Famine anniversary: Somalis dying on food walks

By Jason Straziuso, AP, Jul 19, 2012

DOLO, Somalia (AP)—The long, dusty walks from hungry homes to far-away refugee camps are again claiming lives in Somalia one year after up to 100,000 people died in the country’s worst famine in generations.

Two lethal factors are again combining to send families fleeing from their homes: Too little rain and too many guns.

Enough rain did fall in Somalia this year to prevent a repeat of last year’s massive famine, but it wasn’t enough to keep everyone fed. In addition, al-Shabab militants who have been forced out of larger cities are infiltrating smaller towns where they are demanding payments from families in money, livestock or children, residents said.

The weekslong walks to refugee camps made by hundreds of thousands of Somalis last year turned sandy paths into roads of death for the famine’s weakest victims. Refugees in Dolo are telling similar heartbreaking tales.

In a cruel replay of last year’s hunger marches, many families who left refugee camps as the crisis eased this year went home, attempted to plant food but are now returning to the stick-hut camps.

“Before we were hoping for a good rain. But we got very little,” said Ali Ganoon Abdi Rahman, a 75-year-old who walked nine days with his wife, daughter and four grandchildren. They arrived in Dolo earlier this week.

Rahman said that al-Shabab militants are active in his village in the Bay region of Somalia, but he hopes to return. “We came here because of hunger and security. Let these two things be sorted then we will go back.”

Some 12 million people needed assistance at the height of last year’s famine. The numbers are much lower this time around but still staggering. The U.N. says 2.5 million people need aid to survive.

In Mogadishu, tens of thousands of refugees still live in impoverished camps. For Aden Mohamed, the famine’s horrors are far from over. He sobbed as he carried the lifeless, shroud-draped body of his 2-year-old son, who died Thursday morning of malnutrition.

With tears running down his cheeks, Mohamed whispered the word “hunger” as he shuffled toward a rough grave dug on the edge of a sprawling camp close to Somalia’s parliament building.

“If there is no drought and famine why are our children dying of hunger?” asked the mourning father of six as his neighbors nodded. “Our children are dying every day! Our stomachs burn with hunger. Our hearts cry in silence every day.”

Mark Bowden, the top U.N. humanitarian official on Somalia, said: “While famine conditions are no longer present, we need to make no mistake, the absence of famine does not mean that people are not in crisis. … Malnutrition and mortality rates have improved but remain among the highest in the world.”

The U.N. says that 18 percent of children born in the country will not reach the age of 5. A third of children are moderately or severely underweight. Only a third of children are enrolled in school.