Plastic bottles litter the ground as children emerge from an abandoned mud-brick building in this hot, dusty East African city.
The dirty bottles used for sniffing glue are a visible clue of what life is like for these homeless kids. “It takes away the pain I have,” Mohammed, 13, said, looking down at his sand-covered feet as other children take a hit of glue nearby. “The glue helps me go to sleep.”
Hargeisa is home to hundreds of street kids like Mohammed, who are victims of one of the worst droughts in the region over the past year. These sad-eyed children have nowhere else to go and often suffer from illnesses such as tuberculosis.
Poverty-stricken children surviving on the streets of Somali cities is not new but the sheer number is. The government estimates one-fifth of the kids on the streets of Somalia’s second-largest city are there because of the devastating drought.
Teenagers and young homeless adults fiercely guard the dilapidated building where Mohammed sleeps. A putrid stench radiates from the murky hole in the building’s wall that the youngsters enter and exit through.
Several of the children interviewed coughed as they lamented that they were getting sicker and their clothes were becoming tattered rags.
