Abdirisak’s
life will never be the same again.
His trauma is obvious as he recalls for a Red Crescent volunteer
his still fresh and tragic memories of that day a month ago
when the tsunami smashed into the Puntland coast in the north-east
of Somalia. Abdirisak’s town of Hafun was one of the communities
hit hardest by the giant waves.
The 11-year-old’s voice is filled with sorrow. “My
older brother and I were in our small fishing boat by the sea
shore. Suddenly something unusual happened. I first saw the
sea water running back into the Ocean. It left behind lots of
fish, large and small, on the sand.
“My brother jumped out of the boat to collect a big lobster.
As he was walking a few steps away from the boat, I saw the
waves, big as mountains, coming towards us at high speed. My
brother could not make it back to the boat. He was swept away
with his fishing net,” Abdirisak says.
“I remained alone on the boat. I didn’t know what
to do. I then realized that the boat was floating over the town,
which had already been engulfed by the sea. It was a nightmare
to see my brother’s body floating behind me over the water,”
he recalls.
Eventually his dugout boat crashed into the roof of a house
and got caught up in the rafters, where it stayed until the
following morning.
“Until then, I was convinced that I was the sole survivor
of the disaster. But early in the morning, I saw people searching
for relatives, looking at the incredible destruction done to
the town. My father was among them. I could not believe it.
I told him that last time I saw my brother, his body was floating
on the water. It took us three days to find my brother’s
body off the shore,” the boy says.
The tsunami will mark Abdirisak’s life forever. He will
need all his strength and the care of adults to overcome the
nightmare of witnessing his brother’s death.
Like him, many children along the Somali coast have experienced
equally traumatizing situations. The tidal waves killed at least
150 people in Somalia, and thousands of homeless survivors are
living in temporary shelters in villages scattered along the
Puntland coast.
“Abdirisak’s case epitomizes the suffering of many
children caught in natural disasters across Africa,” says
Col. Nur Hassan Hussein, Secretary General of the Somali Red
Crescent Society (SRCS). “Access to psychological support
is essential if they are to recover and live a normal life.
Yet, with a little effort, such suffering can be at least partially
prevented.”
Somali Red Crescent volunteers and staff are continuing their
relief work, providing a wide range of services, from psychological
support, basic health care, distribution of food and non-food
items to garbage and debris removal.
Throughout the emergency as well as during the recovery phase,
the SRCS has worked closely with the Federation, the International
Committee of the Red Cross, as well as other partners present
in the country, including United Nations agencies such as UNICEF,
WHO and WFP under the coordination of OCHA. While the SRCS volunteers
continue to help those in need, work has been already started
to upgrade disaster management in Africa.
Various components of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement –
including leaders of National Societies in East Africa, the
Platform for Rapid Intervention in the Indian Ocean (PIROI),
sister National Societies from based in the region, International
Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation
Secretariat – gathered last week in the Kenyan capital
and drew up the ‘Nairobi Initiative’, a series of
ten commitments to improve and upgrade risk reduction structures
across the region.
“We must ensure that not only our volunteers but at-risk
populations are well prepared to face all possible but often
unpredictable moods of nature,” said Richard Hunlédé,
Head of the International Federation’s Africa Department.
“Otherwise, early warning systems alone could prove insufficient.”
With its grassroots network of millions of volunteers, the International
Federation is in a unique position to reach and influence even
the most isolated communities.
In East Africa, the most disaster-prone region on the continent,
national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies are not starting
from scratch. A cyclone and tropical storm early warning system
connected to PIROI, a Red Cross Red Crescent Platform based
in La Réunion, as well as existing disaster preparedness
and response programmes, have allowed timely interventions in
the Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles, Madagascar and Comoros
in recent years.
In Somalia, Red Crescent volunteers from the Garowe and Galkayo
branches, who were among the first to respond when the tsunami
hit the Puntland coast, had undergone risk reduction training
only weeks before the emergency.
But as Bisharo Awil Qambil, SRCS Branch Secretary in the Bari
region of Puntland, and Ed Cooper, Head of Federation’s
Somalia Delegation, explain, there is much more to be done to
create a preparedness culture among the at-risk communities.
“At first, people saw the water receding. Fish and lobsters
littered the exposed ocean floor. Seeing this, excited fishermen
returned to the beach to collect the lobsters. Several minutes
later the sea waves returned with such force that all the people
who were on the beach were swept out to sea. If only they could
have known how to react to such signs,” Bisharo says.
Along that stretch of the Somali coast, the vast majority of
the people rely on fishing for their livelihoods and most own
fishing equipment or boats. Almost all boats are now destroyed,
making it much harder for people to survive.
“It’s important not to forget that those affected
are also the victims of previous disasters. They have suffered
from a long drought and tropical storms in recent months that
have all affected their livelihoods,” Cooper adds.
The Nairobi Initiative seeks to bolster the ability of communities
to withstand disasters. It “spells out the clear commitment
of the International Federation and its national Red Cross and
Red Crescent societies to step up and improve disaster management
mechanisms and strengthen ties with the communities where our
volunteers are rooted,” according to Anitta Underlin,
head of the Federation’s regional delegation in Nairobi.
A Plan of Action to implement the Nairobi Initiative is in an
advance drafting stage. The plan foresees three distinct phases,
lasting one, two and five years respectively. The first priority
remains responding to the emergency needs of tsunami victims.
During the remainder of the first and second phases, rehabilitation
programmes will be identified and implemented, while the third
phase is dedicated to long-term reconstruction, capacity building
and development projects
“We will make sure that all programmes and activities
developed over the coming period, in Somalia and the Eastern
African region, will lead to an increased cross border cooperation
between Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies meaningful for
any type of disaster that may affect our countries,” says
Dr. Ahmed Hassan, president of the Somali Red Crescent, and
a member of the Federation’s Governing Board. “We
would like to see these initiatives replicated by our colleagues
across the African continent to benefit populations living in
high risk areas.”
One month after the disaster hit the Somali coast, a Federation
team composed of Red Cross and Red Crescent staff from Kenya,
Uganda and Somalia has begun a one week mission across the affected
region. Their review will focus on the response of the Somali
Red Crescent and will lay the ground for the implementation
of short and long term programmes there.
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The
Somali Red Crescent is delivering much needed aid, including
medical care, to those affected by the tsunami (p12550)
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The
town of Hafun, in the Puntland region, was devastated
in the disaster (p12551)
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Somali
Red Crescent volunteers help in the clear-up in Hafun
(p12552)
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News
