Karbosa, Southern Eritrea (Visafric, July 1, 2000) - Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans are alive today because they sought refuge in the country's numerous mountains, valleys, caves, cliffs and rocky overhangs to escape the May-June Ethiopian offensive against Eritrea.
The same rough terrain that provided some measure of protection to villagers like Nuria Saleh-- displaced from her home in Senafe when Ethiopian forces pushed deep into Eritrean territory seizing land and destroying villages-- is now proving to be a major obstacle in the efforts to locate all the displaced and provide them with urgent relief aid.
Nuria is among the 5,000 displaced people mostly women and children sheltering in the valleys and mountains of Karbosa, southern Eritrea. Nuria and two other women were nine months pregnant when they fled their homes in Senafe. All three gave birth to their babies in the caves of Karbosa under unhygienic and difficult conditions.
"We thank Allah for giving us healthy and strong children" says Fatuma Ahmedin, who gave birth to Khaled only one week ago." It is not easy for a pregnant mother to run from heavy shelling with out getting tired. We all thought we were going to lose our unborn children."
"I am going to tell Mohamed about how he was born, and what happened during this time in our history" says newly wed Fatuma Ahmed cradling her two-day-old son. Fatuma never expected to give birth to her first child in a cave far away from her home. Nevertheless she was very happy that the displaced community took time to celebrate the joyous occasion and give her baby a warm and traditional welcome. "When I gave birth with the help of the women also displaced from my neighborhood, they went out and ululated seven times and all the other women came to congratulate me bringing with them cups of sugar, flour and coffee." Given what the mothers had gone through and the conditions under which the babies were born, it is amazing that both the mothers and their babies are doing fine. However, every day they spend living in the open with little or no shelter, with inadequate food, limited access to clean drinking water and to medical care gravely endangers their physical and mental well being.
" The women only had access to cold, dirty water from a nearby stream which they used to clean up the mothers and their new born babies. It is a miracle that the babies are not suffering from infection," says Kedija Omar from the National Union of Eritrean Women who was visiting Korbosa to talk to the displaced and find out what the union can do to help.
Fred Ogwal-Oyee, Emergency Program Officer for UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, says that the majority of Eritrea's 1,5 million displaced people are not in camps but in open settlements similar to Karbosa." They are exposed to the cold and rain which makes them susceptible to all kinds of diseases, including malaria." With the onset of the rains, there is a real danger of a cholera outbreak, warns the UNICEF official.
What worries local and international relief agencies is that there are still thousands of Eritreans whose whereabouts are still unknown. In some places, whole villages have "disappeared." Officials fear that there may be thousands of displaced hiding in inaccessible, remote mountain areas. They are desperately trying to locate all the displaced before the people run out of whatever food they have and before the rains make the areas even more inaccessible.
The displaced in the Karbosa " settlement" are among the population recently located. Access to the area is almost impossible. There are no roads, only mountain passes. It takes one hour by car to reach Karbosa from Adi Keyih. The mountain pass is steep and dangerous. On the way to Karbosa, the four-wheel drive carrying UNICEF staff got bogged down in the mud. It took several hours of hard work to dig the car out of the mud.
The rains that the drought affected population had prayed for have finally arrived. But with the displaced still unable to return to their homes and farms, all that the rains have brought is more misery. With Ethiopia still occupying their villages and with their homes destroyed by retreating Ethiopian forces, the majority of Eritrea's displaced can not return home. They are unable to take advantage of the long awaited rains and start farming their land.
It rains every afternoon in Karbosa and since there aren't enough tents to go around, there is very little to protect the women and children from the cold and the rain. The healthier and stronger women help put up the few tents and plastic sheets available.
On Thursday, the UNICEF head in Eritrea said that international response to the humanitarian catastrophe facing the country is woefully inadequate. He warned that there is only one-month food supply available for the displaced.
A report by Refugees International, a US based NGO, warned that Eritrean displaced are in "grave peril" and called for more aid for Eritrea. The report also called on the " US Department of Defense make air transport capacity available to airlift tents, water purification equipment and mobile warehouses to Eritrea."
Copyright 2000 Visafric.