(ERGO) – Shine Ahmad Iman, his wife and nine children have been living with their relatives since 27 March after flash floods swept through their house and six-hectare farm in Gungado in southern Ethiopia. They lost their house, crops, and all their belongings.
“We are not in the rainy season, the water came from far away and it has hit us hard,” he said.
Shine and his family moved 10 kilometres away to live with his relatives in Afmadow. He had been preparing to harvest his crops of maize, sorghum, watermelons, tomatoes and peppers at the beginning of April.
He had taken a loan of $950 from local businessmen to invest in his farm, hoping to pay it off with the profits from his harvest.
Shine wants to get his farm going again as soon as possible but getting another loan will be hard with his outstanding debts.
He is one of hundreds of farmers in this part of Somali Region’s Jarar zone who lost their crops in floods that poured down from higher ground, submerging an estimated 600 hectares of farmland.
“We plant our crops once in 12 months, the year was starting when we lost everything. It was God’s decree, we got displaced and left everything behind,” said Shine.
These farmers are rainwater dependent and normally plant their seeds between November and December during the deyr rainy season.
Ahmad Abdi Ahmad is in a similar position and moved to Afmadow on 28 March where he, his wife, and eight children are living in a small hut. They were lucky that their 29 goats survived the floods. They sold two of the goats and set up a tea vending stall run by his wife, earning about $2 a day that buys them one meal a day.
They lost their house and the watermelons, tomatoes, maize, and sorghum he was about to harvest.
“We couldn’t stop the floods. We escaped trying to save our own lives. I lost three hectares of different crops and one hectare of watermelons. We invested our money into the farm, and this has badly affected my family,” he said.
He had taken a loan of $530 from local businessmen for his farm that he cannot now repay.
Flood alert messages had been broadcast on the radio by the Somali Regional administration, but Ahmad told Radio Ergo’s local reporter that he did not heed the warnings.
“We got the alerts, but this area was not common for flooding. It’s something from God and we have never seen it before,” he said, adding that he has no capital to invest to revive his farm now.
The head of the Ministry of Agriculture office in Gungado, Mohamed Hassan Salan, said their assessment found that almost 700 families were displaced in the flash floods and 40,000 sacks of crops destroyed.
He told Radio Ergo they will be giving farmers seeds although the flooded farmland is not yet suitable for planting. He estimates that it might take at least two months for the farmland to dry up.
