Lydia Mirembe, of Uganda Red Cross, in Hafun
Hawa is an enterprising young woman. When we are introduced, she is busy lighting a charcoal stove. The mid-morning heat seems not to slow her down as she joyfully goes about her cooking.
A swarm of houseflies hovers noisily over her utensils. She wards some off, but they return in no time. Soon a big pan is placed on the stove and the goat meat starts to steam away. In another pan, she empties packets of spaghetti and starts breaking them up.
Hawa, 35, cooks outside an unsteady shack, supported by frail sticks, covered with orange tarpaulins and torn sacks. It is now a common scene in Hafun.
The Somali town was badly hit by the tsunami on 26 December 2004, forcing many households like Hawa’s to make their home in these shaky shelters, made from the plastic sheeting they received from aid agencies. Their houses and all they contained were washed away by the raging tides. But life has to go on.
Residents of Hafun are still trying to understand why nature turned on them and their thriving little town in such a violent manner. Some think it was an act of God, to show that he is still the almighty. Many believe it is a punishment from Allah, for their evil ways, while others speculate that an underwater test went awfully wrong.
Whatever the explanation, one thing is clear: their way of life was brought to a sudden halt. Picking up the pieces may take years.
For Hawa, a well-established restaurant business was reduced to nothing. But she is determined to start it up again. She is intending to sell the spaghetti and goat to residents in the new settlement.
But where had she got the money to buy the food for her hovel of a restaurant? Amid the destruction, Hawa had had a small stroke of luck.
She had sent some truck drivers to buy her some supplies from Bossasso. They were due back in Hafun on 26 December, but were delayed. When the tsunami struck, her investment was saved.
Today, with Unicef tarpaulins, a few salvaged household items and a life, Hawa has set up the shed she calls a restaurant and she is surely picking her pieces up.
“If it is Allah’s will,” she says, “I will one day own a big restaurant like the one that was swept away.” Today, a meal of spaghetti, goat meat and a blemished banana costs up to 60,000 Somali shillings (US$ 4 dollars)
Elsewhere in Hafun, residents are trying to re-establish their small businesses. Small items for sale are on display, from torches to perfumes, razor blades to biscuits. Maybe these modest items are the beginnings of the restoration of a once booming commercial centre.
One “shopkeeper”, Saidi Jamar, stands in front of his well-organized shack, which contains a colourful array of torches, perfumes, small radios and ladies’ scarves of all shades. Like many others, Saidi lost most of his household items in the tsunami, but he feels lucky that Allah allowed him to live.
“I think that Allah wanted to give me a second chance and I am not going to waste it. The tsunami was an act of Allah, and we must live on after it,” Saidi says. But maybe he wouldn’t be so upbeat if he hadn’t had time to run to the mountains taking with him some money and merchandise from his shop.
Unlike Saidi and Hawa, many people were not able to save anything. They simply ran for their lives without looking back to see what they could salvage. Ali Haji, a 45 year old fisherman, was one of them.
“All the years I have been fishing, I had never seen anything like the tsunami,” he recollects, a shocked expression on his face.
Fishing was the mainstay of the local economy. The shark, lobster and kingfish caught were mostly exported to Yemen. At the height of the fishing season, fishermen like Ali could make up to 200 dollars on a good day. People came from as far away as Tanzania to tap into this lucrative business.
That was all before the tsunami, which destroyed both of Ali’s boats, as well as killing one of his two sons, who was out fishing that day. The other has been completely traumatized by the disaster. “He could not bear the loss of the things that he had lived for,” Ali explains.
The son is not alone. It is clear that post-tsunami rehabilitation will have to pay much attention to psychological and mental disorders among the survivors, and this will continue to be one of the priorities of the Somali Red Crescent, whose volunteers and staff have been providing a wide range of services - from psychological support, basic health care, distribution of food and non-food items to garbage and debris removal – since the tsunami struck
The SRCS is working 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.
As he points out the destroyed boats and mangled nets strewn across the sandy coast, Ali laments: “we know no other job but fishing. If people can help us get new fishing equipment, we could try to get back on our feet.”
Like Ali Haji, Abdi Khadir, a retired veterinary doctor, lost his son in the tsunami. The previous month, he had lost another son in floods. “I still can’t believe that all this happened to me in just two months, but maybe that is how God wanted it to be,” Abdi says in a resigned tone, as he takes me to see his destroyed house, and on to what used to be his well, now filled with sand and giant crabs.
“I saw the water recede up to 2 kilometers away, and I also watched it coming back with waves almost 40 feet high. All I could do was run to the mountains,” he recalls. What Abdi seems to miss most are his numerous documents, none of which he was able to save.
Since the disaster, the 60-year-old has put up a shed, which he now calls home, although he tells me that he spends most of his time at the ruins of his house, because he feels that is where he belongs.
While the people of Hafun try to pick up the broken pieces of their lives, there are those who seek to take advantage of the situation. Commodity prices are being hiked and conmen are posing as humanitarian workers. People are now paying up to 80,000 Somali shillings for a 20 litre jerry can of water which used to sell for just 2,000.
The presence of those who would capitalise on the suffering of this battered community makes the chance of recovery for people like Asha Ainab harder.
Asha lays on a mattress in her ramshackle shelter, attempting to wipe tears from her eyes with one hand and pats her thigh repeatedly with the other, as if in much agony. She stops crying when she sees us and attempts to greet us in a language we cannot speak. “Assalam Aleikum” we chorus in the common Islam greeting. “Waaleikum Ssalam,” she replies faintly.
Asha, 60, survived the tsunami only by a miracle. Years before, she suffered a stroke that paralysed her left hand and leg. She lived at the mercy of her caretakers, who helped her do every little thing that required movement.
But on the day of the tsunami, none of them was there for her. Everyone’s first thought was for their own lives. Asha was very much an afterthought.
The tsunami found her basking in the midday sun. Most of her family members were out working or in town. She saw the raging waves coming, but couldn’t move. Before she knew it, she was being carried along with oil drums, saucepans and anything else gushing waters picked up.
“I knew that death had come upon me. I tried to move, but I couldn’t win the battle,” Asha explains, obviously suppressing the urge to cry. The waves, though, deposited her somewhere in the sand, where she remained until her son, Ahmed, found her late in the evening, sick, shivering and almost buried in rubble. Her right leg was broken
Ahmed and other family members say Asha always asks them to leave her to die. She no longer sees a purpose in life and doesn’t want to be a burden on her family. But they will not give up looking for solutions. Having lost most of their property and business, finding money to take her to a hospital in nearby Bossasso has proved a big challenge. She is still getting treatment from traditional Somali doctors.
Heartrending stories like Asha’s abound in Hafun.
Restaurant owner Fatmah Saidi recounts how she was unable to save her disabled five-year-old son. When the ocean receded, she knew something was wrong. As she cleared the tables, she watched as excited coastal dwellers rushed to the exposed ocean bed to pick up fish, lobsters and other treasures. In a flash, the ocean came raging back, submerging many people.
Fatmah quickly took her youngest child and ran to the mountains. When she came back, she found her son already dead. He was one of five children confirmed dead in Hafun. To this day, Fatmah says, the image of her dead son has not left her.
Everyone in Hafun has a story to tell about their loss. Some had the comfort of being able to identify the bodies of their loved ones among the 19 that were recovered. But for others, their dear ones could be any of the 131 people who, the local authorities say, are still missing.