Displaced in Somalia: Sahro

Somalis describe their lives in and around the capital, Mogadishu, amidst violence between insurgents and government troops backed by Ethiopian forces.

Sahro, 25, had been living in a small shanty suburb on the outskirts of Mogadishu but is now living 14km out of the city after heavy fighting forced her entire neighbourhood to flee.

The UN says 170,000 Somalis have fled Mogadishu this week

My family and I moved to my home in 1997 when people realised we could clear the land and build houses.

It is now like a suburb on the outskirts of Mogadishu. My parents live there and I was married there. There are even schools open now.

One Thursday last month I was going back home from work and there had been fighting between the insurgents and the Somali troops.

When the troops came, the people were running from bullets. Our biggest worry is always the mortars and the troops doing house-to-house searches.

I took a bus home that day. When I arrived I found many troops, armed with guns, blocking the way to my house.

The minibus was told to turn around and the driver told me he could not take me any further, so I got off.

Snipers on the roofs

I couldn't get to my house, so I sat in another neighbourhood and borrowed a phone to call home.

Then I saw an old lady, some children and an old man passing by. I decided to try my luck. My plan was to reach my house and get to my neighbourhood.

Finally I was able to reach my aunt's house and she told me that I could get home but to beware because there were snipers on the roofs.

As I got closer to home I was told that the insurgents had been fighting around it the whole day.

We were at the house and thinking about what to do when my neighbour warned we had to leave.

We thought they were exaggerating.

Buying land

But then my husband said we should leave - in the middle of our discussion they started to fight.

I saw two Ethiopians killed from our window. We were just hiding in our houses.

A DISPLACED LIFE Displaced mother: Khatija Fleeing father: Yusuf Rape in camps: Faduma Helpless doctor: Abdullahi Displaced again: Sahro

The fighting was heavy for a while and then stopped so we packed our things and ran.

Now, people are not prepared to go back. They are settling about 14km outside of Mogadishu.

We are displaced again but now people are buying land from cattle herders. Groups of people pool together and buy a small piece of land and then several families will live there.

We are building shelters out of iron sheeting. The people who cannot buy land go to another place in the same area but just further away and they just build huts with plastic sheeting.

The people in the plastic sheets were renting iron-sheeting housing in our old neighbourhoods, they were slightly poorer and now some of them have gone back to Mogadishu to a place called Bermuda.

They call it Bermuda because during the time of the warlords it was a place that when you went in, you were not sure if you would come out.

Displacement is normal; every day I see people moving.

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