The war has displaced hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. Official statistics put those who have been displaced at over 300,000. In addition, over 41,000 Ethiopians have been deported from Eritrea. We carried our children, the sick who couldn't walk and the old people. They now share a stone-walled room with two other families, a total of eighteen people.
Women lie squeezed side by side on the two beds that stand against opposite walls.
The men and the children sleep on sacks spread out on the dirt floor. They take turns sitting on the beds and two chairs during the day. Their living conditions could be made more bearable with a simple donation of a plastic sheet which could be erected on poles outside as a sleeping shelter for the men. Compared to others, these people have fared well. Those who have neither relatives to accommodate them nor the means to pay rent have sought precarious refuge in cliff faces a few miles outside town where they live in rock overhangs.