Journey through Somalia: from prison to cholera treatment center
By Giles Clarke
In early March 2017, I travelled with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, to Somalia to cover the devastating drought that was unfolding there. Following three consecutive seasons of poor rain, livestock are dying en masse and there are no crops to speak of. In a country where 60 per cent of the population relies on agriculture, livestock and fisheries, this lack of rainfall is catastrophic. Despite progress on the political front, more than half of Somalia’s population — a staggering 6.7 million people — have been plunged into desperate circumstances and do not know where their next meal will come from. Famine is a very real possibility just six years after the 2011 famine killed 260,000 people in Somalia.
Here is an account of our short journey:
We spent the first two days photographing drought-and-food relief sites in and around the beleaguered capital, Mogadishu. Security was very tight. Somalia is one of the few countries in the world where many aid groups travel in convoy with armed guards, and any time we left the compound, we had to wear protective body armour. Attacks against aid workers, in the form of assaults, kidnappings and looting, are common in Somalia. A devastating attack on the UN compound in 2013 killed 13 people. Civilians, meanwhile, unarmed and certainly without armour, are vulnerable every time they leave the house. In February, an attack on a market in Mogadishu left 40 people dead.
I joined aid workers from the World Food Programme, OCHA and UNICEF on the flight — an 18-seater Turboprop plane — that took us 300 km inland to the Bakool region, deep into the Somali desert. As the capital disappeared behind us, the vast expanse of scorched desert took over. The short rain season at the end of 2016 brought below-average rainfall, with central and southern Somalia receiving one third of normal levels.
This part of the interior is riddled with violence and is divided and controlled by different armed militia, most notably Al Shabaab. We flew into the town of Wajid, a former Al Shabaab stronghold, which Somali Armed Forces and forces from the African Union Mission in Somalia liberated in March 2014. It is too dangerous for aid-truck convoys to travel here by land, so critical supplies have to be flown in, which is considerably more expensive.
We dropped down onto a rough, bumpy airstrip on the outskirts of Wajid. In the blistering desert heat, we were met by a local security convoy, which took us to meet with local officials. Soon after, we headed to a drab stone building, from which a doctor, dressed in a bloodstained and soiled white coat, greeted us wearily.
I walked into a crumbling cell nearby and, as my eyes adapted to the dim light inside, I noticed four eyes peering up at me from the corner of the room. Two very young children sat motionless in the dirt, both stricken with cholera. It wasn’t immediately clear to me where we were, but the doctor explained we were in an abandoned prison whose cells had been turned into makeshift cholera wards. The children’s tiny bodies were filthy, their crude bandages blackened with dust, blood and dirt. Opposite, on a low, wooden-slatted bed, lay their mother, also completely still, but quietly keeping her exhausted eyes on her children. The drought conditions in Somalia are contributing to the outbreak, as with scarce water sources, people are forced to either buy water at unaffordable prices, or they resort to unsafe water resources.
In another cell nearby, I met an older woman sitting in a plastic chair. Next to her, a relative was covered in a blanket, having died from cholera earlier that morning. As I looked around the room, the history of this place was hard to ignore. The building had been used by Al Shabaab forces as a prison until 2014, and evidence of torture in the form of bloodstains lined the walls and floors. The number of patients has sharply risen over recent months and is overwhelming the hospital’s capacity. Basic supplies, like IVs, were dwindling, and hygiene was virtually non-existent. The doctor only had the help of a couple of volunteers, and together they were struggling to keep up. It was a desperate situation.
After what seemed like just a few minutes at the hospital, our security adviser warned us we had to move on. “Al Shabaab will be informed of our presence already,” he said. “If we stay in one place longer than 25 minutes, they can mobilize to our position.” I hated to leave so quickly. I wanted to stay and speak longer with the doctor who, so clearly devoted but utterly under-equipped, was keen to share this terrible situation with the outside world. I felt his complete despondency as we left. You can spend weeks and months as a photographer and not come away with an impression as strong as the one I had there.
We went on to visit a food-distribution site in a former hospital on the other side of town. Many of the women and children there — and they were almost all women and children, since the men tend to go with their animals in search of pasture — had walked for hours to reach the site. On the road and separated from male family members, women and children face serious risks to their safety, including rape and forced recruitment into armed groups.
According to Laurent Bukera, head of the World Food Programme in Somalia, humanitarian efforts are far more robust since the 2011 famine, but at the same time, the extent of the drought is far wider, and responding to all in need is a formidable task. “The towns in this area are often cut off from the rest of the country and so, in many ways, are the most vulnerable [people] and also the most challenging for us to respond to,” said Bukera. According to him, most of the livestock here have died, as have the crops.
Meanwhile, despite the desperate circumstances in Wajid town, every day more people pour in from villages across the region, hoping they will find food or water there.
As the day drew to a close, we somberly boarded our small plane to return to Mogadishu. Below me, the marks of drought became increasingly obvious, and I was reminded that the desperation in Wajid is but one crisis in a country that is inundated with them.
Note on this blog: Since leaving Somalia, aid agencies, notably UNICEF and NGO World Vision, have stepped up their support to this treatment centre in Wajid, providing medicines, IVs, and other supplies.
Text and Images by Giles Clarke/Getty Images for UNOCHA.
Originally published at medium.com on May 11, 2017.
