Hamilton Spectator
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
The registered nurse, a leader among Hamilton Somalis, has been encouraging her community to send famine aid to East Africa in recent weeks. But this past weekend she took her efforts to another level: Ali flew to Africa to deliver medical aid to people in refugee camps in Somalia’s border regions and capital.
“To me it will be a shock going back. Bittersweet,” the 33-year-old said Friday.
Ali left for Nairobi Sunday evening with two Canadian physicians. Ali and the doctors from Parry Sound and Montreal were scheduled to join Islamic Relief’s mobile clinic staff, treating people displaced by famine in the Dadaab and Mandheera refugee camps, and those internally displaced in Mogadishu.
“It really is a wide range of emotions — from feeling good because of the fact that I’m able to, at least in some physical way, to use my skills to give back. … But at the same time, this is not how I wanted to go back,” Ali said.
“I wanted to go back in better conditions, not to go back to thousands of people facing starvation and death.”
The team will be administering IV medication and antibiotics to those suffering from malnutrition and tending to wounds.
More than 11 million people in East Africa are facing severe food and water shortages in the region’s worst drought in 60 years.
The United Nations declared a famine in late July for two parts of southern Somalia. About half a million Somali refugees have fled to Kenya and Ethiopia.
Because Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab has restricted the delivery of foreign aid, Islamic Relief is one of the only agencies given some access within Somalia, Ali said, but where they can take the mobile clinic will depend on the situation once they are on the ground.
Ali, who works at the Juravinski Cancer Centre, is scheduled to return to Canada Aug. 11.
“This disaster could’ve been prevented. The world response (came) after thousands of people died. We’re always in a reactionary mode,” she said. “Two years of drought — you know what the end result is going to be, particularly when there is not a function to respond effectively to the disaster.”
But a positive byproduct of this disaster has been signs of unity among the Somali diaspora transcending tribal divisions, Ali said.
“We’re sort of coming out of our shells and saying: No, this (division) is really not beneficial because look at what’s happening. (The famine) is not discriminating against any tribe. It’s the half of the entire country facing famine.”
Sumiah Abdulle agreed. The 20-year-old left Somalia when she was 2 years old, and says those who grew up in Hamilton do not have the tribal allegiances their parents or grandparents may have had.
“We don’t really know about our own tribes. … We’re all from Somalia, so when we come here, we need each other,” she said. “We can’t fight with each other; we have to help each other out, rather than fighting each other, because that’s why we left Somalia.”
Abdulle joined about 100 Somalis at the Bennetto Community Centre Saturday to celebrate the end of a month during which Somalia achieved independence in 1960 and Canada Day also lands.
Mohamed Nur, 55, said his mother, brothers and sisters are living in intensified conflict between rebels and the so-called government in Mogadishu. Nur, chairman of the Somali Community in Hamilton, came to Canada in 1989.
His family lives in the middle of a battle zone, Nur said.
“They have that experience every day, every night. They are hearing the shells. They are hearing someone, their neighbours … are dying every other second.”
The drought has forced farmers to move into the city and some have taken up arms to work for warlords, while those in the rural area cannot cultivate their land, Nur said.
The worst story he has heard, was about a mother walking to the country’s border with her five or six children. She had to leave behind children who could no longer continue on the journey to save the others who could, Nur said.
“We are frustrated. Everyone’s having that feeling of being away from the country cannot do for the country. That’s why we’re trying to get the community together to show the real picture of what’s going on over there.”