One of my abiding memories from 1992 was the silence of a clinic in Baidoa filled with mothers and sick infants, too ill to cry. They were the lucky ones. Many families did not make it that far.

A nurse checks on Jamel* (3), who has measles and a fever, at Banaadir Hospital, Mogadishu, Somalia. *Name has been changed for security reasons to protect the subjects.  Somalia and neighbouring countries are experiencing their fifth failed rainy season. Nobody can survive more than two years without proper rain. So famine is looming once again. Photo: Mustafa Saeed/Concern Worldwide

EAMON TIMMINS

A famine is expected to be declared in Somalia in the coming weeks. It will make headline news, but news reports will fail to capture the horror that famine entails.

This time 30 years ago, as a reporter for the then Cork Examiner, I went to Somalia to report on the famine in which up to 300,000 people died. My memories of three visits to the war-torn, drought-stricken country are the stuff of nightmares. Now, three decades later, famine looms again.

A famine is something that nobody should witness, let alone live through. It should be something that is consigned to history, but it isn’t.

One of my abiding memories from 1992 was the silence of a clinic in Baidoa filled with mothers and sick infants, too ill to cry. Rows of women with their babies sitting on the floor waiting to be seen by nurses, glad they had got this far, but worried about their children’s condition. Huge rooms of listless children, their eyes rolling in their heads, their mothers stroking their cheeks to comfort them.

They were the lucky ones. Many families did not make it that far. The dusty roads to the major towns were littered with dead livestock and occasional bundles of rags – people who had died on their way to get help.

Nurses were tasked with the unenviable job of screening the crowds gathered outside feeding centres and clinics each morning and only being able to admit the sickest.

Even for some who were admitted, it was too late. One nurse told me she regularly worked with children who were too sick to be saved. “You have to prioritise your human resources when you are here. You have to realise when somebody is going to die and accept it,” she said. 

She would deal with the personal trauma of this when she returned to Ireland, she added.

The hardest cases to deal with were the small children and orphans. Nurses pointed to children who had been found in huts, alongside the bodies of their dead parents and siblings. Older children had buried their last remaining relatives before walking to the local town for help.

My other lasting memory from 1992 was the ‘death cart’ as it did its daily rounds in Baidoa. Pulled by a donkey, it collected bodies of those who had died overnight. The proper burial of bodies was essential to stop the spread of diseases in the crowded camps which had sprung up in the town.

Grave diggers had stopped digging individual plots and switched to trenches for mass burials. In one camp of 8,000 people, they were burying 60 people each day. Today, Baidoa is again the epicentre of the current drought and impending famine.

Organisations like Concern have been working with communities in Somalia since 1992 and there have been major improvements over the years. Communities are more resilient. 

However, Somalia and neighbouring countries are experiencing their fifth failed rainy season. Nobody can survive more than two years without proper rain. So famine is looming once again.

An earlier and greater response by the international community would have saved thousands of lives in 1992. An urgent and major response by international donors is needed today, if thousands of lives are to be protected and untold suffering averted.

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Eamon Timmins is Media Relations Manager for Concern Worldwide

Source: Irish Examiner