Saturday May 28, 2022
(ERGO) – Having worked as a blacksmith since he was a
teenager, Abdihamid Ali Isack, 55, has finally had to shut down his workshop in
the southern Somali town of Hudur, as the crippling drought brings thousands of
livelihoods to a standstill.
“Literally I could say I have become a beggar!” Abdihamid
told Radio Ergo grimly.
“I beg from relatives, friends, anyone I think might have
any money. I used to hustle and eat what I get from the sweat of my own brow,
but that’s not possible anymore.”
Before the drought his family of eight managed reasonably
well, but now they are surviving on just one meal a day from his earnings of
just two dollars a week.
“Before this ravaging drought, we were making good money
that enabled us to have three meals a day. Now our customers are equally
affected by the drought. Farmers have downed their tools while pastoralists
have lost their animals.
When things changed, I took my spanner and hammer and went
walking around town looking for damaged or broken donkey-carts to see if I
could get repair jobs.”
Abdihamid, with 40 years in the blacksmith trade, used to
earn between $10 to $15 a week. What he gets now cannot even buy a two-kilogram
bag of sugar that costs the equivalent of $2.2 in Hudur, which has been under
siege by Al-Shabab for eight years. Commodities can only get into the town by
air as the roads have been barricaded.
He fears for the future of his four children who are in
class three and six in primary school. Their combined fees come to $24 and he
has not paid fees since January. There are around 300 men in Hudur whose main
source of income has been metal work, crafting numerous handmade items used by
farmers and people living in the rural areas in particular, such as hoes,
spades, rakes, forks, among other tools and implements.
However, hundreds of farming and pastoralist families from
Bakool region have fled to internal displacement camps in Baidoa hoping to get some
assistance, whilst others have moved to villages in Bakool where they are
living as IDPs in flimsy huts they set up for themselves.
Isack Ali Kusow, 60, a blacksmith with a family of eight
children, said he lost a huge number of his customers since the beginning of
the year. His workshop is still open because he has no other skills and does
not know what else to do for a living. He comes to his workplace together with
his son three days a week.
“Before the drought I was making 200 to 300 Somali shillings
from one axe, but now even selling one for 60 Somali shillings is not possible.
The situation has gone bad. Let alone selling our products, we don’t see people
even bargaining for any of our items,” said Isack.
Isack Ali’s family is now dependent on his wife, who has a
shop in Hudur town. The chairman of social affairs at Hudur district authority,
Mohamed Abdirahman Mohamed, said it was important to keep the blacksmiths in
operation because their products are much needed in the country, especially in
the agricultural sector.
“The whole region is badly affected by the drought, the
challenge is not unique to the blacksmiths, similarly porters, electricians,
all of them are affected by the drought. We have nothing as a district to
support these people but we are requesting the federal government and relief
agencies to help these people,” he said.