In the heart of a dusty camp, shadows of desperation mingle with faint whispers of hope. Among these whispers, the devastating account of Hawo emerges—a narrative wrapped in heartache and punctuated by grim reality. “My child,” she shared with a trembling voice, “suffered from watery diarrhoea. When he needed help the most, I couldn’t afford even the most basic medical care. We had nothing, absolutely nothing to offer, and in my helplessness, I lost him.”
Hawo’s story is one of countless others in these makeshift settlements, where her family finds themselves clinging to survival amid collapsing clusters of cloth and sticks. Such flimsy shelters, little more than shoddy blankets stitched together, bend and break under the relentless gusts, demanding constant patching. Here, a single daily meal from kind-hearted neighbors becomes a lifeline they’re eternally grateful for.
Life in the camp, as Hawo can attest, is teetering on the edge of untenable. With a harsh scarcity of clean water, sanitation, or even a snippet of normalcy, every day is a battle. “If you manage to get one jerry can of water,” she reflected with a weary smile, “consider yourself lucky. Proper toilets? That’s a luxury we don’t have. We’re left to fend for ourselves, each and every day.”
Swept away by conflict and violence, Hawo’s family was forced to abandon their modest plot in Basra’s Lower Shabelle region in June 2024. Once proud cultivators of vegetables, they are now caught in the throes of extreme poverty and chaos—a plight shared by many who have found refuge here.
Staggeringly, the Somali Health Awareness Organization reports a chilling increase in mortality among children in Horseed and Danyar camps—15 children, aged between just 3 and 10, have succumbed to watery diarrhoea over the past couple of months alone. These forsaken camps, sprawled across Garasbaley and Kahda districts of Mogadishu, become mere resting places for dreams gone awry.
Another haunting tale comes from Markab Mohamed Abdi, a fellow resident of the Danyar camp. Her young, eight-year-old son, she recalls, was abruptly taken by an illness that swelled his abdomen. With no health facilities nearby to usher in even the faintest hope of treatment, Markab could only watch helplessly.
“It was sudden; his stomach just swelled up,” she recounted, fighting back tears. “There wasn’t any help or medicine. Children here get worse, and there’s nothing we can do. They just die without care.”
Her anxious gaze now falls upon two more of her children, ages four and five, who show signs of a similar, mysterious ailment, a haunting reminder of the child she lost. But with no resources in sight, her fear lingers.
Displaced by warfare since mid-2024, Markab and her husband have known no stability. Once self-reliant pastoralists, their livelihood vanished amidst airstrikes, leaving them devoid of prospects. Sixty livestock, their sole means of survival, were simply gone.
It’s in camps like Horseed and Danyar where over 900 families converge, each driven from their homes by the unrelenting barrage of conflict, drought, and floods. Here, devoid of clean water and basic sanitation, disease thrives—the specter of watery diarrhoea lurking in every corner.
Recently, Dr. Abdifatah Omar from the Somali Health Awareness Organization visited these camps, his observations laying bare the profound humanitarian disaster unfolding before his eyes. “Desperate conditions, to say the least. I’ve seen 17 critical watery diarrhoea cases personally. The disease spreads like wildfire, fueled by the scarcity of clean water and lack of sanitation facilities,” he relayed to Radio Ergo.
The harrowing juxtaposition of struggling families and their dreaming children, against a backdrop of humanitarian crises, calls for immediate action. Dr. Abdifatah’s words resonate with urgency—a plea for life-saving aid for those ensnared by innumerable challenges: poor health, deficient shelters, and wavering food supplies.
These stories, woven into the fabric of survival, implore us to acknowledge the depth of their struggle and act—lest their whispers fade into silence.
Report By Axadle.
Edited by: Ali Musa
alimusa@axadletimes.com
Axadle international–Monitoring
