| Hi jay - I’m forwarding you this message from Eric James – one of our guys in Mogadishu. He’s been doing this work for years, and the famine in Somalia is the worst he’s seen. From: James, Eric Today in Mogadishu, while visiting a group squatting in a bombed-out building, I met Madina. Her mother, herself suffering from a badly cancerous foot, holds her on her lap. She shows the classic symptoms of marasmas, a type of protein energy malnutrition. She has only rice and nothing else to eat. One of six kids, her mother adjusts her little red and white dress while her matchstick limbs hardly move. Her head, heavy from her malnutrition, slumps back. Her thin hair and tight skin make it impossible to tell age and I find out she’s two years old. Despondent, she doesn’t notice at first the small group of men standing around her. When she eventually turns, her eyes reveal the agony she’s suffering. This horrific malady has taken away her happiness and may claim her young life.
Eventually, gripped with the realization that I can’t do anything immediately to help Madina, I turn around to see others in this squalid space. Hot and jammed with people, there is hardly room to move. There is no privacy, little food and no running water. For several hundred families there is one latrine. Amongst the floor mats, laundry and cooking pots, several people crowd together. As we walked in, just minutes before, they found out that their child died of measles. Their faces filled with anguish, they sob at their loss. This is explained to me and then, almost as an afterthought, I’m told matter-of-fact: “yesterday, four people died of measles here.” There has been no measles vaccination campaign and cholera is also spreading. It is a predictable and preventable situation: social fabric is ripped apart, severe drought for two years in a row and then failure to produce enough food. Now most of the country, millions of people, faces famine. In a bad year, farmers are particularly hard hit but this year even camels are dying of thirst. People have worked through every one of their coping mechanisms – their fall back plans – until there is nothing else to do but flee in the hope of assistance. Some have gone to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia but the majority has fled to the capital of Mogadishu. To do so, they make a perilous trip by any means possible – shared vehicle, animal and even foot. Each day hundreds, if not thousands, make their way into Mogadishu from areas hardest hit by the drought. They make their way to growing makeshift camps. Currently, more than 70,000 people have been newly displaced by the drought that has swept the region. This is on top of the 1.4 million displaced people who have already been forced from their homes and communities. They settle in one of the camps among the rubble that forms modern Mogadishu. Meanwhile, there is a scattering of coastal desert rains that fall but it doesn’t make it better (in fact, the Ministry of Health fears the rains will exacerbate the poor sanitation conditions in the city). The interior remains bone dry with no sign of letup for three months until the wet months begin. It will be another three months after that until crops are ready to harvest. The situation is so grave that few, if any, can wait that long. Few aid organizations are available to help and the authorities lack the capacity to adequately respond. In this situation, adults struggle to survive but the youngest suffer the most. In our visit to camp after camp, we find child after child just like Madina. Suffering has visited Mogadishu and the country of Somalia for too long. ARC’s emergency response is focusing on health, food, relief items, water and sanitation and activities specifically targeting children.
If you can, make a donation now for families in Somalia.
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