Up close and personal with Somaliland water crisis

Up close and personal with Somaliland water crisis

I stared into empty well after empty well as I bounced my way from village to village across Somaliland* with Mediar’s water engineer. The self-declared republic of Somaliland has been gripped for the last three years in a crippling drought that has left over one million people without adequate water.  Between both Somali and Somaliland 3.8 million  people face a shortage of both food and water.

Somaliland does not face the same insecurity that plagues Somalia so it has managed to maintain a healthy export in livestock.  A typical village family I visited had 20 – 30 sheep and goats which they trade for all their essential supplies, including water if it is not supplied by humanitarian agencies.  In June this year TEAR Fund’s partner Mediar started trucking water to 33,000 people in 31 villages within a 150 kilometers radius of their base in the town of Burao. 

I met Dheeka and two of her three children scraping together a living from 30 sheep in the desert. The sheep are thin and her husband left a year ago in search of work.  He has not returned and Dheeka fears he has “fled from his responsibilities”.  Though TEAR Fund is funding free drinking water to her village, women like Dheeka face a dilemma.  Her sheep are getting thin and there is simply not enough water for the sheep and the people in her village. If she sells her sheep now before they die she will have money for food, but she will lose her only form of savings. If she holds on the rains may come in October; alternatively things could get worse and she will have to pack up her family and move to a displacement camp in nearby Burao where TEAR Fund and Mediar are providing nutrition and health care programmes for 3,500 malnourished children and their families.  Many mothers have made this choice and the influx of malnourished children from surrounding villages is stretching services in the town.  As a result of this desperate migration, malnutrition levels are rising in Burao with 21% of the population now malnourished (4.9% classified ‘severe’).  

TEAR fund also faces a dilemma.  The water tanks in the ground in each village - picture a small concrete swimming pool - are designed to capture rainfall when it finally comes, but their cement walls are cracked and they need to be repaired if they are to hold water.  The cost of repairing these is equivalent to 9 months of water supply.   

As a development worker it is heartbreaking to see a situation deteriorate to the point where short term, life saving emergency aid is needed; as this makes it difficult to justify investment in longer-term solutions that are so important if communities are to ultimately reduce their vulnerability to drought.
The traditional October rainy season is nearly upon Somaliland.  God willing it will rain, the derelict tanks will do their best to hold it.  Mothers like Dheeka can then perhaps return to their villages and TEAR Fund and Mediar can take a breather and reassess how best to help these communities better prepare for future droughts. 
        

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*Somaliland region is a self-declared independent territory of Somalia and while not yet internationally recognised, it has a working political system, government institutions, a police force and its own currency.