{"id":11008,"date":"2022-09-29T09:12:55","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T09:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=11008"},"modified":"2022-10-02T08:57:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-02T08:57:07","slug":"climate-migration-blind-and-homeless-amid-somalias-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2022\/09\/29\/climate-migration-blind-and-homeless-amid-somalias-drought\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate migration: Blind and homeless amid Somalia\u2019s drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

DOLLOW \u2014<\/strong> Blindness heightens the remaining senses. The thud of a toppling camel is more jarring, the feel of tightening skin more acute, the smell of death thicker after weeks and months and then years without the rain that\u2019s needed to survive.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, as panic rose with the wind, Mohamed Kheir Issack and Issack Farow Hassan could even taste the coming famine.<\/p>\n

Issack is 80, Hassan is 75. The two men are friends and as close as brothers, gripping each other\u2019s hands in their mutual darkness as tightly as they hold their canes. Near the end of their lives, the most alarming drought in more than half a century in Somalia has stripped them of their animals and homes.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press first met them crouching together in the dust. They were among hundreds of people who had arrived in this border town in recent days, part of an unwilling migration that has seen more than 1 million hungry Somalis flee.<\/p>\n

Somalia has long known droughts, but the climate shocks are now coming more frequently, leaving less room to recover and prepare for the next. Pastoralists and farmers who have known for generations where to take cattle, goats and camels when the usual water sources run dry have been horrified by this drought that has seen four straight rainy seasons fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cDroughts before were not like this. We were able to withstand them,\u201d Issack said.<\/p>\n

When rain does fall, more unpredictably now, hotter temperatures mean it evaporates faster, leaving meager amounts for farming or drinking. East Africa is the world\u2019s hardest-hit drought region, according to the U.N.\u2019s desertification agency.<\/p>\n

Experts say forecasts indicate that the fifth rainy season now underway will fail, too, and even the sixth one set for early next year. With that, Somalia will be in uncharted lands beyond the memories of even Issack, Hassan and their age-mates.<\/p>\n

The two men had always lived in their southern community of Ufurow, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) away, and had never moved from it until now.<\/p>\n

Somalia is now said to have the world\u2019s fastest urbanization rate as so many people like them emerge from rural areas and cluster around potential sources of aid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey know before we do that their way of life is over,\u201d U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has said.<\/p>\n

Here outside the southern town of Dollow, Issack and Hassan waited patiently in the late afternoon light, a wall of children and slender mothers behind them. Long strings of prayer beads were around their necks, a battered mobile phone in a pocket.<\/p>\n

On the edge of the rapidly growing camp for displaced people, an official was drawing lines in the dust. He was marking squares, a hopscotch of future homes for the waiting families. What they would build on the spaces little bigger than a king-sized bed, and where they would find the materials, would be their problem.<\/p>\n

For Issack, Hassan and the rest, the huts would be better than sleeping under the stars, with thorn bushes giving no protection from the mosquitoes and grit flung by the wind. Families hurried in the last hour before sunset to occupy their squares, digging with twigs to make holes for poles of stripped branches.<\/p>\n

Twenty-four hours later, their section of the camp looked like any other, with plastic sheeting and fabric, even strips of mosquito nets and clothing, stretched around the branches.<\/p>\n

Source: AP +\u00a0 HOL\u00a0 \u00a0 Origin: View original<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DOLLOW \u2014 Blindness heightens the remaining senses. The thud of a toppling camel is more jarring, the feel of tightening skin more acute, the smell of death thicker after weeks and months and then years without the rain that\u2019s needed to survive. Perhaps, as panic rose with the wind, Mohamed Kheir Issack and Issack Farow …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-environment-and-disasters","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11008"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11051,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008\/revisions\/11051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}