(ERGO) – Hundreds of families living in an internal displacement camp in Dhobley, in southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region, have been left without access to toilets and in fear of disease outbreaks, after flooding destroyed the camp latrines.
Habibo Abdi Ahmed’s family in Dan-Wadag camp have been going into the bush to relieve themselves. They fear doing this at night as they are close to the heavily guarded Dhobley airport.
“The forest is scary at night. We live near the airport and soldiers are patrolling the area every night. If we go too close we are afraid of those soldiers. We can’t use flash lights at night as they will come out asking why we are shining our torches and what we are looking for,” she said.
Habibo said sanitation in the camp is now terrible, with a constant stench of human waste and sewage mixed in with the stagnant water lying on the ground. Their house was awash with filth and they had to abandon it for 10 days and return after the water receded.
There are 420 affected families in the camp, about seven kilometres from Dhobley town, and camp dwellers are worried that diseases will spread.
Unemployed, Habibo has no financial capacity to rebuild their shared toilet or get rid of the dirty water.
“The toilet collapsed, the whole sewage system is broken and the pipes have also fallen into the sewage,” she said. “The toilet was in my compound but five families were using it.”
She worked as a cleaner in a nearby hotel but was not able to get there for a week as the roads were blocked by flood water. When the water subsided and she went to the hotel, she was told she had been replaced. The four dollars a day earnings were her only source of livelihood.
“My husband has no job and neither do I. My children aren’t old enough to be working, the oldest is 12. We have no jobs and there is no work I can do. My husband sometimes goes to town and sometimes stays at home with everyone,” she said.
She takes food on credit from a shop in Dhobley to cook once in the morning for her seven children. They were originally displaced in 2017 from Beledhawo, Gedo region, where drought killed all their 50 cows and 80 goats.
Another camp resident, Ahmad Arab Ali, said flood water gushed into their makeshift house from all sides and they cannot even find a place to cook.
Without any toilets, they are also going into the bush but at night it is impossible to walk far from the camp.
“The sewage pipes and the seat itself are totally broken. Us adults go to a place about one kilometres from the camp while the children don’t go far. We don’t have money to rebuild the toilets,” he said.
Ahmed uses his donkey cart to collect firewood to sell every three days, earning about 200,000 shillings, enough for two meals a day usually. He said he cannot plan to rebuild his house, which is important to his family of six children, as his scanty income is not even enough to cover their basic food needs.
He joined Dan-Wadag camp in 2016 after leaving a rural part of Afmadow district in Lower Juba, where the family lost 150 goats and 20 cows to drought.
The director of the sanitation department at Jubbaland Ministry of Health, Dr Mohamed Muhamed Hiray, advised families to take precautions as they wait for a solution. He said Dhobley is one of the areas prone to outbreaks of diarrhoea, especially with many animal carcasses and broken latrines in the area.
“It is forbidden to defecate in an open space. These are the breeding areas for cholera and infectious diseases. People can even dig a small hole and bury the waste. Cleanliness is something you should strive for. Another thing you can do is wash your hands regularly and add sterilizer to water for drinking,” he advised.
He said Jubbaland administration is planning to rebuild the toilets in the camp although he did not mention a timeframe for this work. The toilets were originally constructed in 2020 by Norwegian Refugee Council.
