Momena Isak's grandmother abandoned her under a gnarled tamarind tree after she could walk no more.
Now, the emaciated 14-year-old was all alone, unable to move because of a giant ulcer on her foot.She had hobbled nearly eight miles from her home in Wareshe after her mother died of starvation, clinging to a walking stick, each step more painful than the last.
Her grandmother and other relatives, lured by the possibility of food some nine miles away in the refugee-swollen town of Baidoa, kept walking.
Momena was left to fend for herself in this village of strangers, one of thousands of outcasts struggling to survive in Somalia, where famine born of civil war and drought has claimed some 100,000 lives.
Mohamed Moalim Muktar, 35, the Deynuunay village head, says about 3,000 refugees have arrived in the area, more than its population. Many wanted to reach Baidoa but were too old, too weak or too sick to go any farther.
Villagers have struggled to give them some food. The International Committee of the Red Cross has set up three kitchens in town, but there is only a little food, Muktar said. And there is no medicine and no shelter.
Before food started to trickle in, he said, 40 to 50 people were dying daily: "Nowadays, the deaths have decreased to 10 to 15 every day."
Last week, the American charity World Vision opened a supplementary feeding city near the tamarind tree where Momena and about 40 others sat quietly under its feathery, spreading branches, many nursing similar ulcers.
Suzanne Banda, a 45-year-old public health nurse from Anchorage, Alaska, who is trying to organize the center, didn't have any medicine. But she had organized several Somalis who were patiently cleaning the badly infected ulcers with a solution of soap and disinfectant.
Severe malnutrition, said Banda, often turns minor infected wounds like Momena's into gaping ulcers that won't heal.
"A lot of these people are dying - we can't save them all," she said.
Momena kept washing the ugly red ulcer on her foot with a piece of yellow soap the Somalia relief worker left her, hoping aloud that it would help her walk again soon. She said she was getting some food and wants to work when her foot gets better.
She said she might go to Baidoa but never wanted to see her grandmother or other relatives again.
"They left me alone when I was needy," she said.
Hareda Isak, 15, no relation to Momena but unable to walk because of a similar leg ulcer, shuffled through the dust toward the shade of the tamarind tree, sitting on her backside and propelling herself with her arms.
"A stick went into my leg, and it became infected," she said. "I can't walk. . . . I came only today. Maybe somebody can help me."
A few feet away, Habiba Omar Ali, who thought she was about 70, studied the bullet wound on her ankle. It had just been cleaned, revealing exposed bone. She was shot seven months ago by troops loyal to ousted dictator Siad Barre.
"I can't walk," said Ali, who was wrapped in a dirty piece of torn cloth that was once red. "I was brought her by donkey cart. . . . I have no son, no daughter, no food, no clothes."
Howa Sheik Mohammed, 77, who could barely walk, sat nearby with her painfully thin legs draped over an empty oil can.
"All our camels were looted by clan militias," she said. "I was living among relatives, but almost all those looking after me died. Only my brother's son is left."
Although thousands of refugees believe getting to Baidoa or Mogadishu, about 150 miles to the east, offers their best chance of survival, many displaced Somalis in both cities die of hunger every day.
In Baidoa, there is food for those able to walk.
But for weak and sick, like Ambio Ali, 45, who was huddled under a thin blanket in front of the city orphanage, coughing repeatedly, there is nothing. Her 10-year-old daughter, Edo Mohammed, a near-skeletal figure, sat staring a few feet away. A younger daughter had already died of starvation.
"Nobody feeds me, and I have no medicine," Ali said. "I am too weak to go to one of the kitchens."
The situation has become so desperate that many Somalis simply do not have the energy or will to care for each other. And overtaxed relief workers just don't have the food or manpower to scour streets for outcasts too frail to fight for their daily rations.