Eleven-year-old Dahir weaves his way between a growing cluster of homemade huts on the edge of Baidoa, heading to a tin-roofed school building near the main road. He is wearing his only shirt and trousers, and clutching his one other possession – a new schoolbook.<\/p>\n
The school’s sole teacher, Abdullah Ahmed, 29, writes English days of the week on the blackboard, as Dahir, and perhaps 50 classmates, recite: “Saturday, Sunday, Monday…”.<\/p>\n
For a few minutes, a burst of interest energises the children, but soon the yawns and coughs resume – signs of the hunger and sickness that echo, like a grim soundtrack, across the plateau of rocky ground around Baidoa that has become home in recent months for hundreds of thousands of civilians, displaced by the worst drought to hit Somalia for 40 years.<\/p>\n
“I think at least 30 of these children have not had breakfast. Sometimes they come to me to tell me of their hunger,” says Mr Ahmed. “They struggle to concentrate, or even to come to class.”<\/p>\n
Six weeks ago, on our last visit to this part of southern Somalia, Dahir sat, weeping, beside his mother Fatuma, outside the family’s flimsy home-made hut.<\/p>\n
A few days earlier, his younger brother, Salat, had starved to death on the journey into Baidoa from the drought-parched countryside.<\/p>\n
Salat was buried a few metres away. Now the grave is surrounded by huts built by newer arrivals.<\/p>\n
“I’m worried about my sisters. I wash for them. I wash their faces too,” says Dahir, glancing across at six-year-old Mariam, who coughed hoarsely and complained of a headache, and then at four-year-old Malyun, sitting lethargically and with sunken eyes on her mother’s knee.<\/p>\n
“She is warm. I think she has measles. They may both have measles,” says Fatuma, putting her hand to Malyun’s forehead.<\/p>\n
Measles and pneumonia have swept through Baidoa in recent months, killing many younger children whose immune systems have been weakened by malnutrition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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