More than a decade ago, Norta Ibrahim Mudey fled the violence and anarchy of Mogadishu to find sanctuary in a remote fishing village on the far north-eastern coast of Somalia. That peace was shattered the day giant waves raced across the ocean from south-east Asia and slammed into the eastern coast of Africa.
Somalis who for years had been battered by war and drought thought they knew devastation. Then came the tsunami.
”I have seen death and destruction in the civil war, but nothing like this,” said Mudey, a diminutive woman wrapped in a veil, squatting in front of a shack patched together with rusting metal sheeting and a bright pink cloth.
Mudey’s husband and six-month-old child were swept out to sea. Only her husband’s body was returned to her.
Humanitarian workers estimate at least 100 other families fled vicious clan fighting in central and southern Somalia only to lose everything when the December 26 tsunami struck Hafun — the worst-hit village. Others had lost their herds to successive droughts, followed by mud slides and unusually low temperatures, and came to the coast in search of a livelihood.
The waves lashed 650km of coastline. Estimates of the number killed range from 100 to 300, with thousands of others affected.
The Horn of Africa country has been without an effective central government since opposition leaders united to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The leaders then turned their guns on each other, carving the nation of seven million into battling fiefdoms ruled by clan-based factions.
The conflict has left more than 500 000 people dead, two million driven from their homes and 1,5-million refugees in neighbouring countries.
A new government, formed after two years of negotiations between warlords, clan leaders and civil society representatives, is currently based in Kenya because it considers Somalia unsafe.
But the north-eastern region of Puntland set up an autonomous administration and has experienced relative calm over the past 14 years.
When Mogadishu succumbed to duelling warlords, thousands sought safety among clansmen in other parts of the country. Salah Bashir was among them.
”In Mogadishu, if you earn anything, it will just be taken by the militias,” said the 30-year-old builder, whose uncle and nephew were killed by stray bullets.
Mudey and her husband, Ali, a mechanic, also joined the fleeing throngs.
”I have seen people injured and killed, people looting, and people running from the bombs,” Mudey said wearily.
Their first stop was the bustling northern port city of Bossaso.
But Mudey’s husband soon learned that the people of Hafun were looking for someone to repair the engines on their fishing boats.
He was the village’s only mechanic and quickly prospered.
The family had a two-room house at the water’s edge. They bought a television and satellite dish. And they supported a host of relatives and friends.
”But the sea took everything,” Mudey said — house, savings, tools and belongings.
She and her husband had just sat down to lunch when the first wave crashed through their home. Mudey grabbed their six-month-old infant and started strapping the boy to her back, but the next wave tore the child from her hands. She and her husband were swept out to sea.
Mudey survived by grabbing hold of the ruins of a jetty — built by the country’s former Italian rulers and bombed by the British during World War II.
Two days later, her husband’s body washed ashore, but her baby was never found. Their three other children were out with an aunt when the disaster happened and escaped unharmed.
Convinced the tsunami would strike again, her husband’s ageing mother took the children back to Bossaso. Mudey stayed behind in an improvised shack, to avoid missing out on any international assistance for the village.
Bashir, who found Ali’s body, is thinking about moving to Yemen.
”I thought I could make a life here,” he said. ”But now we are running again.” — Sapa-AP