(ERGO) – Hamalo Ali Osman, a mother of nine, yearns for daily food and a decent shelter for her children before forecast rainfall pours down on them in Hiran Bile IDP camp in southern Somalia’s Beledweyne, where they arrived in August after fleeing drought and conflict.
This destitute mother now sells firewood but her meagre income can only afford them one meal in a day, and sometimes not even that.
“We are facing a very hard life. We cook once a day at night. We are facing hunger; our children are in a desperate situation. We sleep in flimsy huts that we set up under a tree, using clothes and plastic bags tied to the branches,” Hamalo said.
She is among 500 families displaced from Mataban and Mahas districts in Hiran who have arrived in this camp over the past four months. None of the children are in school despite being of age.
“We are very worried about the rain as we don’t have shelter to protect us. It is cold and the children are vulnerable to the weather change. We would love to set up a decent shelter, but we don’t have the money.”
Hamalo walked with her children for five days to reach the IDP camp, after losing 150 goats to the drought since the beginning of 2021. She is holding on to her remaining 20 feeble goats even though they cannot provide milk or meat.
“I go to farms and feed the livestock with whatever I can get from the farmers. I have left them to roam free and they eat plastic and pieces of cloth. None of them would find a buyer this morning!” said moaned.
Halwo Abdi Farah, a mother of five, said they also eat only one meal a day, thanks to support from relatives living in Beledweyne town. She lives right at the entrance to the sprawling IDP camps where they have set up their flimsy shelter.
“We get food from our relatives who have been living in the city. They send us something to eat when we run out of food supplies. There is no one in our house earning a living, our situation is tough,” she explained.
Before joining the camp in September, Halwo was a pastoralist in Mataban where she lost 200 goats in the past three years.
“I don’t have a single goat that survived the drought, we are now bankrupted,” she said.
Her main concern is food for her children and shelter. She appealed for help from humanitarian aid agencies and local Somali businessmen to assist them.
The leader of Hiran Bile camp, Falhado Muhumud Warsame, told Radio Ergo the families include some who fled the drought and others pushed by conflict. This female camp leader said the families were looking impoverished and no aid had been distributed in the camp for four months. She noted that 300 of the families arrived in August and September, after being displaced by the conflict between Al-Shabaab and government forces.
Falhado said that the families in the camp are all in similar conditions and in dire need of assistance.
“These families don’t even have food, water and decent shelters. Some of them depend on their relatives while others collect firewood. New people are joining the camp every day since the drought and conflict still prevail,” she said.
