SCRIPT - SOMALIA
It’s early morning in Mooyko. A new day begins in a Somali village. At first sight, it all seems very pleasant, but it’s just another day where the struggle for food is on top of the agenda.
Maryam Abdul kadir is a typical example of a child in Somalia. She is 13 years old and she is right now - it’s 6 in the morning - preparing breakfast for her younger sisters, brothers and cousins.
Food for the young consists of boiled bananas and has to be ready in a rush so that Maryam Abdulkadir can get to the fields to fetch hay which she hopefully will be able to sell at the nearby market.
Sync: Maryam Abdulkadir:
Life is hard. I work all day. How much money do you make? I make 3 to 4000 shilling.(£ 0,1)]
Amiir Hussein Deerey is the leader of the village and has been for the past 34 years. The clan he is in charge of has done everything possible to avoid the violence of the past many years, but even though the village hasn’t been directly involved in the fighting, the times of war and chaos has strongly affected the residents. They are now depending on unpredictable farming where drought is followed by floods.
Sync: Amiir Hussein Deerey:
In this area, there used to be factories producing sugar and oil. People had jobs, but things have changed during the 17 years of chaos. 31.48 People used to be peaceful. There was no war. Everyone farmed the land and no one was fighting each other. It was a better life. Now it is just the war. One constantly has to be aware of the war.) ]
Looking closer at the facts on Somalia it draws a picture of a country frightingly far away from our lives in the western world. For every 1000 children born in Somalia only 775 will live to celebrate their 5th birthday. In an average western country the number is 995.
Unfortunately, Maryam Abdulkadir fits very well into the statistics. She is supposed to have 9 siblings but the reality is that one died at birth with Maryam's mother. Two others died of hunger before Maryam was born.
Sync: Maryam Abdulkadir
I look after the little ones because my mother died.]
And looking further at the statistics it doesn’t get any better:
29% have access to clean water
25 % have acces to proper toilet fascilities
1% of all children has a mosquito net
30% of all children receive the nessecary vaccinations
11% of all children attend school
sync: Christian Balslev-Olesen - Somalia is in a few words best described as a land of chaos. Without official authorities in 16 years. Without any kind of institutions helping the people: the basic elements of health, of education, and of security. Somalia has been governed by militant leaders for 16 years. It is the one country in the world that has been without official authoriteis the longest and it means that the foundation of help which normally is present, even in very poor African countries, is non-existent in Somalia. bånd 1.3 04.00-04.45
(archive pix)
At the moment, the 14th attempt on establishing peace is negotiated to stop the chaos that has left the country the worse place in the world.
Back in 1991 the country was virtually falling apart. Different clans were fighting for the power over the capital Mogadishu. Quickly the fightings spread to most of Somalia resulting in death and destruction.
The international community watched silently while more than 200.000 people died of famine. Only few tried to help.
Sync: EV29 1991 Murray Watson, ecologist and pilot - the only contact to the world outside Somalia
By the end of 1992, the terrifying pictures in the news had made the needed impact on the international community. With the programme Restore hope, the president of the US at the time declared that no one should be hungry by Christmas in Somalia - thousands of American soldiers were sent to Mogadishu.
The programme ended in a catastrophe. Pictures of cheering Somalis on shoot down wrecks of helicopters and the dead bodies of American soldiers dragged around the streets of Mogadishu left the international community in a state of chock. It was hard to find anyone willing to help the citizens of Somalia after that.
International aid and sponsors disappeared - this was a conflict out of control and no one wanted to get involved.
Sync:Matthew Broderick, colonel EV 22 1994]
Even today, it is still the power of weapons that controls Somalia and the situation is nearly as hopeless as then.
Sync: Christian Balslev-Olesen - When Somalia collapsed in the beginning of the 90’s it wasn’t just the central authorities which seized to function. All the major international help organisations and bilateral sponsors withdrew from Somalia and the country was basically only kept going on humanitarian aid. Gone was all the help to rebuild the country and the long term help needed to maintain the development in Somalia - it disappeared.
Different clans were fighting each other and an Islamic group, working for the introduction of the Sharia law took control of large parts of the country in June 2006. Half a year later they were expelled by Ethiopian forces, which together with an interim government tried to create peace in Somalia.
But so far with limited success - everyday you hear of killings, attacks from Islamic extremists, assaults, seizure of ships and attacks on the few reporters trying to tell what is going on in Somalia. The citizens of Mogadishu are still fleeing the capital. And in the area from where Horisont is reporting around the town Jowhar - north of Mogadishu, you only show up with a camera after the local war lord or governor as he calls himself, has given his permission.
One of the few places where the sorely tried citizens of Mogadishu's can escape to is the refugee camp Sheik Omar in the town Jowhar - 90 kilometers or 3 days of walking from the capital.
Sync: Maryam Sheikh Ahmed We sincerely hope that the international community will help us. Many weak children and elders live here all suffering malnutrition.
Approximately 800 families live her under conditions hard to believe.
Sync: This is one of the children with problems. The child is eight months old - it’s a twin.)]
sync: Amina Mohamed Isaaq -
I cannot find food for my children.
What are you doing? This is the way to examine how undernourished the child is.
sync: Christian Balslev-Olesen - In addition to the constant situation of war, Somalia has also been hit hard with natural disasters the last two years. We have had the worse drought in 10 years in 2006 which was followed by serious flooding which again was followed by more violent fighting in Mogadishu. This send approximately half a million people on the run into this area. After that we had the repurcussions of the floodings with diarrhoea and cholera which killed thousands in the same areas. Right now the situation is that people have not been able to sow, not be able to harvest and consequently not had their traditional crops, their normal income. As a result, the prizes on food has trippled on the local marked during just a few months which means that we are now in a extraordinary difficult situation, even seen with Somali eyes.
The people living in camps are in most ways on their own. This woman has come from Mogadishu with her husband and four children. The survival of the family depends on her ability to sell her self made pottery. If she is lucky, she will be able to make what is equivalent to £1 on a pot.
sync: Nurta Osman Humay
It’s a long and demanding process. It takes seven days to make them. Not until then can I go to the marked and sell them. In the mean time we have nothing to eat.)]
Camp Sheikh Omars is a local intiative and the little money available to help the refugees primarily come from Somalies abroad and Red Cross which twice in the past nine months has helped with food supplies. The serious famine threatening right now has made UNICEF deliver food supplies for the youngest children but the help is far from sufficient.
Sync: James
Relief work is a dangerous and expensive business in Somalia and many areas are completely cut off from receiving any help at all.
This is a group of some of the most needing people receiving help for the first time.
Every family receives 2 sacks of corn flour, 10 kilos of beans, 5 kilos of oat and 3 liters of oil)
sync: Christian Balslev-Olesen
It is very hard with constant conflicts, large number of militias, all the time road blocks and so forth - it is dangerous, it is tough, it is complicated, it is expensive. We try to reach people with various forms of the help, food, water and intensive contributions to the children and their mother suffering the most. But it is not enough at all - at the moment we are only capable of reaching a little less than half of the people who needs help.
One thing is life in the refugee camps which is the reality for close to 10 % of the Somali population - approximately 700.000 people. One would think that there is no worse place to live than in the temporary camps but the truth is that life in the many villages is so hard that it makes some settle in the camps hoping to get help from the outside world.
The population of Somalia is somewhere between 7 and 9 million inhabitants. Most of the country is covered in barren sandy soil, and most people live along the coastline or river banks. The village Mooyko is on the river Shabelle 80 kilometers north of Mogadishu.
Ahmey Osman has lived his entire life in Mooyko, and he is among the few lucky ones who twice a week have the chance to work and make a little money.
sync: Ahmey Eymooy Osman - Me and my friends are working as day labourer in the farming industry. We can make 15.000 (£0,5) for a full day of work. After work we spend the money on food. We bye corn, beans, sugar and oil.
He is one out of ten siblings in a family where only one had the chance of going to school. It’s a family of farmers and they struggle to cultivate their land but it’s against all odds when drought is followed by flooding.
The flooding means that the village has lost the crop but also that nearly all the children has been caught bilharziosis - a parasite living in dirty waters.
Ahmey's dad is 83 years of age. He is trying to appear a strong father by hunting a couple of times every month but this family is like the rest of the village helpless without help from the outside world.
Four boxes of grapes are 1400, how much is 25 boxes of grapes? ]
No matter who we speak to in Mooyko, they all share the same dream - young and old. They would like to be educated - they know that it’s the only way out of the poverty.
Sync: Maryam Abdulkadir It’s good to learn something, and appreciating to learn
I dream of taking a high education. I have heard that there are 75 languages in the world and I wish to learn some of them.
You’d be surprised, but Mooyko actually has a school. Maryam went there untill her mother died - she was eight years at the time. The school in Mooyko is free for everyone - because here is no teacher getting paid. Seven adults from the village take turns in teaching whenever they have the time to do so.
But to most of the children going to school is not an option - after all food is more important than school which is why most children will be send to work instead. And while some of the kids are studying math, Ahmey is weeding.
sync: Ahmey Eymooy Osman - What makes me most upset is seeing the other kids going to school but I can’t afford it. That makes me really sad.
It seems like a huge gap between the life of a Danish teen-ager and a war-stricken Somalia - and life in a mud hut. But even though this is the reality, the knowledge of the outside world and it’s possibilities is very much present. Everyone knows that education is the solution and also her it’s obvious that boys will be boys. Ahmey like most other boys also want to be professional soccer player.
sync: Ahmey Eymooy Osman - Everyone in the world love Manchester United and Brasil.
The boys in the village listen to the games in the radio and in quieter times they walk into the nearest town where they are able to watch the game on the television for £0,02.
But daily life right now is far from those dreams - it is mostly about surviving. Maryam, age 13, is being the mother of the family in cooperation with her grand mother after her mother died. Her joys are very much down to earth.
Sync: Maryam Abdulkadir - Can anything make you happy? Yes. What is it? If prices on grass go up.
When Maryam came back from the marked she had made 4000 shillings on selling grass to the cows of the nomads. That is just a little more than 10 pence (£0,1) - for that amount of money she bought half a cup of milk and 150 grams of sugar.
A normal day in Mooyko has come to an end. Ahmey is done in the fields and preparing for one of the few pleasures he has during the day. He is on his way to the village mosque - here everyone are faithfull muslims. And one of the few things that in spite of everything actually works is the village Koran school. All children spend the early morning hours with citing the Koran.
sync: Ahmey Eymooy Osman -Being in the mosque is nice. I have no other places to go to learn and the only thing I can only read the Koran. I study the Koran until I have to go back to work or spend time with my friends.