Markus Prior, Somalia: Marcus Prior reports on men with guns and a French warship in Somalia, one of the toughest places for WFP to do business.

Your heart is always somewhere close to your mouth when you head into Somalia. Our plane bursting a tyre on landing at the stony Jowhar airstrip is just the start. It’s the men with guns – everywhere – that really set you on edge.

Slowly you acclimatise – even an Englishman like me whose policemen never carried firearms. Men with guns are part of Somalia’s background noise. At least you hope that’s what they remain for as long as you’re there.

The town of Merka was a pleasant surprise, perched on a rocky crag above a brilliant white beach, lapped by the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. I wake my first morning to see the distant outline of a French warship, flanked by two other vessels. For the first time, an international force is providing security to ships carrying WFP food into Somalia, in a bid to outgun the pirates who turned these waters into perhaps the most dangerous in the world.

For the rest of the morning the swell remains too large for the labourers to get to work. Merka is a beach port, the food being transhipped onto smaller boats before porters carry sorgum, corn-soya blend and cooking oil on their heads through the surf to the shore. It’s a spectacular sight – hundreds of men running to and fro in a frenzy of activity.

Somalia is perhaps the toughest place for WFP to do business anywhere in the world. No day is ever the same, no need ever constant. The constant flux caused by the bitter conflict that has sent over 600,000 fleeing the capital 100 kilometres to the north has been given top-spin in 2007 by the failure of crops across the region surrounding Merka. Basic food prices have spiralled beyond the reach of many. Farmers whose crops have failed have been driven towards towns like Merka, but there even the poorest paid daily work is hard to find.

In 2008, WFP will be aiming to feed at least 1.2 million people across the country, most of them in the south. That could of course change almost overnight, depending on how the conflict plays out. It is a huge task, in the face of extraordinary obstacles, but WFP is getting the job done.

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