Mogadishu Saturday, October 11 2008 SMC  

Majority of the city dwellers fled to outskirts of Mogadishu specially the areas surrounding the road that links Mogadishu and Afgoi district which is some 30KM from Mogadishu.

When you are driving along Mogadishu and Afgoi road your eyes will catch people desperately scattered along the road living in sheltering in shanties houses entirely are those people who have fled from their houses in the city and due to the frequent battles in the city.

These abject people scattered along Mogadishu Afgoi road are categorized in four classes some were living in high class family before driven out of their houses, some leading middle class, some low class and the last class of these people are people who have earlier fled from some other regions in Somalia and leading wretched lives in Mogadishu and living in camps in the city.

These people who were earlier leading different kinds of lives are now equal, going to the same lavatories, queuing water in the same procession and other related things.

I personally went to survey the situation these people are undergoing, and when I reached at El-Sha Biya which is approximately 15KM and is where majority of these people have taken safe haven after fleeing from their original abodes.

The people around these places have established their own independent administrations, and each and every camp has its own administration.

Mohammed Farah is an old man energetic and in his early octogenarian and he is the head of (Allah Amin) camp he is the father of a family of 12.

I had an interview with him to know more about how he is coping with the current life and how he is capable of managing the responsibility of Allah Amin camp.

“In fact I know you are somebody in the field of journalism, and I hope you understand more than anybody else if it comes to the condition of displaced people that is that, if I come to explain to your second question there 400 families in this very camp and at least each family consist of 5 including the parents and the lives they are leading in this camp forthrightly speaking is absolutely an abject one for instant the health side, the mothers and the children are generally suffering from different kinds of skin diseases such as scabies and alike, they have nowhere to go for work some go for begging in the areas around, some mange their bread through pushing wheelbarrows, some idly sit around dust filling their eyes merely waiting for donation from either international or local organizations” says the old man.

The other major issue these on the breadline people are facing is hunting of the aid workers who are devotedly extending them humanitarian assistances told me elder Mohammed Farah.

“What they are providing us will not actually cover the entire of our needs, but partially sincerely speaking half loaf of bread is better than nothing so if they are either kidnapped or killed it is not good for us” added old man Farah.

The last time when a United Nation officer by the name Keynan was abducted the internal displaced people staged 7 days of protest against the kidnapping of the UN officer.

In another camp I visited a meet with a teenage mother of one who had also dashed away from the hitches in Mogadishu.

The youthful mother had lost her beloved husband when a stray mortar landed in their abode in Bakara bazaar during night time and the infant child on her lap when I met her was a boy below the age of 1 year, and has nothing to manage with her life and that of her infant. Habibo who lives in a very abject life lives with her mother in-law, and expressed her feelings towards the current state she lives in.

“This is nothing other than a test which the almighty Allah is trying upon his creation and wants to see how they react, so I have nothing to say the good kismet comes out of God the bad kismet also comes of God so we are Muslims we have thank God in any circumstances, I always raise my hands high up begging for Allah to return our city to tranquility as the other cities in the world, it is not only me that is suffering we are thousands of us here in the camps around” said Habibo the youthful mother.

The entire Muslims in whole world wide will less than a week celebrate the long awaited Fitri festival, but how is the preparation of the internal displaced people if it all it is there first? I asked Abdiwahab Mohamed Ali who 12yrs and lives with his deprived parents who cannot afford to dress him smart, when of course the rest of age mates are elegantly dressing that happy day.

“When I was in Mogadishu I remember I was not in apposition to obtain new clothes, I knew the reason is mainly because my parents were not in a position to do so, when I was in Mogadishu the children in my age line who hail from well-off families, but now I know we the children we are all living in the same standard of life, I mean we are all in the same boat” says Abdiwahab.

Abdiwahab and some of his age mates who are desperately living in this area around the road between Mogadishu and Afgoi whish to see themselves in a different situation better than the current one in the coming festival of Edul-Adha..

So far thousands of people have fled from their houses since the Ethiopian troops invade in the country backing the Somali transitional federal government in the year 2006.

Mohammed Omar Hussein
shiinetown@hotmail.com

Somaliweyn Media Center

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Muqdisho Somalia

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Somaliweyn Media Center (SMC)