Somalis slowly rebuild from ruin

[NASSIR]

Somalis slowly rebuild from ruin

By Alexandra Zavis, Associated Press | February 3, 2005

 

HAFUN, Somalia -- In this remote, northeastern corner of Somalia, villagers have long believed the world will end when the sea runs dry and the ground shakes. When the tsunami struck Dec. 26, many thought that day had come.

 

In some ways, the world did indeed end for those who lost everything in the killer waves that reached thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean to Africa.

 

Gone are their homes, their livelihoods, and their tenuous security in the midst of factional fighting.

 

More than a month after the tsunami struck, fishermen are still patching boats, shopkeepers are trying to salvage what they can from ruined businesses and schoolchildren huddle under a green tent to shout out vowels in English.

 

Hafun, a large fishing village at the end of a spit of land jutting into the Indian Ocean, was the worst hit in Somalia. The tsunami, triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian coast, raced 2,800 miles across the sea and slammed into 400 miles of Somali coastline. Estimates of the number killed range from 100 to 300, with thousands of others affected.

 

The overall death toll is between 156,000 and 178,000 across 11 nations, with an estimated 26,500 to 142,000 missing, most of whom are presumed dead.

 

Lives are slowly being rebuilt in Somalia, but nothing eases the fear from the day a wall of water from half a world away came crashing down on them. "I thought it was the end of the world," said teacher Khalid Said.

 

She was not alone. Drawing on a mix of traditional myths and Muslim teachings, the people here believe the world will end much the same way that events unfolded last month: with the sea receding and the ground shaking. "The water ran away . . .leaving fish in the sand," said Hadia Khalaf, 55, standing in the rubble of her flattened home.

 

Curious villagers ran to the beach to watch, some scooping up the unexpected catch of lobsters and fish. Suddenly the water came back -- three giant waves of it, each more devastating than the last.

 

The waves tossed small wooden fishing boats into trees more than half a mile inland, smashed concrete block homes to pieces and flooded wells with sea water.

 

"I thought my day had come," Khalaf said. "I was grabbing things inside my house, which I thought I could run with, but all I could save was my life."

 

Running and swimming through the churning water, buffeted and bruised by debris, she clambered to safety on top of a nearby hill.

 

At the two-room school, Said screamed to his students -- ages 6 to 14 -- to also run to the hills, saving all their lives. Others weren't so lucky. For days, body parts washed ashore. Villagers confirmed 19 dead among their own. But they say many others were in town or at sea that day.

 

Many Somalis have died or lost their homes in years of factional fighting that has left the country without a central government since 1991. But this remote northeastern corner had been spared most of the violence, and the people quietly prospered.

 

The tsunami struck at the height of the fishing season, which draws people from across Somalia and as far away as Tanzania and Zanzibar. They erect temporary shelters along the shore, which were all swept away.

 

Fearful a tsunami could strike again, villagers have built a rickety wall of rusting metal sheeting and pieces of wood between them and the vast blue sea. Behind its flimsy protection, they are piecing together their lives as best they can.

 

When officials from the UN Children's Fund arrived two days after the tsunami, they found many villagers still in the hills, too fearful to come down. But when they saw humanitarian workers pitch their tent on the shore, they started to come back.

 

Those who lost their homes initially sheltered in the school. But UNICEF supplied plastic sheeting with which they have patched together makeshift homes amid the ruins of what was once the capital of Somalia under Italian rule. Other agencies also have arrived, distributing food, medicine, water and other aid.

 

Mohammed Ismail, 40, searched the debris of his tiny grocery store along what was the main road, salvaging concrete blocks with which to rebuild. When the tsunami hit, it swept away bags of flour, rice, and sugar.

 

"I grabbed my son and ran," he said. "But my wife couldn't swim. When I came back for her, I found her balanced on top of a pile of rice bags."

 

 

BOSTON GLOBE