Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Camp Life

Life at IDP camps is hot and difficult. Every camp we go to is over crowded and everyone is sort of squashed together. They build similar structure homes, but only very tiny versions. We are talking about a family of 5 – 8 sharing a space about 1 square meter in size. They cook on a tiny fire made from a few pieces of wood. A mother wipes her child’s runny nose with a stray plastic on the floor nearby…Al Imdaad’s Molana Imraan sees her and gives her a tissue left in his pocket.

Further down 10 year old Anisu Mohammed is toasting Anjero for her mother. Anjero is a flour water paste which she scoops up from a pot and spreading around in a circle on a flat p0late over the fire, after a few seconds Anisu turns the anjero around by peeling it off the surface with her tiny hand.

Ebrahim is 80 years old, he is skin and bones…… he is too weak to stand for long enough for the the doctor to complete his instruction on how to take the medicine. He has traveled over 200 km, a lot of that could probably have been on foot. He has nothing, absolutely nothing. No worldly possessions at all… but that’s okay. The real pain and tragedy of Brother Ebrahim’s story is that he has absolutely no one left. He is all alone with no one not a single family member. How much can a person endure at such a late stage of their lives ?

At another camp on the other

Everyone at these camps expresses gratitude for the kindness of the world. Without a doubt the assistance that has come to Mogadishu is saving lives every day. Every level of this society expresses gratitude to our convoy and asks us to pass the message on to our people back home. They also say that Allah has brought them the drought and Allah will take them through it.

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