The sun rises over the Horn of Africa, further baking the parched land. The sound of battle a few kilometres away blends with the subdued chatter of more than 3,000 Somalis gathered at a series of bomb-proof concrete blocks that protects the entrance to the African Union (AU) field hospital in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
Here, the young and the old, the sick and the malnourished congregate in the dust and relentless heat. No more than 400 of the thousands queuing will receive treatment today. AU soldiers refer to this checkpoint as 'The Gates of Hope' and nothing is left to chance. Al-Shabab - the Somali mujahideen that's been fighting to establish an Islamic state since 2006 - has repeatedly targeted the hospital with mortars and suicide bombers. Those queuing understand the implications: women comply tolerantly with the order to remove their burqas before being scanned with a hand-held metal detector; even a dying grandfather, who was pushed for 10 kilometres in a wheelbarrow by his son, does not escape scrutiny.
I ARRIVE IN MOGADISHU at the end of March, amid the brutal conflict that's crippled Somalia for two decades, claiming 400,000 lives, and the worst drought this region has experienced for 60 years.
'We need medicine, doctors, anything at all,' says health minister Dr Adan Haji Ibrahim, before a Thursday morning cabinet meeting at Villa Somalia, the bullet-riddled seat of the country's Transitional Federal Government (TFG). (Until the threat of famine finally entered the global consciousness this month, Somalia had been widely ignored by an international community fatigued with stories of the conflict here, and preoccupied with the events of the 'Arab Spring' to the north.)
More than 10 million people in the region are threatened by famine. Two million Somalis had already been displaced by the war and insurgency before the drought caused that number to mushroom by another million in just a few months. So desperate is Ibrahim for support - Somalia's health service operates on an annual budget of HK$5 million, compared with Hong Kong's HK$40 billion - that, walking past the Chinese embassy on a recent trip to Nairobi, Kenya, he spontaneously knocked on the door to ask for assistance. Unfortunately, the mission was closed.
'My initial concern was that when the rains came, the parched conditions would prevent water drainage, leading to flooding, unsanitary conditions and outbreaks of cholera,' Ibrahim says. 'Now, though, with the rains still not here, we are seeing a massive increase in the number of illnesses related to dehydration and malnutrition, and a corresponding rise in mortality.'
Crops are failing and food prices are rising. In Bakaara market - the site of the United States military disaster that was depicted in the film Black Hawk Down - a bag of sorghum wheat that a few weeks ago could have been bartered for one goat, now costs four. Entire villages in Somalia's pastoral heartlands have been abandoned, says Saeed Hersi of the Norwegian Refugee Council. 'Not only does this mean the country's next harvest has failed, but subsequent crops are not being sown.'