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Returning home from the Diaspora, Somali national finds her bearings.

Somali people have known malaria for centuries, especially in the central and southern part of the country. In fact the Somali town of Buale is so named because many people from that area used to have a ‘big belly’: a condition associated with chronic malaria caused by ‘splenomegaly’ (an enlarged spleen).

Sheik Yusuf Jimale and the other people in Dhagahley village were hungry. Drought made his crops fail, leaving Jimale, a village elder, worried that he and others would die of starvation.

T Ayan Abdi Mohamed is a 56-year-old Somali and a mother of seven. She remembers a time before her village was engulfed in tribal-based fighting. She remembers when she and her children lived peacefully.

"I do not think you can say this is a recovering city. It is a fairly depressing prospect," is how the senior UN emergency aid official John Holmes describes Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.

Somalia's interim government is seeking to strengthen its grip on the capital, Mogadishu, less than a month after it declared victory over insurgents but ordinary people complain they are paying the price.

Habiba Abdulrahman is a 54 year old pastoralist living in the central region of Somalia, a sub-Saharan country whose population is facing an increased threat of drought that is compounded by 15 years of armed violence.

The ICRC is slaughtering tens of thousands of animals in Somalia to provide food to more than 150,000 people affected by the worst drought for many years.

Two million people in Somalia, were directly affected by the recent food crisis.  Oxfam is carrying out a seven month cash relief programme in Gedo region that consists of cash relief payments aimed at helping people meet their immediate basic needs, and a longer term cash-for-work programme

"When the team first arrived, they supplied medicines to existing health structures and distributed items such as plastic sheeting and mosquito nets, to more than 3,500 families. Provision of clean water to the displaced population was also a priority and they put in place a water trucking system to cater to the massive needs of a population left with very little".