A Fragile Existence
Sharifa was heavily pregnant with her third child when the fighting began and her brother was killed. The family decided it was time to leave Mogadishu. “We walked and only sometimes we got a lift in a car or a truck. It was tough and took us two months to get here,” she says, holding her infant son Farhan in her arms. The boy, who began his life as a refugee looks weak and suffers, like many other camp children, from chronic diarrhea.
Sharifa lives with her husband, their children and her blind father-in-law under a fragile construction of sticks and some pieces of plastic that serves as home. It hardly shields them from the sun. It does not protect them from the torrential rains that have turned whole regions in East Africa into deadly flood zones.
A Desolate Place
It is difficult to imagine a place less suitable for housing a large population of refugees. About 160,000 Somalis live near Dadaab, a small Kenyan town about 50 miles from the Somali border, surrounded by semi-arid desert with sparse vegetation and no surface water. They fled the violence and lawlessness that came with the collapse of their country in 1991. Since then, their survival is entirely dependent on help from outsiders.
With the fighting between the weak Somali transitional government and the Union of Islamic Courts intensifying, ten of thousands of newcomers have arrived in Dadaab in recent months. Now, the camp accommodates about 100,000 more refugees than it can realistically sustain. All of their food, water, and medical assistance comes from the UN agency for refugees and other aid organizations. It is never enough. It barely keeps the refugees alive.
Adding Floods to the Crisis
Habiba has lived in the camps for 15 years. Two of her four children died from malnutrition and diarrhea. Now, the floods have washed away the mud house she had managed to build over the years. She has received plastic sheets to start building a new home. “There is not enough food, there is no shelter, there is no money to build a new house,” Habiba says.
Habiba is far from alone in her suffering. The devastating floods in the region brought new hardship to the refugees of Dadaab. Many lost their homes and had to move away from the lower parts of the camp. Displaced mothers rely on a mobile clinic to get medication for their sick children. Malaria and diarrhea are on the rise since the heavy rain started. Open for just two hours, the clinic has already treated 36 patients.
Since early November, the camp has been cut off from any ground transportation. Flooding washed the road away and supply convoys had to be suspended. Now, everything from food to fuel and medication has to be flown in, an expensive way of securing supplies.