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About 1.5 million Somalis, a sixth of the total population, have fled their homes because of the spiraling violence in Mogadishu. |
GALKAYO, Somalia – Caught between the rock of rape of kidnappings and the hard place of grinding poverty, helpless Somali women are living an open-ended ordeal.
“We are the breadwinners for our families,” Halima, a divorcee of 35, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We have no husbands and our daily earnings are not enough to survive on.”
Known as a “shoulder shop”, Halima hawks goods from huts to another in refugee camps in northern Somalia.
The huts consist of acacia branches twisted into a dome shape and covered with ragged cloths and rice sacks.
At the camps, boys stand guard to prevent attacks on their families.
"Not a week goes by when we don't have a rape case," said Hawa Adan Mohamed, a women's rights activist who runs vocational training schemes and manufacturing projects in Galkayo.
"If you go to the police there's no follow up. They say that because of the clan issue they cannot touch the perpetrator.
"Here the strongest man takes all," said a United Nations official.
About 1.5 million Somalis, a sixth of the total population, have fled their homes because of the spiraling violence in Mogadishu, according to the UN refugee agency.
Huge numbers are concentrated in the north, in Puntland or Somaliland, a breakaway republic.
The Somali government has been battling against the militant Shehbab and Hezb al-Islam groups since May.
The fighting has left hundreds of civilians dead and hundreds of thousands of them displaced.
Many of the conflict- and drought-displaced Somalis trickle across the borders to neighboring Kenya.
Beasts
Grinding poverty, coupled with Somalia's clan system, means that the displaced are not always welcome outside their native region.
"In Mogadishu we were under continual artillery fire,” Fatuma Ahmed, 39, said.
“We saw people die and be eaten by cats and dogs.”
The Somali mother recalled her hellish experience during her way to the refugee camps in the north.
“On the way here we were robbed,” she said bitterly.
“We were raped and we lost children when they got sick and died.”
As if recognizing their weakness, the helpless Somali women were not even safe from beast of prey facing attacks from Hyenas on their herds.
Habiba Barre, 30, fled from Ethiopia after the government cracked down on ethnic Somalis, accusing them of hosting rebels. Now, she lives in a hovel made of flattened powdered milk cans.
Repulsing a hyena attack on three of her little goats, Barre survives on high hopes for her goats to grow to sell their milk.
“Here at least we are only scared of hyenas, not of being killed.”
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