(ERGO) – Escalating food prices caused by major infrastructural flood damage are forcing internally displaced families living in camps in the southern Somali city of Baidoa to cut down on basic family meals.
Abdikadir Ali Hassan, living in Dawo camp in Baidoa, has been struggling to feed his seven children since the extreme weather and flooding caused the closure of building sites where he made a living.
With no income now and facing a crisis, he is forced to seek help from relatives.
“When times were good, we cooked three times a day but now with reduced income we are only getting one meal. Our situation is very tough now. Whenever we don’t have anything, we have to seek help from our relatives because the Somali people depend on each other,” he explained.
Abdikadir said food prices had escalated beyond the means of local people in his community, with a kilogram of rice increased from $0.6 to $2.5, and flour up from $0.6 to $1.5.
Flooding has cut off the main Baidoa to Mogadishu road, which is crucial for trade and supply of goods to and from the capital, whilst the Baidoa to Bardera road has been severed by a bridge collapse in Bardera, Gedo region.
According to Abdikadir, their diet has changed dramatically as they are faced with important decisions to forgo the food items they cannot afford.
“I buy food with whatever I have got. I used to buy flour but I’ve stopped because it needs oil to cook it, so I only buy rice and sugar now. I try to spend two dollars on food a day,” he said.
Abdikadir was displaced from Tusikar village, 59 kilometres from Baidoa, in August 2019 after losing his 70 goats to the severe drought that had ravaged the countryside.
Abdinur Hussein Hassan, a father of eight living in Al-Amin camp, was also depending on construction work, earning about three dollars a day.
Instead of their previous three meals a day, he says they are now lucky to get just one. He is buying food items from local stores on credit and is worried about his debt of $230 and rising.
“It’s really affected how we get our meals. Before we used to be able to buy the food we needed for $1.5, but now even $3 isn’t enough. We buy bread from the market and eat it with tea, that’s how we are surviving,” he said.
“I don’t know when I will get back my job as I’ve not been working since the rainfall started. We somtimes get food from some of our neighbours who are better off than us.”
He described their current situation as the worst he has encountered in the six years he has lived in the IDP camps. The family left their home in Dhuray village, 20 kilometres from Baidoa, after losing their 200 goats over successive failed rainy seasons.
A businessman in Baidoa, Ibrahim Abdirahman Mohamed, said the acute inflation of prices had been caused by flood damage to the transportation infrastructure.
He observed that food stocks in the area were not enough to sustain local people for a month, with sugar, flour, rice and cooking oil fast running out.
He noted that the floods had disproportionately affected poor families, who were now struggling to get enough to eat.
Having been in business for 15 years, he said most of his customers currently had no income and he was selling them food and other items on credit.
