In drought-stricken Somaliland, families try to survive on black tea

  • 28/03/2017

  • Reuters (Africa)

BURAO, Somalia (Reuters) - In a makeshift camp beside a disused airfield in the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland, 32-year old Nima Mohamed sits next to an open wood fire, boiling a kettle of black tea. Unless aid groups bring them food and water, the tea is the only meal of the day for her three sons and three daughters who lie nearby in a home made of old bed sheets. Mohamed is one of the two million people in the breakaway Horn of Africa republic -- about half its population -- facing starvation after an acute drought killed their livestock. "We have lost all our animals," she told Reuters. Before their goats died from lack of pasture and water, they provided milk for the children to drink and butter which was used to cook rice for the family to eat, she said. About 100 or so other families were camped out next to Mohamed's hut in similar structures made of sticks, plastic sacks, moth-eaten canvas and cardboard. They settled outside the airfield after migrating from various drought-stricken parts of Somaliland, especially in the eastern part of the territory. According to the government, 70 percent of Somaliland's economy relies on livestock