Somalia Rises from The Ashes to fight another day

[MR ORGILAQE]

Somalia rises from ashes to fight another day

- Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 15:04

 

January 25 2005 , Mogadishu - If there is one thing Yasmin and Najma Abdi Warsame have learnt at a young age, it is to endure and move on.

 

First these two young sisters and their family were forced by drought to uproot from the country's highlands and move to this arid coastal strip of central Somalia.

 

Then the floods struck, drowning their sheep and goats and forcing them to resettle further south. Then their land was seized by rebel warlords in the civil war, pushing them north again - to the spot where four tsunami waves stole their mother from them.

 

"We were sitting outside our old house when my mom saw the waves," tells Yasmin, the 12-year-old elder of the two.

 

'Most people on the beach could not see the sun'

"There was explosion everywhere. The wave was so high that most people on the beach could not see the sun. My mom went into our hut, gave me the baby and told me to run, run! Then she was buried in our house by the wave. The last thing I saw was her arm, grabbing a piece of wood."

 

In a country of eight million, the overall death toll is estimated at over 200, with 17 000 families affected along 650km of coast, and $23-million (about R140-million) in damage. Around 600 boats and 900 shelters were destroyed in this region.

 

With six confirmed dead and 20 still missing, community leaders say the most important needs are fishing boats and equipment, and a new water system.

 

"Somalia is a place of disaster," says their father, Abdi Warsame Egal, sitting in a temporary shelter of tin and scraps of plastic-sheeting held together by fishing net. "If you survive the drought, you'll face floods. If you survive the floods, you'll face a civil war. Survive all three and finally a tsunami comes. We are a country of incredible potential, but we are completely constrained by the catastrophes of nature."

 

A 1 200-person fishing community, Kulub is the only village in Africa to be completely decimated. There is nothing left to see, just a treeless semi-dry desert, weathered rock and soil as far as the eye can see.

 

'If you survive the drought, you'll face floods'

"Every cottage, every house - this is the worst-affected village in Somalia and in all of Africa," says Said Ahmad, one of the first UN workers to arrive.

 

Even after travelling 5 040km across the Indian Ocean from Sumatra, the wave still reached 3,6km inland, a hit so harsh the village remained underwater until just a week ago when the tsunami-formed lagoon dried up and the rubble was exposed: buoys, overturned boats, produce scales, tyres, thermoses, handbags, plastic chairs, sandals, pants, lobster trucks. Because the tsunami threw everything so far inland across the arid landscape, it all looks a bit absurd - suddenly in the middle of the desert you stumble across an overturned boat.

 

"We all keep cash in holes under our homes; it was all washed away," says Ahmad Aden, whose 10-year-old son, Dirir, died while throwing a lobster net from the shores of neighbouring Gara'ad.

 

"Before the tsunami there was a basic normality, a routine, I felt in control," continues Aden, who lost another son previously in a fishing accident.

 

"Now I have lost my boat, my sons, my livelihood; everything I have I lost to the sea and suddenly I can't provide for them nor can I explain what has happened. I feel like a failure as a father."

 

It's not just the tsunami-affected coasts; the entire country has a post-apocalyptic feel; a land of hyper-disaster. Refugee camps are scattered along most dirt-roads in the country, people relocated by droughts, by the floods, by civil war. It's as if the country were in the midst of the 10 plagues.

 

In many African societies harsh drought and war has accelerated an already rapid urbanisation. But in Somalia, a land without a government or any substantial infrastructure, the process is different. Without a central government for almost 15 years, the economy is in shambles - there are no functioning cities.

 

Some did go to the towns, as that is where international aid agencies and all militias are based. But the Adens, Warsames and many other families wanted to support themselves off the land, and as the pastures dried up, herds began to die and people to starve, the only option that left them a sense of dignity was to head to the sea.

 

Elders here estimate these recent "drought refugees", newly arrived this year, make up 60 percent of the population and explain why so many unidentified bodies are washed up on the country's shores.

 

In Kulub a small child found the head of an unidentified body on the shore, and two more unidentified corpses washed up in Gara'ad. "Nobody can really count missing people. Because of the drought the town is over-populated and a new community so we don't even know how many we are," says Abbi Hassan, a local volunteer helping after the tsunamis.

 

There's been little help. In a country without a government for over a decade, there is no infrastructure, no telecommunications, nor any public institutions in the area. Kulub is 11 hours' drive from the nearest doctor or paved road. "Before the tsunami I felt part of something beyond this community, a member of the world," says Aden. "When this happened I suddenly felt alone, I realised how abandoned we are."

 

Radios used to communicate from one village to the next were all destroyed in the waves.

 

Said Ahmad of Unicef, one of the first UN workers to arrive in the region, tells how hard it is to access this area. "It took us 20 hours and was a very difficult trip."

 

But short-term aid is on the way. With Unicef taking the lead, international aid organisations were working in Hafun - another fishing town at the north-east tip of the country where 19 were confirmed killed - less than three days after the tsunami hit. The response to the villages on the central coastline, with more casualties and structural damage than in the north, took two weeks.

 

"The World Food Programme and Unicef arrived late in the game and the other international organisations who are supposed to help us have failed to do so," says Mohamed Mahamoud, the district commissioner appointed by elders.

 

"It is an accessibility issue," explains Shafqat Munir, a UN operations officer who led the relief operations. "There is no government and very few institutions. The UN presence is essentially the only infrastructure in the entire country."

 

But after never-ending disasters and with little outside help, Aden insists that Somalis have learnt to accept and survive.

 

"You have what is on you, what the desert and sea gives you," he says. "You lose what the ocean, desert, drought, floods and war take from you. That is all. That is what you have."

 

Source: iol.co.za