Dear Bob Geldof, where are you?

Please sing a song to save Somalia, everyone will buy it, you'll have a number one and everything will be fine again.

Sahar Aman August 16, 2011
Dear Bob Geldof,

Where are you? Somalia is screwed.

Famine has caused thousands of Somalis to leave their homes and head across the border to refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, in hopes of receiving food and aid from international aid agencies. They are finding little help!

The other day, on the news, I saw a woman who had to keep tying rope around her stomach to stop her hunger pangs so she could take care of her children. (I can’t remember if that was for Somalia or Pakistan).

Starving refugees stand in line, hours on end, outside the Mogadishu’s Badbaado Camp kitchen, holding a pot, or in some cases a plastic bag, into which they get a ladle of rice. Supposedly hundreds of camps like this have sprung up in the last three months but no one has an official figure, maybe two or three hundred.

I'm fasting right now so I know what it feels like to be hungry and thirsty - thank God I get to stuff my face when the sun goes down, and give thanks so I don't have to live through the agony of hunger and thirst day in and day out. Because we are totally nourished, it means we can do our bit for those who are less fortunate than us.

I have read that 29,000 Somali children, under the age of five, are dead. I don't even know if a child  I sponsored is alive (wait, was she Somali? I have that letter somewhere maybe I lost it.)

The women are fleeing because they are preyed-upon by rapists! This is really bad – In addition to suffering the devastation of famine, they have to live with the fear that rape is a definite possibility? Can you even imagine living like that? I can’t even begin to think of it.

As al-Shabab was only driven out of the city last week, aid delivery has been severely delayed. Outside Somalia, aid has been reaching the refugee camps, but the United Nations and the other major aid agencies have still not been able to begin food distribution in Mogadishu because the of presence of al-Shabab.

Now that they’ve gone, hopefully a food distribution system will be put in place – but that could take weeks and even months. No one really understands why it’s taking so long for food to get there...

We can’t let their requests fall on deaf ears! Please sing a song to save Somalia, everyone will buy it, you'll have a number one and everything will be fine again. (For like a year, then we'll all forget because there will be another natural disaster somewhere else in the world and then we'll all help that country until, you know, the next HAARP/man-made/natural disaster).

Please respond as soon as possible! Thank you for your time.

Yours Sincerely,

The Apathetic.

PS: Riots really suck.

PPS: So does anarchy. (Suck that is).
WRITTEN BY:
Sahar Aman The author is the editor-in-chief of an online travel magazine, Days to Come. She tweets as @sahar_aman (twitter.com/sahar_aman). Follow her on Instagram: sahar_aman (www.instagram.com/sahar_aman/)
The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.

COMMENTS (7)

Ali | 12 years ago | Reply Sahar Aman...very moving article, please post more!
parvez | 12 years ago | Reply Exploitation of the poor by the powerful has to be addressed if some form of relief is expected. I suppose until then the givers of charity will have to be relied upon. Nice article though.
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