When the Shabelle River broke its banks, Ahmed*, 55 and his family lost their home, their crops, and their only income in a matter of hours. Five months later, unconditional cash assistance from Save the Children helped them survive and begin again. His harvest has returned. The river, still unbanked, has not gone away.
The water came while the seeds were still in the ground.
Ahmed* had planted maize, sesame, and beans, the same crops his family in Jowhar district has always grown, when the Shabelle River broke its banks and moved across the fields. There was no time to dig anything up, no time to carry anything out. He gathered his children, moved them to higher ground, and from there watched the farm and the house disappear under the water.
"The flood came suddenly. Our crops were already in the ground when the water reached us. We had no time to save anything. We took our children and we ran to higher ground. We were away from our land for five months. Our farms and our homes were destroyed. The pressure of the water was very strong."
For five months the family lived in a makeshift shelter. The farm that fed fourteen people, with enough left over to sell at the market, was gone, and the income with it. In those first weeks, no help reached them.
Floods like this are part of a wider pattern across Somalia, where families who live by rain and rivers are pushed off their land by water one season and drought the next. When the Shabelle flooded Jowhar, Save the Children reached families through the Somali Cash Consortium, funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO). The idea behind it is straightforward and built on trust. Give families money directly, without conditions, and let them decide what their household needs most.
Through the Somali Cash Consortium, Save the Children provided multi-purpose cash assistance to 300 flood-affected households in Jowhar. Each received $120 a month for three months. For Ahmed*'s household of fourteen, with no crops, no home, and no other income, that money covered what displacement makes urgent at once: food, clean water, medicine, the cost of keeping a roof over the family.
"While we were in that condition, Save the Children came. They gave us $120 for three months. That money is what carried us through. It helped us forget the suffering of those days. Until now, Save the Children is the only organisation that has come to us."
The cash kept the family steady through the worst of it. It also did something quieter. It meant Ahmed* did not have to make the choices families fall back on when money runs out, taking children out of school, selling the tools they farm with, cutting the number of meals in a day. When the floodwater finally receded, he was chosen for a farming support package and went back to the land he knew.
"I was among the farmers chosen to re-plant. I planted maize, sesame, and beans. From the maize alone, two full barrels came out for me. What was left after feeding the family, I turned into household expenses. My family is now settled on slightly higher ground, a short distance from the village."
The recovery is real, and it is fragile. The family now lives on slightly higher ground, a short distance from where they started. The nearest school is seven kilometres away, too far for the younger children to walk. Education, for now, is one of the things the family has not yet been able to put back.
Ahmed* is clear-eyed about why none of this is settled. The land floods easily, and the embankments that would hold the river back have not been built. He has rebuilt his farm with his own hands, and he knows that effort alone will not stop the river from returning.
"This problem of flooding will keep returning until something is done at the river itself. The way to solve it is to build embankments along the Shabelle. Without that, the next flood will find us again."
There is a version of this story that ends with the harvest, and it would be a true one. The barrels of maize are real. So is the modest income, the settled ground, the family that came through five hard months together. Cash assistance did what it is designed to do. It held a family above the line while they found their footing, and a farming package helped them turn that footing into a crop.
But Ahmed* is asking for something the response was never built to deliver. Cash can carry a family through a flood. It cannot stop the next one. The structural protection he describes, embankments along the Shabelle, and a school his younger children can actually reach, sit beyond the reach of a three-month transfer. They are the difference between surviving this flood and not facing the next one in the same position.
This is how Ahmed* describes the life the river keeps interrupting.
"My name is Ahmed*. I am 55 years old. I live in Jowhar district in Middle Shabelle, and I have twelve children. I am a farmer, that is what I have always been. When the rains are good and the season is healthy, my farm produces enough to feed my family and to sell some at the market. That is how we live."
The harvest has come back. The river is still there. And so is the work that would keep the next flood from finding this family again.
* Name has been changed to protect the identity.
