(ERGO) – Dozens of farming families from Qoryolley in southern Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region have been fleeing to internal displacement camps in Mogadishu since clan conflict erupted in their home area in May.
Batulo Ali Yusuf and her family of 12 people are staying with relatives in Ya-Allah camp in Garasbaley district since arriving in Mogadishu on 15 June.
“We don’t have anything to make a living here, we just depend on other people, we don’t have a house. We don’t know where to find work. We are dependent on other people, we are poor,” she stated.
Batulo, who has never been displaced before, said she couldn’t afford to rent a house in Mogadishu and finds life in the crowded camp terrible.
They used to make a stable living from their 11 cows and 1.5-hectares of farmland in Qoryolley, but they had to abandon everything due to insecurity.
“When we were there we worked on our farms and we would cook maize or beans, we had a decent life,” she said.
Batulo said the conflict broke out at night while they were asleep and they had to flee hurriedly to safety with little time to prepare and gather their belongings.
“There was fear and uncertainty in the area. We rushed with our children because we couldn’t stay there. We didn’t take anything because there were exchanges of gunfire. We encountered hardship, hunger and fatigue,” she said.
She and her children walked for 20 kilometres from the conflict hit area before they boarded a food truck headed to Mogadishu. They paid $20 for their trip on the truck. She said they hoped to find support in the camp but instead they are struggling.
Also from Qoryolley, Madina Abdullahi Ali, a mother of nine, suffered a traumatic experience of family separation as violence broke out at their home.
“We walked from Qoryolley to a place called Lambar Afar, then we took a vehicle to Afgoye. I have lost my children, I had nine and now there are two left. The last time I saw them was in Qoryolley. I had sent the rest of the children to their grandmother’s house when the conflict hit,” she cried.
Other camp residents in Ya-Allah have given her a temporary shack made of pieces of clothes tied to wooden stakes. They don’t have food and Madina has been going into the streets of Mogadishu to beg for food or money. They sleep hungry when she doesn’t manage to find anything.
Madina’s husband died in 2020 and she has raised the children alone since then. She owned 40 cows and a one hectare farm in Qoryolley that provided them with a living but now they have no income at all.
She fears her children will succumb to malnutrition as they are eating a poor diet now. A week before fleeing home, she had bought a month’s supplies of 10 kilograms of rice and sugar but had to leave it behind. Six of her older children were in Koranic school and she also worries about their education.
The house of Nurto Abu Mohamed, meanwhile, was set ablaze by the warring clans in Qoryolley. With no transport to get her out of the warzone, she walked with her two children for nine hours until she came across Somali military vehicles that gave her a ride to Mogadishu.
She has found nothing in the camps to help them.
“We don’t have food. We ran from gunfire and we’re now living crammed up with other people. We get one meal in a day and it is hard. We don’t get bananas, maize or any of the other things that we had in Qoryolley,” she said.
Ya-Allah camp leader, Abdullahi Jaylan Ali, said more than 300 families fleeing conflict in Lower and Middle Shabelle regions have joined the camp with more still arriving. Most of them have trekked for long distances to reach Mogadishu and are very weak.
“These families have joined us while we were already struggling. There is nothing much we can do for these families. We all rely on God,” the camp leader said.
It is understood that families from clan conflicts in these regions have also been arriving in other IDP camps in Mogadishu’s Garasbaley and Deynile districts.
