(ERGO) – A community of 167 families evicted from an internal displacement camp in Baidoa, who have settled on rural land outside the city, feel safe from further threats of eviction but lack access to jobs and services.
The families were evicted in March from Al-Amin IDP camp in the city, when the private owners decided to take over the land. They have claimed ownership of a site they have also called Al-Amin, five kilometres outside the urban limits, for which they plan to seek formal registration.
One of the group, Khadijo Somow Adan, 63, told Radio Ergo they decided to move so that they would not be displaced again. However, earning a living from her sisal weaving is now very hard because of the distance from the city.
She can only get to the market once a week to sell the fans, brooms and baskets she weaves. This has significantly reduced her previous daily income of about $1-2 a day to at most $3 a week.
“This is what I make and that is how I get coffee in the morning. My daughter who lives in the rural area sent me some sorghum that I’ve ground. I prepare porridge with no sugar and that’s how I live, I am facing hardship,” she said.
Khadijo is partially paralysed in one hand and leg and raises her seven children alone. It takes her about two hours to walk the distance from Al-Amin to Baidoa along a bad road where there are no vehicles.
“We are impoverished people. I am paralysed after a fall that broke my arm and leg. Now I’m in constant pain and I don’t have medicine. I don’t have anything, I don’t even have anyone to fetch me water, my children can’t get water from those far places,” she said.
She has been an IDP for four years, living in a makeshift shack made of pieces of clothes, cartons and tree branches. She and her children were displaced from Bula-Barako village, 60 kilometres from Baidoa, where they abandoned their farm in 2022 following years of successive failed rainy seasons.
Khadijo is also worried about her children who are growing up without any education. Al-Amin has no school or other amenities.
Qureysho Adan Ishaq, 51, a mother of five, has also been trying to adapt to their new life in the isolated camp away from the city.
She collects livestock feed to sell. However, it takes her 12 hours to find and collect the grass and to make a sale in town. She usually makes less than a dollar a day. She said she would never have undertaken such a strenuous job if there were other opportunities.
“If I can get tea for my children early in the morning, I give it to them. I also give them leftover beans from the previous night to start their day. I cook them porridge when I come back at night,” she said.
Qureysho said they used to get free water in their former camp from a service installed by aid organisations. Now they have to buy water from a reservoir constructed by farmers four kilometres from their camp. A jerrycan of water costs 1,000 Somali shillings so they have to use water sparingly.
Qureysho said they did not receive any eviction notice from their former Al-Amin camp. All she could do was grab her children and a few of their belongings before a bulldozer began crushing and clearing their property.
“I had my house and a toilet. We left it behind after watching everything get destroyed. It was all destroyed by the bulldozer,” she said.
Qureysho has also been an IDP since 2020, when her family left their farm in Goof-gadud, 31 kilometres from Baidoa, after it dried up due to prolonged water shortage.
Also living a vulnerable existence in this new settlement are disabled people such as Said Osman Dahir, 57, who is blind. He lost his sight after an illness when he was just six years old.
He has a wife and seven children to support. He used to manage when they lived in the town, with handouts from charities and local people, but now he can only get there about three days a week if there is someone to accompany him on the long walk.
“When we were living in the town, aid organisations would sometimes help us, but now we have nothing in this area. We also don’t have roads. While we were here my wife went into labour and we had to carry her in a donkey cart. We couldn’t reach the hospital so we had to take a tuktuk when we got near the tarmac road. It was very hard but we thank God she finally gave birth in a hospital and got free services,” he said.
Said moved to Baidoa in 2017 after leaving behind their five-hectare farm in Moolmad village in Bakool region due to insecurity and drought.
According to South West state administration, there are about 750,000 displaced families living in Baidoa. Most of these families fled their villages after losing their farms and livestock to insecurity and climate shocks.
