In December 2019, Cyclone Pawan hit Ali Mahamud Rubaax’s village of Dharkeynley in Beletweyne, central Somalia. The storm’s rain caused the river levels to reach their maximum, breaking their banks and overflowing into the village and surrounding areas leaving most of the town under water. About 182 000 people from this district were displaced. Some drowned. Others had gone missing. 

This wasn’t the first time Ali dealt with flooding. As a lifelong farmer, he had often seen the river overflow and destroy his crops.

“When the flooding ended last year, we started planting seeds, but then the water came back again,” Ali explains. It is part of the lot of farmers in this low-lying but economically important hub of Beletweyne, which provides services to surrounding rural communities. 

But Pawan was so intense that, in just a few days, parts of Somalia received as much rain as they normally would over an entire year.  The scale of flooding it caused was worse than the typical inundations endured by farmers like Ali. And this time, with the rain, came the locusts.