(ERGO) – About 700 families displaced by climate crises and conflict in southern Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region have been languishing for years in miserable camps in Jowhar without any aid or assistance.
Halimo Mohamed, a widow in Isnay-Biyaso IDP camp, told Radio Ergo that she and her children have never slept on full stomachs in the two years they have lived there.
“I give them food in the morning and sometimes we get another meal at night, but not always, and that is our situation,” she said.
As well as her eight children, she also takes care of three of her grandchildren. Without a job or any other means, Halimo depends on her relatives in Mogadishu and Saudi Arabia sending her $70 a month.
Halimo’s husband died in July 2018. She continued running their two-hectare farm in Halgan village, 18 kilometres from Jowhar, until floods two years later destroyed her crops. She decided to move to the town hoping to find a better life. On joining the camp, she took on laundry jobs earning $3.5 on a good day, but when she fell ill and suffered chest pains she had to stop.
They live in a flimsy hut that she built and are unable to return to Halgan village because there is nothing there for them.
Most of her neighbours in Isnay-Biyaso camp fled either floods, drought, or conflict, or a combination of recurrent disasters, and live in similar conditions now.
Mohamed Hassan Nur says he has been struggling to find a job so that he can put food on the table. He goes out every morning and comes back with nothing. He did not expect life in the camp to be so deprived.
“Our lives have been hard, we don’t have anything, there is not even food. Everyone likes to get coffee and food in the morning, but we don’t have that, we leave the house without drinking coffee, such is the life now,” he complained.
He occasionally gets called up to water crops on a nearby farm but the small earnings he makes barely cover meals for his family.
Mohamud, also a farmer and a father of three children the youngest being seven years, said the situation in the camp is the worst they have experienced. He and his family escaped from Jarirow village, 70 kilometres from Jowhar, during conflict in 2020.
“Many people had to flee into displacement. People are still fighting and there is no peace in our village,” said Mohamud, who would still like to return to his farm when it becomes possible.
Hirshabelle state administration distributed some rice, flour, sugar, cooking oil, and powdered milk in 2021. The food did not last long and there have been no other aid deliveries.
The leader of Isnay-Biyaso camp, Osman Ise Hussein, said the families there face a dire situation and there are no jobs in the area. He is worried about their situation as Ramadan begins.
“They don’t even have food to break their fast,” he said. “There has not been any humanitarian aid delivered to this camp.”
