(ERGO) – Thirteen year old Maano wakes up early every morning and walks out of the displacement camp where she lives carrying a small bag of brushes and shoe polish to look for shoe shining jobs in the city.
Maano, whose farming family were displaced from Lower Shabelle region, has taken on the role of provider as they struggle to make ends meet in the capital, Mogadishu.
“I go to Tare-biyano, Lanbar-Afar, Soobe, Bakaro, Seybiyano and other crowded areas. My younger brother used to do this work but he was washed away by the ocean and now I work myself. I give the money to my mother. My brother would be working but now I am the provider for my mother,” Maano told Radio Ergo.
Maano lives with her mother, Anab Osman Ayad, and her two young siblings in a tiny shack in Hilac camp in Mogadishu’s Deynile district. The couple of dollars that Maano makes on lucky days keeps them going.
But shoe shining is a tough occupation for a girl in the Mogadishu streets, where such work is usually done by boys or men. Maano said she often faces threats from other shoe-shiners and street children. Her motivation to help her family has made her determined to continue.
“Some people attack me, they take my equipment, while others throw away the shoes. Some people pay me but others don’t. Some take away my own shoes and I come back home with no shoes. I come home and have to buy new shoes. Some ask me why I am a girl doing this work,” Maano explained.
The little money she might earn can buy her family one meal that day. When she gets no work, she begs in the market.
“I would have loved to live like my peers and get to learn. I’d like to learn the Koran, go to school and get a better job than this,” she said.
Maano’s mother, Anab, sometimes accompanies her to beg in the market. Anab and her husband divorced and he does not support the family. Anab constantly worried about their survival in the squalid camps of Mogadishu.
“Whenever we don’t make any money we can’t eat. If we don’t have money, where can we get it? We just have to lie down and sleep. The young one cries from hunger. There is nowhere we can get food, so he has to just cry. The older one can withstand the hunger. By God, our situation is difficult,” Anab said.
Anab used to earn $3 from washing clothes but she stopped working after losing sight in one of her eyes. She was hit by a rock when caught in the middle of youths embroiled in a fight in November 2022.
“I was at a gate looking for a job when I was hit. I would have continued working but I couldn’t because I can’t see well. Also, my hand was injured in a tuk-tuk accident and that’s why I left my work,” she said.
“If I got to someone’s house and start looking for jobs, what can I wash, really? They get the clothes from the washing lines and ask me to wash them again. I can’t see well and I can’t even bear too much bright light. There was one night I was almost hit by a car that I didn’t see near Saybiyano.”
Anab has not received medical attention for her injuries as she couldn’t afford to go to hospital.
With help from her neighbours, she had bought her eldest son some shoe-shining equipment so he could help the family. He started working in April 2023 at the age of 11. Tragically, he drowned in the ocean in January.
“He used to bring home whatever he got. He didn’t know the ocean and his friends took him there. He was supposed to return home with the money he had earned but he didn’t and he was washed away,” she said.
Depressed by the loss of her son, Anab had no recourse except to equip her teenage daughter Maano and send her out to the streets to take up her brother’s shoe shining work in February.
Anab and her family were displaced by conflict and drought in Lower Shabelle, where they were farmers and had to abandon their house and farm in early 2022.
