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No country on the African continent has a longer coastline, hardly any fish-rich waters, no country is strategically as perfectly located as the country on the Horn of Africa, where every ship must pass on its way from Asia to Europe: Somalia had good cards. The dream beaches could have become a magnet for European tourists, and the capital Mogadishu a jewel on the Indian Ocean.
But things turned out differently.
Somalia is the most corrupt country in the world. Half of the 17 million inhabitants would not survive without help from abroad. Mogadishu is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Only Allah can save Ayan
In 1960, the Italian and British colonial rulers left. The decades of civil war and criminal rulers subsequently destroyed the country little by little. The Islamist terrorist militia Al Shabaab now controls large parts of the south. The north (Somaliland) wants to secede. Two-thirds of people cannot read or write. And 700,000 babies are born here every year, one in ten of whom do not reach their fifth birthday.
Ayan (3) will also die before her fifth birthday if she does not eat quickly. The doctor at the emergency aid station of the Belkhier refugee camp in northern Mogadishu tries to explain this to Ayan’s mother. Ayan clings to her mother’s orange robe with her spindly fingers.
The girl still weighs 6.5 kilos. Standing, sitting, let alone playing: he no longer has the strength to do that. The flies suck on Ayan’s faint edges of his eyes. She doesn’t move. Her mother Kinsi (25) just throws her hands in the air: “You don’t understand me. The child is sick. Only Allah can save it.”
Kinsi stumbles out of the corrugated iron hut into the afternoon heat. The smell of burnt plastic hangs in the air. Hundreds of mothers and a single father with hungry children huddle in front of the hut. Hoping for advice or a few packets of emergency food, they look silently across the dusty field toward the tent city. There the bits of fabric flutter from the almost 10,000 bulos, the traditional Somali tents: nothing more than a few branches covered with bits of cloth and plastic.
“Al Shabaab has put me on the death list”
Keyse (60) is standing in the middle of the colorful sea of shreds cutting branches for a bulo for himself and his four grandchildren. “I didn’t want to pay taxes to Al Shabaab,” says Keyse. ‘They put me on the death list. All my animals died of hunger. I had to escape.”
Two chickens parade by. Otherwise: standing still in the sea of tents. People lie apathetically in their material caves. “I’m still scared,” says Keyse. And still nothing to eat. But at least you will soon have a flying roof over your head. It offers no protection against Islamists and hunger. But from the burning sun.
Large parts of Somalia have become uninhabitable. It hasn’t rained properly for six years. The Al-Shabaab militias cut off the hands of farmers in the hinterland if they do not give them three-quarters of their meager harvest. The country recently had to import 90 percent of its grain from Ukraine and Russia. They are gone, removed without replacement.
Many who can afford it make the dangerous journey to Europe. Currently, 2,671 Somalis are going through the asylum procedure in Switzerland: fifth place in local asylum statistics. Those who cannot pay the smugglers end up in the tent camps here.
Since the beginning of this year, 130,000 desperate people have fled terror and hunger to the outskirts of the shattered capital. Here they now shelter around a dry pool of water like thirsty animals, in constant fear of the wild creatures from which they have fled.
The donation boxes remain empty
“Thousands of children will die,” said Mohamud Hassan, head of the Save the Children organization in Somalia. The El Niño weather phenomenon is likely to bring rain soon. But the soil is too dry to absorb water. The floods will wash away everything in the hinterland except the murderous terrorist gangs. “Somalia is one of the countries most affected by climate change, even though we contribute less than 0.01 percent of CO₂ emissions,” says Hassan.
Save the Children supports approximately four million people in Somalia with the basic necessities of life. That’s a start. But it’s not enough. The UN says 2.4 billion francs will be needed this year alone to save the country from the worst disasters. But the donation fund is two-thirds empty.
This means the end for the Weydow Clinic, one of the many corrugated iron emergency posts in Mogadishu. It is due to close at the end of this year. But there is still a lot of activity here. In a brightly lit container room, up to four women give birth at the same time, shoulder to shoulder, pelvis to pelvis. Without exception, everyone is circumcised. This causes additional pain and often problems. About one in a hundred Somali women dies during childbirth. Mothers are allowed to stay for six hours after giving birth. Then they have to leave.
Sometimes they come back the next day because they simply don’t know where to go. Like Faysa (34), mother of seven children – and blind. She sympathizes with little Ahmed, who sleeps under her stained robe. Their children’s birthdays? Don’t know her. “One a year, sometimes two a year,” says Faysa. Contraception is a difficult issue in strictly Muslim Somalia. Offspring are considered a blessing. Somali women have an average of 6.1 children. And in any case: the pill does not satisfy hunger.
Twelve times as many babies as three years ago
At Banadir Hospital, one of the few public hospitals in the Somali capital, 900 babies are born every month, twelve times as many as three years ago. The hospital is operating at its absolute limits. Half of the doctors and nurses work for free. The newly built children’s department with 40 beds cannot be put into use due to a lack of materials and staff. “We have to triage hard,” says doctor Hafsa Mohamed Hassan (30), head of the intensive care unit for malnourished children. “We take in newborns who cannot survive without oxygen. We’ll send everyone else away.’
300 children visit the department every month. Veiled women kneel at the beds of their emaciated children. Empty looks, stuffy air. Doctor Hafsa tries to radiate confidence. “Most survive,” says the young doctor. But not everything.
Doctor Hafsa does not yet know whether Zakariye will make it. The one and a half year old boy lies motionless in bed 5, smeared with a greasy ointment to prevent his skin from drying out. Only the mouth moves slightly. Ikran (45), his grandmother, leans towards him. But she hears nothing. “He used to crawl, now he just lies there,” she says. Every few seconds she waves the flies away. Every 30 minutes she injects 18 milliliters of enriched milk through the thin tube through his nose directly into his stomach. Zakariye still weighs 4.3 kilos. “He doesn’t cry at all anymore,” says Ikran. It would take too much force.
Source: Blick
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
