Living on the edge of a forgotten land

Their presence in Somaliland's capital is no respecter of rich or poor, uptown or downtown life, though inevitably it is the poorest communities where the worst garbage is to be found.

Daami neighbourhood is one such place. In this sprawling slum that is home to some 3500 people, many belong to Somaliland's minority clans, and are among the most marginalised in the region.

"We would like to improve our children's education, improve our houses across Daami village," says Ismail, a local woman summing up the determination that many people feel towards bettering their community despite being dealt a bad hand in the gamble that passes for life here.

To understand the problems that face the people of Daami is to first understand from where they came in Somaliland, a place itself long marginalised as the world's attention over the years has focused on its headline-making, conflict-wracked neighbour, the Republic of Somalia.

A former British Protectorate which received independence from Britain in June 1960, Somaliland initially united with Italian Somalia to become the Republic of Somalia. Under the rule of the military dictatorship of Siad Barre between 1969 and 1991, the people of Somaliland felt increasingly marginalised.

Barre's attempt to undermine the power of the dominant clan in the then northern Somalia led to the formation of the Somali National Movement (SNM).

As the SNM began a guerrilla insurgency against government and military posts inside Somalia, Barre responded with a military onslaught against northern towns and villages that killed tens of thousands of Somali civilians and led to the internal displacement of half a million people, while the same number again became refugees in Ethiopia.

Such atrocities led to the Somali Civil War and ultimately the downfall of Barre, with Somaliland in 1991 declaring its independence from the Republic of Somalia.

Since that time, Somaliland while managing to establish a stable administration, has still not been internationally accepted as an independent nation.

Afflicted in recent years by harsh droughts and its cities packed with myriad rural migrants, landless civil war returnees and families fleeing conflict in neighbouring Somalia, the urban neighbourhood of Daami in Hargeisa has become one of many catchment areas for such people as well as those from marginalised clans often culturally discriminated against. It is impossible to downplay the importance that Somaliland places on its clans as pivotal social units, and the central role clan membership plays in the country's makeup.

This social and cultural discrimination against minority clans means that few take much notice that Daami in recent years has literally become a dumping ground as private refuse disposal companies have taken to mass fly-tipping of stinking waste alongside the slum huts and tents in which thousands eke out their lives.

Outside Daami school I watched as children gingerly tip-toed through the heaps of plastic bags, rotting food scraps and every imaginable kind of solid waste.

Nearby, in a large stagnant lake growing daily as the seasonal rains fall, other youngsters swim and toddlers are bathed by their mothers, oblivious to the risks they run from disease and infection.

Skin complaints, respiratory conditions, diarrhoea and intestinal problems, cholera, typhoid, as well as the threat from mosquitoes and malaria all stem from this seething pool of garbage saturated effluence. In the main it is the smallest of children under five years old who are the most vulnerable. During my time moving through the neighbourhood, mothers would constantly confront me with their children and the many ailments from which they were suffering.

One toddler, a large lump on her spine, had been unable to sleep on her back almost since birth. Another little girl with a throat and neck infection had been left with her tongue so badly swollen, she had lost her ability to speak. A small boy unable to see properly had never had an examination to determine whether his blindness was permanent or the result of something like cataracts that could be treated.

None of these mothers had the money or access to the medical care needed for their children.

"In the rainy season our houses collapse or the water and filth rises up into them", explains Ismail, one of five women sitting before me who have become part of a Daami community self-help group set up with the support of humanitarian agency Concern Worldwide.

"In the beginning most of the women here and others in Daami didn't believe this could be done and thought setting up the group would be a waste of time", admits Ismail, looking around at other female group members dressed in colourful hejab headscarfs and nodding in agreement.

In extremely poor communities like Daami, women and the households they come from have no savings and with no micro-credit services available, most are dependent on money-lenders and shop owners for credit.

With the creation of the self help group, that has changed. Ismail says the women are now totally committed to the scheme that helps them generate income collectively to start and support other small livelihood projects selling items or running small stalls providing them with a degree of food security to prevent their families going hungry. It also helps improve the process of social inclusion for those discriminated against.

"Now our morale is good and we are using money from the group. Who knows, we could become big business people in the future," Ismail jokes.

Along with the self-help groups, Concern has also focused attention on the provision of sanitation and clean water. Most households in Daami have no latrines and open defecation is widespread. Even if available, piped water is way beyond what the poorest here can possibly afford.

As we walk past the tiny huts and tents in which most people here cram and on along the shoreline of Daami's garbage-polluted lake, I begin to fully realise the problem the community faces with its shortage of fresh water.

Most people in Daami survive on $1 a day; water from piped sources would cost at $0.40 per 20 litre jerry can. That means a bill of $36 per month for a family of six using only 60 litres of water a day. Faced with this, the poorest in the community are left with the option of accessing water from an earthen dam. Free, it might be, but being tainted with solid waste means they run the risk of sickness and possibly death.

Many of those who have set up in Daami are of course rural migrants from Somaliland's countryside where water is also a crucial issue for the majority of people there who are agro-pastoralists and farmers.

In this region almost everything depends on rainfall which can be friend and enemy. When not suffering drought, much of the arable land here is often swept away leaving gullies up to 20 feet deep. Not surprisingly, this massive loss of rich farmland has meant that productivity is often low and the community plunged into poverty as a result.

Nasir Abiib was one of those who, as a result of drought and failed crops, was forced to head for the city to make a little money and feed his family.

Five years ago, an exceptional days wages hauling a wheelbarrow with goods in Hargeisa city amounted to $5 a day.

A meal rather than money was often all he was given, leaving nothing to send back to his family still struggling on their small patch of land some hours' drive outside of the capital.

That, however, was rare, and more often than not Nasir made nothing at the hands of unscrupulous hire-and-fire bosses.

"Come back tomorrow and we will pay you, they would tell me and other men from the countryside, but sometimes they never paid up," he recalls.
"You cannot go to the police, you cannot fight back; they have money," Nasir complains with a shrug.

It was one of Concern's agricultural support projects that gave Nasir the chance to rebuild his life in a way he least expected. "I was a casual labourer on one of the projects they had provided for other farmers, but I watched, learned then began to do things for myself," he says proudly as we sit in the shade of a tree on the 1.5 hectares of land on which he now grows, maize, tomatoes and water melon, resulting in him being hailed by locals as the best farmer and an "innovator" in the district.

I asked him what difference this had made to his life and that of his family?

"I have a reputation in the community before that I was in debt, always debt, credit and borrowing," the 48-year-old says glancing in the direction of his family nearby, who were working around their huts and livestock pens.

Most important of all, Nasir explains, is the way Concern's influence and support helped him in the long-term ensure that he had the capacity to feed his family.

"We now have enough food for four or five months," he says.

In such a harsh environment, with farmland vulnerable to the vagaries of nature, including drought, floods, pestilence and soil erosion, that is no mean feat.

In the district around Nasir's land I was to see for myself the water course and small gully dams projects that ensured flooding would have a limited effect on arable land.

In the Gabiley region I met and talked with other agro-pastoralist communities who told how before Concern's involvement, people and livestock were sharing water supplies. The improvement in health and their living environment was considerable, they assured me

In the village of Haji-daahi, locals told how they would like to see more hygiene and wash facilities along with soil bank-building and training to manage the water around which life here in this semi-arid landscape so depends more than most places on the planet.

"Five years from now we will be the people who are supporting the poorer members of our community," insisted village chief Abdi Daahi.

This, of course, is what real aid aims to achieve, enabling people to look after themselves and have the capacity to then support those still at risk within the community.

In Somaliland, such communities have traditionally shown a great deal of resilience and have cared for disadvantaged groups through use of diaspora, religious, community and clan-based coping strategies and systems.

But even with these mechanisms, that perfect storm of crop failure, poor rainfall, and outbreaks of disease regularly test those coping mechanisms to breaking point and beyond.

Somaliland and Somalia hewn from the same land-mass, culture and shared history, are today in some respects quite different places.

The former, fairly stable politically, the latter, increasingly so but still twisting in the winds of a conflict that has lasted decades.

In the two weeks that I spent moving around both regions, I met slum dwellers in Hargeisa and Mogadishu, and subsistence farmers in Gabiley, all with hopes, aspirations and a determination to make their lives better.

If there is a real common denominator in their lives, it is the perpetual threat of crippling poverty. But, as I was also to witness, with the right will and resources, that same poverty can be tackled and overcome.