Ainashe.net

David McGuffin; CBC’s Africa Correspondent writes:   

The day we arrived in Wajid, in southern Somalia, they executed a man on the edge of town. We heard the gunshots. He’d been involved in a scuffle over water at a distribution site the day before and shot another man. The town elders say rough, quick justice is the only way to prevent full-blown anarchy. This is how desperate the drought has made life in Somalia. On the edge of town, refugee camps have sprung out of nowhere. Stand in the middle of them and all you can see are sad, makeshift tents crammed together in a dry, dusty, windblown plain. David McGuffin reports on the desperate situation in Somalia, where the drough sweeping East Africa is hitting hardest. [Runs 2:50] We met 60-year-old Makay Sufi in the heart of this barren sea of tents. She was pounding grain – food aid from the United Nations – to make her one daily meal. Everything she cooks with is borrowed. She told us that she owns nothing but the clothes on her back. Her livestock are dead. Her crops failed for three years in a row. She walked almost 97 kilometres to this refugee camp.  “I came in search of food and shelter,” she said. “I have nothing. But even here, our monthly food rations only feed us for a week.”  Up to a half a million Somalis are on the move in a desperate hunt for food.