Fadumo (her real name is concealed to protect her) is a mother of eight, struggling to survive in Boqolka-Buush internal displacement camp in Bosaso, northern Somalia. She is living with HIV/AIDS and her vulnerability has just increased dramatically due to cuts in aid.
“My children are constantly battling hunger and they know that if I had food I wouldn’t hold back,” she told Radio Ergo.
“We’ve experienced seven days when the children stayed home with nothing at all to eat, just drinking water to stay alive.”
Fadumo, who is separated from her children’s father, fears for their future, especially with the burden of stigmatisation and discrimination that she lives with constantly. They are relying on whatever handouts they can get from neighbours at the moment, since aid from the UN’s World food Programme (WFP) stopped at the end of last year.
The WFP monthly rations of 90 kilos of flour, rice, sugar, and wheat plus $9 in cash had been a crucial support for her for the past three years.
Now once again Fadumo and her family are at risk of hunger and poverty, as well as eviction due to unpaid rent. Although they live in a camp, they have to pay $25 a month rent for their two-room house made of iron sheets.
“Before the end of the month, I set aside small amounts of money for the landlady. If I get $5 or $10 in a day, I save a portion for her,” she said, adding that when aid organisations came to the camp to register people for aid including shelter last month, she was excluded from the process.
Three years ago, Fadumo experienced the harsh reality of the cruel discrimination commonly facing people with her status. She had to flee the camp she was living in after being spotted by neighbours as she came out of a centre where she collected her ARV medication.
This public exposure cost her the good job she had at that time, earning $45 a month doing cleaning work.
After losing her job, she was at least able to use the WFP cash aid she was getting to pay for her children’s education. There is no chance of them going to school now.
“Today, getting education for my eight children is not easy. When I took them to school, I told the teacher that these children are orphans. Their father is neither alive nor dead. But I couldn’t afford to pay the fees and so later they were expelled. They are staying at home now without going to school,” she said sadly.
Her eldest son, aged 12, has become a street child. Last December she learned that he had injured his hand after being attacked by a dog. She has been trying to treat him at home.
Also affected by the slashing of WFP aid are Samiyo (real name concealed) and her husband, who are both living with HIV/AID. They live alone in a corrugated iron house built for them by well-wishers.
Samiyo said that in the past two days, they had only cooked one meal. This has been their situation for the past three months, since the food aid stopped.
“We have no one to help us or support us. We barely have enough to light a fire. Sometimes we don’t have food, and sometimes we get something. We only cook at night,” she said.
Last October, Samiyo made the agonising decision to send her five children to live with relatives in Jigjiga, in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, hoping they would be spared the hunger they are facing.
Her husband used to earn a living until suffering a back injury in 2022 whilst carrying bags of rice as a porter at the port of Bosaso. It has left him bedridden.
She remembers life being good when they received the aid that complemented her husband’s earnings. Desperate now, she has started looking for manual labour in Bosaso city, four kilometres away, but it has not been fruitful.
“There is no work I can get, absolutely nothing. No one helps us, even our neighbours, we sometimes ask them. But if you ask one day, you can’t ask again the second day. It’s a shame.”
Samiyo is worried about her husband’s health. She cannot afford to take him to hospital and he depends on her constant care and assistance even at mealtimes.
“I have no money to take him to a doctor. Our daily life is in a tight spot. He is injured and he is an old man,” she said.
Ali Muse Mohamed, the chairman of Daryel organisation, a group that advocates for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, said they had 250 members in Bosaso, Armo, Qardo, and Dhahar in the region. He said they had all lost the WFP food and cash aid, although they were still receiving ARV medication.
He explained that Daryel had reached out to numerous aid organisations pleading for assistance for those who had been pushed to the extremes of vulnerability by the aid cuts. However, they had not received any response.