Somalia, the land of forgotten dreams: Victims reveal the horror and anguish of war

 

Sarah Hassan Noor with her son Abubakar Ahmed with a bullet wound

Before 2009, she lived in Somalia’s southern port city of Merca Insurgents raided her home and killed her three teenage nephews Her three children and husband were missing She trekked 500 km across the Kenyan border to Daadab with her youngest child

Lovely blue skies, warm air, unaffected terrains and the beautiful sounds of playing children.

That was what they woke up to every day. Then all hell broke loose, the streets were soon spattered with blood of loved ones, no one smiled anymore and everyone viewed the other with suspicion.

Then they had to leave the place they called home and were suddenly thrust into a new world.

The neighbouring country where they finally found some semblance of peace. But they still can’t be as carefree as they would like.

The sins of their land pursue them. They are regarded as the face of terrorism and plunder around the world.

Khadija Ahmed, 49, wears a careworn face. Her brown skin is etched with lines of worry. She offers the crew her bed, there are no seats in the dimly lit room.

An abode in Nairobi’s Eastleigh where she now lives was offered by a Good Samaritan after she left Daadab earlier this year.

Before 2009, she lived in Somalia’s southern port city of Merca with her brother, three nephews and four children.

Her eldest daughter had moved out. Life was relatively calm. Until it wasn’t. “Insurgents forced their way into our neighbourhood and started beating us up.

I took my youngest daughter and fled.” When the insurgents left, Khadija crept back to salvage whatever she could.

“When I entered the house, I found the bodies of my three teenage nephews on the floor. The poor babies had been slaughtered. I couldn’t find my children and husband. So shaken, I took my baby, got my mother and we fled. We made the long trek (500 km) across the Kenyan border to Daadab.”

She pauses to wipe her tears, and despite the anguish in her big brown eyes, you can see the unrelenting strength. The resilience in her slight frame. They weren’t alone in the trek, they were with a thousand others.

And in October 2009, they were registered into the camp and received their ration cards.

But Khadija’s mother couldn’t handle her new life. “She asked me to take her back home. She wanted to be in her birth country. I wanted her to be happy, but I was scared for her safety.”

Being the dutiful daughter, she heeded her mum’s request, but the ending wasn’t happy. And Khadija now openly sobs, the pain seemingly still raw. “She died on arrival. The journey took its toll.”

Some of her neighbours, who had opted to remain in Somalia, took her remaining daughter from her, saying that she was too destitute to take care of her.

Khadija eventually returned to Daadab and her little girl, now 14, is still in Somalia, living with another family.

Khadija is currently on medication for hypertension and she still doesn’t know the whereabouts of her husband and three sons.

She lives with her 10-year-old grandson, her eldest daughter’s son, who was sent over from Somalia by her daughter.

“He just showed up at our doorstep. His carer just said. ‘This is your kin’. I pray my husband and sons are alive and well, and maybe, I will see them again,” she says with a brave smile, tears running down her face.

Would she ever go back home? “Never. It holds painful memories for me.

I remember my little nephews, I would never go back home.”

Many flats away, is Farhia Mohammed, 38 and a mother of nine. The eldest is 20, the youngest, three. She sits on a low traditional Somali stool, tugging at her black hijab as if to conceal her face further.

Her dark eyes are filled with sadness and fear, and she hardly looks at me in the face. She was only 13 when the war in Somalia started in 1991.

“We were living in Kismayo, when one day armed thugs broke into our house and started stealing our belongings. My mother tried to stop them, so they killed her,” she says absently.

The abusive in-law

Her father, who had been absent when the incident occurred, moved her and the younger three siblings to Mogadishu. There, life was alright and Farhia even got married and became a mother.

But then, the country was plunged into mayhem again and three of her elder brothers were killed. She finally decided to leave when her husband was killed by a rocket propelled grenade.

 In a bid to escape the skirmishes with her seven children, they decided to go to Daadab.

But on their way, unbeknown to her, her husband’s brother had followed her and wanted to marry her forcibly, so she had to run away without informing UNHCR.

This time she settled in Kakuma in June 2009. “I didn’t want to marry him. He said that he wouldn’t give me my share of my husband’s property but I didn’t care.

It was alright. I successfully transferred to Kakuma but after a few months he found me and stole two of my children in 2013,” she says.

Farhia moved to Nairobi in January 2016 and the kidnapped children were finally spotted in Somalia and with UNHCR’s help, were reunited with their mother.

Her brother-in-law, despite having been arrested in Daadab and in Kakuma over the issue, followed her to Nairobi and later came to her house, threatening her.

 Farhia

She moved once again but he has now rendered her and her nine children prisoners in their own home, as they can never leave the building.

“My children do not go to school because I am afraid he will take them. They are taught Mathematics and English by a well-wisher in the building who is a teacher. He offered to teach them when he heard my story,” she says.

Property tussle

The police, UNHCR and an organisation known as Refuge Point are all aware of her plight but she says that the man brags about how he cannot be arrested in Nairobi because he has a lot of money.

Refuge Point have however been assisting her with food and rent. They also helped school her children until she had to move due to the threats she faced.

“In the last text he sent me he said he would kill me and take my children,” she says.

“He has also threatened to use the Al-Shabaab to kill me.” Farhia explains that he does this because under customary laws, one cannot manage the family property once the spouse dies.

“It is haram (forbidden) unless you have the children with you. That is what restricts him from using the inheritance he still withholds from me.”

Farhia is also afraid of the police, who tend to arbitrarily arrest refugees using the guise of lack of documentation. They sometimes do not recognise their documents despite being legal, and she fears for her children especially with their uncle lying in wait.

Hope

She has recently gone through UNHCR interviews for resettlement in a third country which should happen soon and they gave her a verification document to stay in Nairobi.

She continues to wait, hoping that one day she will eventually find a place to call home, free of fear for herself and her children.

A mother’s devotion to son

Sarah Hassan Noor, 53, used to be a nurse back in Somalia. Today, her son, Abukar Ahmed, 20, is her life’s purpose. She moves about her small one roomed house with an assuredness born out of circumstances.

There is a tiny TV set in a corner of the room that Ahmed stares at intermittently. He remains lying on one of the two beds in the room.

He never leaves the bed, and a catheter runs from his abdomen to a tin beside his bed.

To empty waste. His life course was altered by a stray bullet to his back in a fire exchange between the Somali government troops and the Al Shabaab soon after President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed took over in 2009.

“The insurgents took over the whole area I was living, so people ran away and I was left alone,” she says.

Her son had been shot by the time people started leaving Somalia and he was paralysed.She could not carry him. “I was stuck in the house and I could not go out with nothing to eat.

Suddenly, a kind man with a car came and carried my son and I out of there,” she says. A cousin sent her money to get her to Daadab.

While in Daadab, her son joined Standard Six but had to be wheeled in his chair every day. Soon afterwards, he got an in infection of the urethra and could not hold urine. His testicles also retracted into his abdomen.

“Doctors at the hospital in Daadab couldn’t help. I remember crying all day long because he was in so much pain and had no medication,” she says, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her abaya, the traditional Muslim wear.

They had to travel to Nairobi for treatment where relatives helped take him to Kijabe Hospital. He had surgery and got a catheter inserted.

Sarah went back to the community and asked for help from several mosques until she was able to raise the Sh120,000 required by the hospital. But she constantly needs to raise money.

“When I take my son for his doctors’ appointments I usually need Sh5,000 for consultation and transport. When the appointment date nears, I go to mosques, relatives and neighbours to ask for help and it has been really stressing me out,” she says.

“The biggest problem is that we do not have the right documentation to stay in Nairobi. So I live in fear. I do not go outside. I am even scared that the police might enter this house and arrest the two of us because we do not have the right documentation.”

She only risks it when she has to take her son to hospital. She has been trying to get documentation and have her data transferred from Daadab to Nairobi, but she is afraid because she does not have a movement pass and only speaks Somali.

 They would take her back to the camp, which her son does not want to return to because his health problems were exacerbated there.

She gets food and sustenance from her brother, and her great hope is that her son’s health will be restored. “I have so many problems that I would have you hear the whole day explaining,” she says with a weary smile.

Ahmed smiles at me and says that if he got a wheelchair and free education he would be happy to go back to school.

She jokes that US President Donald Trump should change his mind and allow more immigrants. “America was one of the countries that used to take large numbers of refugees before he came to power, but we hope that other countries will offer to take refugees.

She still hopes that one day Somalia will be restored. Her eldest daughter, 24, is married and lives in Daadab, but she does not know what became of her second-born son. She heard that he went overseas on one of the illegal boats but she does not know if he is alive or dead.

She can only hope that he is. She shows us out, and her bowed shoulders seem to carry the weight of the world.

“It will get better,” she says, when she notes the concern on my face.