A South African Gift of the Givers team in Somalia know after one week they won’t stay, but can’t leave.
|||The refugees stare out at us with suspicious eyes, shrinking back into their cloth-covered huts as we walk through the wreckage and ruin of the camp.
“Qashiuka laguma shibi karo,” says the graffiti on the bombed-out wall.
“It’s Somali,” explains our translator, Abdi. “It means: ‘Do not put the West here.’ “
It’s Monday, our first day as part of the Gift of the Givers’ humanitarian outreach in Somalia, where most of the southern part of the country is battling famine and drought.
The world saw it coming months before. Nobody – including the South African government – took action. Now, well over 11 million people have been affected. And we’re here to fix things, to change the world. Africans helping Africa.
It all starts out so well.
At the first refugee camp – with no equipment or medicine on hand – doctors improvise a nasal gastric tube to feed a severely malnourished toddler, Ibrahim. The team leaves on a high. Day one and we’re already making a difference, we tell ourselves.
The next morning, a group of Somalis begin building a makeshift hospital out of a derelict government building in a former al-Shabaab area.
Already there are queues waiting for us, refugees who fled to the capital city, searching for food. Their presence in Mogadishu – the front line of fighting between rebel group al-Shabaab and the Ugandan and Burundi AU forces – is testimony to their desperation.
Dieticians move through the crowds, separating the critically starving from the merely hungry. It becomes a disadvantage to look healthy.
People grow weary in the Mogadishu weather, a sticky coastal humidity that makes you feel like you’re wearing the season.
Irritations arise. The translators are medical students who barely understand English. Every other patient claims to have measles.
Some gain colour in their faces as they’re hooked up to resuscitation drips. They’re able to carry their packets of food and medicine home at the end of the day.
Others don’t respond. The children throw up their feed. Babies relieve themselves in their parents’ laps. Diarrhoea runs down legs like rice water. Cholera is endemic.
Around lunch time, Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman pulls the media aside.
Ibrahim has died.
By Wednesday, it’s no longer only the malnourished seeking help. There are no functioning hospitals in Mogadishu and word has spread about the South African team.
Nurses put fresh dressing on the blistered, oil-burnt face of a baby boy.
Doctors crowd around a three-year-old leprosy victim, taking photos of her stunted hands, her open wounds.
“I haven’t seen this in 20 years,” says Dr Ismail Vawda.
What looks like a case of infected genitalia on an 8-month-old baby boy turns out to be an ectopic bladder, located outside his body, urine leaking out constantly. He never stops smiling.
“There’s nothing we can do for him,” says Dr Fahmeeda Moosa. “He needs a paediatric urologist. This requires major reconstructive surgery.”
“So what will happen to him?”
“He will eventually die.”
Patients that should be receiving weeks and months of continual treatment have to be sent away within hours.
Few come back for follow-ups.
People start talking about the futility of the mission. What can we really do in one week? What are we actually achieving?
On Thursday night, Sooliman suggests extending the mission. More planes, more aid, more people.
“Who absolutely has to leave on Monday?” he asks.
Only three hands go up.
“Alright then.”
The decision is tested the next morning.
Five of the team wake up with diarrhoea. Another reporter has bronchitis.
Back at the hospital, a bullet flies past the heads of two TV cameramen.
A little boy arrives, naked, dirty, covered in bloody scratches. He does not know where his mother is. He cannot explain what happened to him.
He is in shock, fumbling confusedly with the photographer’s scarf wrapped hastily around his waist.
“We heard him shouting and ran to help him,” says one refugee. “When we found him, the older man who had him ran at us. We think he was trying to eat him.”
The security situation has taken a turn.
We know we won’t stay.
We know we can’t leave.
* The Saturday Star’s visit to Somalia is sponsored by Gift of the Givers.
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/futile-mission-to-save-mogadishu-s-starving-1.1113130
Savings Yorkshire Canary Islands US military Ethical and green living Aberdeen
No comments:
Post a Comment