats all died in December and the family had no other option but to join Qurdubey IDP camp, where they found even the basics including food, clean water and shelter were lacking.
“I am living in hardship and there is nowhere to move. If I had gone back to where we came from we wouldn’t have found anything to survive on. I have been a pastoralist all my life, I don’t have any other skills to earn a living,” said Abdi, who has never experienced life in a camp before this.
Abdi put up a hut for the family using the branches of Algaroba trees and an old worn-out tarpaulin he brought from his village. He and his wife and two eldest daughters work on a farm earning a total of 100 Ethiopian birr ($1.5) a day that they use to cook a single meal.
“The 100 birr we receive on the days we get a job is only enough to buy us one kilogram of rice, half of sugar and some cooking oil,” said Abdi.
Halimo Mohamed Sheikh, a widowed mother of seven, also lost her livestock and joined Qurdubey IDP camp in December. She told Radio Ergo that they walk to fetch water from the river Juba, two kilometres away from the camp, but the water is contaminated.
“The water we fetch is muddy and can’t be used to cook or clean. The other night, I asked my eldest daughter to prepare us tea with water she fetched but the water was it was not fit for cooking, so we didn’t cook anything that night,” she complained.
Halimo, 56, left her rural village of Diidacanaani in Ethiopia’s Afdher zone, after losing 35 of her 40 goats to the drought. She crossed the border to Somalia’s Gedo region with the last five goats, three of which eventually died after eating Algaroba trees. She sold the other two for just three dollars (200 Ethiopian birr) as they were in such poor condition. She now collects and sells firewood to provide for her children.
The deputy district commissioner of Dollow, Adan Barre Ali, told Radio Ergo that the families in Qurdubey camp are pastoralists who fled from drought in Bakool, other parts of Gedo, and neighbouring Ethiopia’s Somali Region. Qurdubey is a new IDP camp that was formed in November 2021 after 700 pastoralist families, who had lost all their livestock, settled there.
He said the district administration has allowed them to settle on this plot of public land, although no aid has reached these people so far. Since September 2021, large numbers of destitute pastoralists have been arriving in Dollow, with some joining Kabaaso and Qansaxley IDP camps.
