Thursday 31 July , 2025 {HMC} As motorised three-wheelers, known as bajaj or tuk-tuks, are becoming the most popular mode of transport in Baidoa market, donkey carts are being overtaken and putting people like Barre Hilowle Mohamed out of work.
Barre, 64, with a family of eight to support, has not had any reliable income since May because customers are choosing tuk-tuks instead of his donkey cart.
He has been driving a hired donkey cart since arriving in Mubarak IDP camp in 2023 after drought destroyed his family’s three‑hectare farm in Ooflow, 90 km from Baidoa.
He paid $1 a day to rent the cart and $3 on donkey feed, and usually made a profit of $5 or so a day.
Having fallen again on hard times, he has to rely on help from others in the camp to have some food to spare occasionally if not every day.
“Our better off neighbours sometimes help us by giving us food. When they see we have not cooked anything at night, they assist us saying here is somehting you can cook tonight. That’s how we are living now. If we get a few pieces of bread during the day, that’s what we sleep on,” he said.
Barre doesn’t have any other skills that could enable him to earn an alternative living. Water at the Mubarak camp well costs 5,000 Somali shillings a jerrycan which they eke out over two days for drinking only.
Having built up $50 in unpaid water bills, he is being refused further credit.
“The biggest challenge we face is unemployment. The marketplace where we used to work has changed as people use tuk-tuks instead of our donkey carts. Even the people we used to rent the donkey carts from can’t help us now,” he said.
Similarly, Mursal Hassan Ibrahim used to support his family of nine from the $5-7 he made a day transporting goods for customers, who have now switched to tuk-tuks.
The tuk-tuks are faster than donkeys and usually cheaper by up to half than a tuk-tuk fare over the same distance.
“The worry we have now is if our lives continue like this, our children won’t get an education, and as we’ve lost our jobs, we can’t support our wives and children,” he said. “I fear that our lives will become even more difficult and we’ll be in deep trouble.”
For the past two months Mursal’s family has relied on cooked meals occasionally provided by their neighbours in Bula‑nurio camp.
“I owe three months’ worth of rental for the donkey cart hire, which was one dollar a day. I thought this month would be better for me, but the debt has accumulated to three months so that’s $90. I also owe $170 to a shop where I used to get food,” he said.
Mursal has been walking into Baidoa every morning hunting for casual labour jobs, but he hasn’t had any luck.
According to Ali Isaaq Dahir, chairman of a committee representing 101 camps around Baidoa, around 300 families who depended on income from donkey carts have been put out of work by the switch to tuk-tuks.
He added that the traditional way of communities helping one another out had been greatly eroded by aid cuts and the economic downturn and loss of casual jobs.
“People used to help each other. If a donkey-cart owner managed to work that day, he would contribute, and we would identify any family in trouble within the camps so the community would make sure that household had food to cook. But now, even that kind of helping has stopped. The very person who used to help others is now struggling himself,” Dahir said.
Dahir said the committee had informed the South West State administration and humanitarian organisations of the crisis in the camps, as new families continued to arrive daily, displaced by conflict and drought, further stretching scarce resources.
