‘We Buried Him and Kept Walking’: Children Die as Somalis Flee Hunger

DOOLOW, Somalia – When crops failed and her goats dried up, Hirsiyo Mohamed left his home in southwestern Somalia, taking and comforting three of his eight children over long distances across an empty and filled landscape. dust at temperatures as high as 100 degrees.

Along the way, her 3-and-a-half-year-old son, Adan, tugged at her robe, begging for food and water. But there is nothing to give, she said. “We buried him, and walked on.”

They arrived at the relief camp in Doolow town after four days, but her malnourished 8-year-old daughter, Habiba, soon contracted whooping cough and died, she said. Sitting in her makeshift tent last month, hugging her 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maryam, she said: “This drought has ended us.”

The worst drought in four decades was attractive life across the Horn of Africa, with 20 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia face the risk of starvation later this year, according to the World Food Program.

The threat of famine across Africa is so dire that last week the head of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal, appeal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to lift the blockade on Ukraine’s grain and fertilizer exports – even as American diplomats warning about Russian attempts to sell stolen Ukrainian wheat to African countries.

The The most devastating crisis is taking place in Somalia, where about seven million of the country’s estimated 16 million people face severe food shortages. According to a database managed by UNICEF, since January at least 448 children have died from severe acute malnutrition.

Aid donors, focusing on the crisis in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic, have committed only about 18 percent of the $1.46 billion needed for Somalia, according to the United Nations financial tracking service. “This will put the world in a moral and ethical dilemma,” said El-Khidir Daloum, Director of the World Food Program, a United Nations agency.

With rivers low, wells dry and their livestock dying, families are walking or boarding buses and donkeys – sometimes hundreds of miles – just to find food, water or urgent medical care.

Parents flock to the capital Mogadishu, taking their malnourished children to medical facilities such as Benadir Hospital, one of the few medical facilities in the country with a pediatric stabilization unit. The beds on a recent visit were filled with bony children, with scaly skin and hair that had lost its natural color from malnutrition. Many children are also sick with measles, are being fed through a nasal tube and need oxygen to breathe.

Mothers sit in the hallway, slowly feeding their children a powder made from peanuts used to combat malnutrition. The price of this lifesaving product is is expected to increase up 16% due to the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, which makes raw materials, packaging and supply chains more expensive, according to UNICEF.

At the hospital’s cholera ward, Adan Diyad held his 4-year-old son Zakariya’s hand as his protruding ribs rose and fell. Mr. Diyad abandoned the cornfield and parked it in the southwest area of ​​the Bay after the river water dried up.

In Mogadishu, he settled in a crowded camp for evacuees with his wife and three children, where they had no toilets and insufficient clean water. Without a job, he could not support his family. Zakariya, often whining, became emaciated. The night before Mr Diyad carried the baby to the hospital, he said he continued to listen to his son’s heartbeat to make sure he wasn’t dead.

“He couldn’t even open his eyes when I brought him here,” Mr Diyad said.

Mr. Diyad and his family are among the 560,000 people displaced by drought This year. Up to three million Somalis have also been displaced due to political and tribal conflicts and The growing threat from the terrorist group Al Shabab.

In rural areas across southern and central Somalia, dangerous and poor road systems make it difficult for authorities or aid agencies to reach those in need. The United Nations estimates that nearly 900,000 Somalis live in hard-to-reach areas controlled by the Shabab – although aid workers believe these numbers are higher.

Mohammed Ali Hussein, the deputy governor of the southern region of Gedo, admits that local authorities are often unable to venture out of the areas they control to rescue those in need, even if they receive a distress call.

Extreme weather events, some linked to climate change, have also devastated communities, resulting in flash floods, tornadotemperature rise, a locust infestation destroyed crops, and now, four consecutive rainy seasons have failed.

“These crises just keep coming, so people don’t have the opportunity to build,” said Daniel Molla, principal technical adviser on food and nutrition for Somalia at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. his farm or herd.

Those who have been uprooted by drought are coming to towns and cities, where many have been straining to get food.

Somalia imports more than half of its food and the poor in Somalia have use 60 to 80 percent of their income comes from food. The loss of wheat from Ukraine, supply chain delays and high inflation have resulted price increased sharply cooking oil and staples like rice and sorghum.

At a market in the border town of Doolow, more than two dozen tables were abandoned because vendors could no longer stockpile produce from local farms. The rest of the retailers sold their meager supplies of cherry tomatoes, dried lemons and unripe bananas to a handful of retail customers.

Some shoppers are those with food vouchers from aid groups, worried about rising food prices.

Traders like Adan Mohamed, who runs a juice and snack shop, said they had to raise prices after prices for sugar, flour and fruit skyrocketed. “Everything is expensive,” Mr. Mohamed said. And with wages relatively unchanged, many Somalis say they have cut back on camel meat and milk. More than three million herds of animals have died as of mid-2021, according to watchdogs.

The drought is also straining the social support systems on which Somalis depend during crises.

As thousands of hungry and homeless flooded the capital, the women at the Hiil-Haween Cooperative went out of their way to support them. But faced with soaring bills, many women say they have little to share. They collected clothes and food for about 70 displaced people.

Hadiya Hassan, head of the cooperative, said: “We had to reach deep into our community to find anything.

Experts predict that the coming October to December rainy season will be the most likely to failpush the drought to 2023. Projections are worrying analysts, who say worsening conditions and delayed funding expansion could reflect the severe 2011 drought. killed about 260,000 Somalis.

“There are terrifying after-effects of 2011,” said Daniel Maxwell, a professor of food security at Tufts University who co-wrote the book.Famine in Somalia. ”

Now, a devastating drought is forcing some families to make tough choices.

Back at Benadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Amina Abdullahi looks at her severely malnourished 3-month-old daughter, Fatuma Yusuf. Clutching her hands and gasping, the baby let out a faint cry, drawing smiles from the doctors, who were delighted to hear she made any noise.

“She was still dead when we brought her here,” Ms. Abdullahi said. But even though the baby had gained more than a pound in the hospital, she was still less than 5 pounds overall – not even half of what it should be. Doctors said it would be a while before she could be discharged from the hospital.

This hurt Mrs. Abdullahi. She had left six other children in Beledweyne, about 200 miles away, on a small arid farm where her goats were dying.

“The suffering at home is indescribable,” she said. “I want to go back to my children.”