Fish give women in Somalia a taste of hope
Fartun recognises that enrolling in this project has made a “big change” in her life, allowing her to generate an income and support her family.
Not traditionally part of the Somali food culture, fish is currently underutilized. However, it has huge potential to improve nutrition in the Bossaso IDP camps but also the larger region where acute food insecurity and malnutrition are common. ©FAO/Alber
A warm breeze wafts across the desert plains outside Bossaso, Somalia, where many Internally Displaced People (IDP) live in perennial temporary camps. Job opportunities are scarce for the residents here. They are people who fled from war, constant insecurity or hunger, but it’s not easy to create a good life for themselves in this new region either.
Fartun arrived to Bossaso from southern Somalia a “long time ago”, but she doesn’t remember when. A mother of four, she used to stay at home to look after their children, while her husband, earning little, worked as a porter in the market of Bossaso. She and her husband struggled to provide for themselves and their children.
But a few months ago, Fartun learned about a new opportunity in her community. She enrolled in an innovative FAO project, funded by the government of Kuwait, to learn how to make a specialty more synonymous with Italy than Eastern Africa: pasta. Not just any kind of pasta, however, fish pasta.
Perhaps not widely known, but pasta is actually a common meal in Somalia, part of the legacy from its time as an Italian colony. What isn’t a common meal in Somalia, at least not yet, is fish, particularly in the country’s inland communities.
“I wanted to somehow earn some income for my family,” says Fartun.