Lying in the sand on the edges of what has become a makeshift camp for thousands of displaced people in Dollow, southwest Somalia, is a harrowing sight: the carcasses of dozens of goats – the rotting remains of what were once herds of livestock.
Their bodies had become so thin there was no meat left to eat, so the animals were left to decompose where they fell, parched from thirst and starved from a lack of sustenance. Hundreds rot in the vicinity, according to locals, who cover their noses to avoid breathing in the stench as they pass. “The people could be next,” says an aid worker, surveying the scene.
Somalia – a Horn of Africa country of roughly 16.3 million people – is facing its fourth consecutive failed rainy season, which analysts say is largely the result of climate change. Hundreds of thousands of children could die this year, according to the United Nations. Some have already.
Roughly 745,000 Somalis have been displaced by drought. Several who were interviewed by the Irish Times say they have buried relatives during the days spent trekking towards camps – some pre-existing and some newly set up – where displaced people can construct shelters on community-owned or donated land. Now, they mourn and wait for assistance.
These devastating losses have come in tandem with the end of an old way of life: pastoralism, which has sustained Somalis for centuries.
Pastoralists have always been revered in Somali society. They own little, and are nomadic, following their animals to search for the best areas for grazing.
In the past, it was said that an estimated 60-70 per cent of Somalis had a nomadic affiliation or lived this way. Many are unused to busy cities or towns, even displaying what renowned Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah has called “a deep urbophobia”.
The lifestyle of a pastoralist has been sustainable throughout dictatorships, civil war and successive incompetent and corrupt governments, because it has never been reliant on the existence of a centralised state, instead following customary law and seeing disputes settled by clans.
“When you are a pastoralist, you live off milk and meat. Milk we drink it, we give it to our children. Visitors come, we give them milk. When a relative who is needy comes to us, we give them goats,” explains Surer Salad Farah (45). “We sell animals to buy other food. Within ourselves we help each other. If we have extra milk, we share it and help each other. Usually we are guided by animals, wherever we hear there is a place for grazing we go there.”
Farah uses a finger to draw lines in the sand showing each recent year of drought: she marks five. Not counted is the 2011 famine that killed quarter of a million people, and forced more than 100,000 to leave the country for refugee camps in Kenya or further abroad.
Before this, Farah’s family managed to keep some animals alive each time. But now the herds they were proud of – that they made a living from and built their identity around – are all gone. Instead, they are among hundreds of thousands of people reduced to living in camps across Somalia with limited access to food, clean water or even toilets. Most of what they eat comes from donations raised by the local community, or anything they can earn doing odd jobs which is then shared with neighbours. People defecate openly, which Farah says has attracted swarms of flies carrying disease.
Everyone has gone from wishing for rain to fearing it; it will turn the camp into a sewer and could lead to a health crisis. They have no proper shelter and sleep on mats on the ground, under round huts made from branches and cloth. She says people are dying from waterborne diseases.
The Jubba River nearby dried up completely, causing people to dig holes in the riverbed in the hope water would pool in them when they went deep enough. Recently, rain fell in the Ethiopian highlands, bringing brown, dirty water back again. That is what thousands of people in this camp drink now.
In the seven months she has been in the camp, Farah says aid has been distributed three times: the first was a food basket organised by a group of Somalis from Mogadishu who raised money through TikTok; the second time was a $100 payment given to some families by the UN's International Organisation for Migration; and the third was a select distribution of $70 by the Danish Refugee Council.
“As Muslims when one family gets something, we share it with the other families,” she says. “People here [number in their] thousands and whatever is being given out is so little that we basically receive nothing.”
Pastoralists are used to working for themselves. They are proud people, and those I speak to still seem shocked that they have been reduced to begging. “Pastoralists don’t even like asking their own relatives for assistance,” Farah says with a shake of her head.
“Begging is very hard and it pains us,” says her relative, Hareedo Muhumed Shuriye (60). “What we’re begging for is help, lift us up from the ground.” She says the family used to have 40 goats, all of which died. Their trek to the camp, she recalls, began with a donkey pulling them on a cart before it died too. The camp is full of sick people, she adds. “We have nothing to sleep on.”
Nearly 700,000 camels, cows, goats, sheep and cattle have perished in Somalia in just two months of drought, according to an estimate by Save the Children. Drought can exacerbate conflict, as people fight over water supplies and areas where grazing is still possible. Several former pastoralists told me the Islamic militant group Al Shabaab is exacerbating suffering by taking over water sources.
"We've always been pastoralists, even my parents," says Khadija Muhumed Sahal (60), sitting crouched on the ground. "But all the animals died so we came here." It took her family six days to travel from Luuq, about 70km away.
While Somalia has experienced previous droughts, Sahal says a few animals have always pulled through, meaning they could build up their herd again. Having all of them die “has never happened before”, she says.
She now attempts to survive by searching for firewood to sell. “You see how I look, I’ve become so thin because we have nothing to eat. No organisation and no government has helped us. Some days we get food now and some days we don’t. We are just looking forward to getting assistance.”
Local authorities say they are overwhelmed and are also calling for assistance for the new arrivals.
Camels are revered for their ability to withstand Somalia’s harsh weather, but they are perishing too.
On the outskirts of the Dollow camp, a camel herder describes leaving home with 20 camels: now, just two remain. The eldest, a female, has lost the use of her legs and is unlikely to live much longer. Beside her is his last hope: a one-year-old with stick thin legs, which may not make it either. The herder has 12 children to support and now has no way to make money.
Camel herders are known for measuring their success on the size of their herd. The animals can pass between owners as part of a dowry payment, or be used to settle debts or provide compensation for injury. Their milk is so prized that it has been nicknamed “Somali champagne”.
In the mid-1970s, tens of thousands of nomads were resettled by the government and forced to work as fishermen because their herds of animals were decimated, but accounts from the time say they found this “humiliating”. In recent years, Somalia’s coastal communities have themselves had less to eat: a result of illegal overfishing by foreign vessels.
Somalis are known regionally for being incredibly entrepreneurial; good business people. But pastoralists have often operated separately from other enterprises, and older people say they would struggle to work on a farm, for example, though some I met in Dollow say younger relatives have been trying to learn what they can.
When I asked Sahal if she could do something else in the future other than be a pastoralist, another woman piped up with a definite “no”. Others laughed, but with clear sadness.
“These people coming from pastoral areas have no other experience other than animal keeping,” says Farah. Younger people can learn a new skill, she says, but that would be incredibly hard for older people. “The main thing we know is how to be a pastoralist.”
