Amid Donor Fatigue, Floods Leave Battered Somalis With Little Hope

Some of the men stood waist deep in water, others precariously balanced on logs in the shade of sunburnt banana leaves, as they anxiously awaited the arrival of a small, inflatable motorboat filled with blankets and plastic sheeting.

They were excited. Their prayers had been answered after 17 days of living atop the roofs of their thatched huts, now submerged in at least 6 feet of water in what once was the tiny village of Koben near the town of Jamame in southern Somalia.

“It’s just disastrous,” Koben village chief Shek Husen Ali Mohamed said recently as he sat inside a gutted tree trunk. “All the houses are underwater, but we are still living here, because we are watching our property.”

As if the worry of drowning, starving or contracting a waterborne disease was not enough, many fear that when the water levels recede--after weeks of flooding in large areas of southern Somalia--there will be a mad rush for land made even more fertile by the leftover silt and mineral deposits.

Mohamed said 116 men chose to remain in Koben, while most of the village’s 1,762 families fled.

Although they lost all their belongings, the men count themselves lucky. A couple of aid workers, searching for stranded flood victims along Somalia’s 372-mile stretch of the Juba River, spotted them and returned with some provisions.

Displaced by weeks of torrential rains and flooding that meteorologists attribute to the worldwide El Nino weather phenomenon, Somalis have sought shelter on isolated patches of dry land.

Somalia’s southern breadbasket--between the southeastern Ethiopian border and the Indian Ocean coast--has been the hardest-hit area, but East Africa’s worst flooding in 30 years has also devastated large sections of Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Djibouti.

The rains over Somalia are gradually tapering off and aid has reached some flood victims, but relief workers acknowledge that the crisis remains acute. Complicating the problem is fear for the safety of aid workers, who have often been the target of armed Somali factions vying for control of the country.

In Somalia, at least 1,540 people have perished in the floods, which have also displaced 230,000 people, claimed 24,500 head of livestock and destroyed about 148,260 acres of crops.

In the district around Jamame, about 250 miles south of Mogadishu, the capital, at least 150,000 people from 84 villages have been flooded out of their homes. About 50,000 people have sought refuge in Jamame, causing severe overcrowding.

In many cases, flood victims have moved in with relatives, squashing as many as 20 people into tiny living spaces typically suitable for four or five.

“This is the worst area you can find in Somalia,” Renato Marai, an agronomist with the United Nations’ World Food Program, said of the Jamame district. “The inhabitants here have received very little.”

Relief planes flying into Jamame must land on a single stretch of dirt road, the only available airstrip for miles. Aid workers early this month took possession of two helicopters, which can carry enough food, blankets and plastic sheeting to supply 200 families for about five days.

However, most of those stranded can be reached only by water.

According to an official of the World Food Program, 20 U.N. boats are now in service in the Juba Valley. In addition, Somali boatmen operate seven makeshift corrugated-iron boats, primarily to evacuate villagers to higher ground--at a price of about $8 a person.

Relief workers in the Jamame region have delivered a limited number of blankets and some plastic sheeting. But most of those who have managed to find refuge on sunbaked, mosquito-infested strips of land have requested medicine and mosquito nets.

Diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and respiratory infections are on the rise. On an embankment in the village of Mogambo, where about 6,000 people from six villages have fled, some people have been bitten by snakes.

With just banana leaves, dried grass and mud to construct shelters, many risk the return to their waterlogged homes to scavenge for floating scraps of wood and pieces of iron. For food, they pluck bunches of plantains off branches that protrude above the water’s surface.

But few have managed to gather enough provisions to ensure a healthy diet or shelter from the fierce sun and thunderous afternoon rains.

“If some help doesn’t come quickly, there will be a disaster here,” said Mogambo village chief Osman Muale Masherimo.

But aid for the flood victims hinges on the generosity of an international community already suffering donor fatigue and put off by past experiences of dealing with disasters in Somalia, which has not had a central government since civil war broke out in 1991.

Warring Somali factions continue to battle in some locations, despite the fact that part of their nation is submerged. Relief workers trying to assist flood victims have been abducted, threatened and extorted--which has prompted the pullout of at least three international aid agencies.

“A lot of countries just aren’t that sympathetic toward Somalia,” said Quintaglie, noting that most of the $10.9 million in aid donated so far by various countries, including the U.S., Italy and the European Union, has already been spent. “A lot of people are hesitant to get involved in another Somalia disaster, even though this is a natural disaster. It’s not civil war; it’s El Nino, and it could happen anywhere.”

The psychological trauma is likely to haunt flood victims such as Batula Xasan Rage for the rest of their lives. The young mother managed to escape her native village of Malaily just before the Juba River swallowed three of her 11 children, burying them in a watery grave. They were 4, 5 and 6 years old.

Recounted Rage: “The water just came rushing in. They couldn’t swim, so they drowned.”