Everything is difficult here; but for relief materials coming from people, the suffering will be too much
she said they do not know how or if they would eat before going to bed, she told our reporters.
She said it takes more than one month to finish weaving a cap making it difficult to live on her earnings.
“Before I finish another cap I must have exhausted the money I made from the previous one,” she said adding that she has been living from hand to mouth for more than three years.
Sadiya, her husband and four children sleep in a small tent in another open space few metres from Saratu.
Sadiya and three other women sit under a tent watching as their children played around the camp. The children, they said, also feel the pressure about their situation.
The toilet and bathroom are situated few metres from the dilapidated tents they sleep in.
During the dry season, they are not spared from termites while heavy rains always threatened their continued stay at the camp during the wet season.
“The weather is now cold and we sleep in a place like that,” Katum Abdullahi, one of the women said.
Ali said about 14 people have died at the camp since its establishment about four years ago. He attributed some of the deaths to poor living conditions and inability to afford quality healthcare services.
One of the women that helplessly watched her son die, Katum Abdullahi, said life has not been easy since she left Gwoza three years ago.
She said she lost her son because she could not afford quality healthcare. “The baby was always falling sick and whenever we went to the hospital, we didn’t usually have money for drugs,” she said.
Katum said she got to the camp with her son healthy but that he died six months later. She said the child would have been alive today if she had enough money to take care of him.
She expressed hope that a similar fate would not occur to her second son who is less than one year old.
She said the food they receive from donors do not last more than three days due to the large number of people at the camp.
A document endorsed by the chairman of the displaced persons and the group’s secretary, Ibrahim Ahmadu and Bala Yusuf respectively, which was made available to Aso Chronicle showed that there are 2,740 people at the camp with majority from Borno State while people from Yobe and Adamawa states were only 725 of the total population.
The document showed that about 130 men in the camp were engaged in menial job while 180 women are into different businesses including tailoring, production of liquid soap, powder and selling food.
Umaru Ali said the displaced persons have a school but lacked books while the primary healthcare centre lacks sufficient drugs. He however commended the police for ensuring peace in the community.