Gerisa isn’t on most maps. If you’re looking for it, you won’t find it in tourist brochures or travel guides. But if you drive southeast from Hargeisa for about two hours across dusty, rocky plains, you’ll reach a quiet cluster of homes, a small market, and a few mud-brick buildings under a relentless sun. This is Gerisa - a town of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 people, nestled in the Awdal region of Somaliland, where life moves with the seasons, the herds, and the rhythm of clan elders.
What Gerisa Actually Looks Like
Don’t imagine a town with paved streets or streetlights. Gerisa is made up of scattered homesteads, each one a family compound surrounded by thorny acacia trees. The houses are built from stone, mud, and woven branches, with corrugated metal roofs that clang loudly during rare rainstorms. There’s no centralized power grid. Only about 15% of homes have electricity, mostly from small solar panels bought with money sent from relatives abroad.
The roads? Dirt tracks that turn to thick mud during the April-June rains and become dust bowls in the dry months. A single pickup truck might pass through once a week, carrying goods from Borama or Ethiopia. The nearest functional hospital is 40 kilometers away. If someone gets seriously ill, the family often waits until the next market day to transport them on a donkey cart.
Who Lives in Gerisa
The people of Gerisa are mostly from the Mahad ‘Ase and Issa subclans - branches of the larger Gadabuursi and Dir clans. These groups have lived here for generations, moving with their animals, settling near water sources, and resolving disputes through councils of elders. Their language is Somali, but you’ll hear Arabic phrases in prayers and Amharic words from traders who cross the border from Ethiopia.
Education is patchy. Most children attend community-run schools, often just one room with a few benches and a teacher who may have only completed high school. Literacy rates are low: about 35% for men, 15% for women, according to UNICEF’s 2022 survey. Girls often stop going to school after age 12 to help with chores or prepare for marriage. Boys might walk 10 kilometers to the nearest secondary school in Damal - if they can afford the transport.
The Economy: Livestock, Remittances, and Border Trade
Gerisa doesn’t have factories or offices. Its economy runs on four things: goats, camels, remittances, and cross-border trade.
Every week, a small livestock market opens near the town’s edge. Around 200 to 300 animals - mostly goats, sheep, and camels - are bought and sold. Buyers come from Borama, Djibouti, and even as far as the Gulf states. A healthy camel can sell for $800. That’s a year’s income for most families.
But here’s the real lifeline: money sent home by relatives living abroad. About 25% of Gerisa’s economy comes from remittances. A cousin in London, a brother in Minneapolis, a sister in Nairobi - they send $50, $100, sometimes $500 every few months. That money buys food, pays for a child’s school supplies, repairs a well, or buys a solar panel.
Then there’s the border. Gerisa sits just 15 kilometers from Ethiopia. Every day, women carry sacks of dried meat, incense, and handmade baskets across the border. In return, they bring back flour, sugar, kerosene, and sometimes medicine. No official checkpoints. No paperwork. Just trust, barter, and quiet deals. The Rift Valley Institute estimates $1.2 million in monthly informal trade flows through this corridor.
Water Is the Real Crisis
Water isn’t a problem in Gerisa - it’s a daily battle.
Only 30% of residents have reliable access to clean water. Most people walk 3 to 5 kilometers each morning to collect water from a well or a seasonal wadi. During the dry season, these sources vanish. Children miss school to carry water. Women spend hours waiting in line. In 2023, UNICEF reported that diarrhea and dehydration were the top causes of child deaths in Awdal.
But change is coming - slowly. Since 2020, the Gerisa Water Committee, made up of local elders and diaspora volunteers, has built five traditional water reservoirs called berkads. These are large, lined pits that catch rainwater during the short rainy seasons. They cost about $15,000 each, funded entirely by donations from the Somaliland diaspora. One woman, Fatuma, told a local reporter: “Now my daughters don’t have to walk five hours to fetch water. They go to school. That’s worth more than gold.”
Climate Change Is Here
The weather is getting harder.
Between 1990 and 2023, average rainfall in Gerisa dropped by 20%. Temperatures rose 1.5°C. The Gu rains, which used to last from April to June, now arrive late or vanish entirely. Pastoralists say their animals are thinner, their herds smaller. In 2022, a drought killed nearly 40% of the livestock in Awdal.
The Somaliland government doesn’t have the resources to respond. But communities are adapting. Some families are switching from cattle to goats - they need less water. Others are planting drought-resistant sorghum instead of maize. A few farmers are experimenting with drip irrigation, using solar-powered pumps bought with remittance money.
A Town Between History and Uncertainty
Gerisa’s history is quiet. There are no monuments, no museums. But colonial records mention 1916 - likely the year British administrators first mapped the area. During the Somali civil war in the late 1980s, Gerisa was abandoned. Around 60% of its people fled to Hargeisa or Ethiopia. They returned after 1993, once Somaliland declared its independence.
Today, Somaliland governs Gerisa loosely. There’s a local office, maybe one government employee. But real authority still lies with the clan elders. They settle land disputes, arrange marriages, and decide who gets access to water. This system has survived wars, droughts, and political isolation.
Gerisa doesn’t want to be a headline. It doesn’t need foreign aid workers to come and take photos. It just wants to be left alone - with clean water, reliable markets, and a chance for its children to learn without walking ten kilometers to school.
What’s Next for Gerisa?
The World Bank projects a 2.5% annual growth rate for rural Somaliland through 2030. But that growth won’t reach Gerisa unless someone invests in infrastructure - roads, water, electricity, schools.
Right now, the only real investment is from the people who left. Diaspora families are building berkads. They’re funding solar projects. They’re sending money so their nieces can finish school. That’s the quiet engine of Gerisa’s survival.
There’s no grand plan. No international donor meeting. Just people, working with what they have, waiting for the rains, tending their animals, and hoping their children will have a better path.
Is Gerisa part of Somalia or Somaliland?
Gerisa is located in the Awdal region, which is part of Somaliland - a self-declared independent state that broke away from Somalia in 1991. While Somaliland functions like a country with its own government, military, and elections, no country or the United Nations officially recognizes it as independent. So technically, internationally, Gerisa is still considered part of Somalia. But locally, people live under Somaliland’s administration.
Can tourists visit Gerisa?
Technically, yes - but it’s not recommended unless you have strong local connections. There are no hotels, no tour operators, and very limited safety infrastructure. Roads are dangerous during rains, and medical help is hours away. Most visitors are aid workers, researchers, or relatives returning home. If you’re serious about visiting, you need to go through a local guide or clan contact in Borama or Hargeisa.
What language do people speak in Gerisa?
The primary language is Somali, spoken in the local Awdal dialect. Arabic is used in religious contexts, and many people understand basic Arabic phrases from prayer and Quranic school. Because of cross-border trade with Ethiopia, some older residents and traders also speak a little Amharic. English is rarely spoken, except among a few educated youth who learned it in school.
How do people in Gerisa get food?
Most families raise their own animals - goats, sheep, camels - and sell them for cash. With that money, they buy flour, rice, sugar, and oil at the weekly market. Some households grow small plots of sorghum and maize during the rainy season, but yields are low. During droughts, families rely on food aid from NGOs or remittances to buy imported food. Water scarcity often limits farming, so most diets are based on meat, dairy, and grains.
Why is Gerisa’s population so hard to count?
Because many residents are semi-nomadic. Families move with their herds across the Awdal region, following water and pasture. A person might live in Gerisa for six months, then spend the rest of the year in the bush. Official censuses don’t track this mobility well. The 5,000-7,000 estimate includes both permanent residents and those who return seasonally. There’s no birth or death registry system, so population numbers are rough guesses based on local elders’ knowledge.
Jerry Perisho
December 5, 2025 AT 11:17That water reservoir project with the berkads is one of the most quiet, effective things I’ve seen in years. No fanfare, no foreign NGO flags - just locals and diaspora pooling cash to dig holes and catch rain. That’s real resilience. I’ve worked in a dozen developing regions and most ‘solutions’ are just expensive toys that break after a year. These berkads? They’ll last decades. Someone should make a documentary on this.
Manish Yadav
December 6, 2025 AT 11:03People here are just too lazy to build proper roads or get electricity. Why don’t they just move to the city? Why waste time on goats and dirt? This is just backwardness dressed up as culture. If they wanted progress, they’d stop living like it’s 1800.
Vincent Cameron
December 6, 2025 AT 20:41There’s a strange poetry in a place that doesn’t ask for recognition. Gerisa exists outside the systems that define modern life - no GDP, no Wi-Fi, no elections. And yet, it sustains itself through kinship, memory, and the slow rhythm of drought and rain. We think progress is towers and apps, but maybe it’s just the ability to keep breathing when the world forgets you exist. The real tragedy isn’t the lack of water - it’s that we don’t know how to honor a community that doesn’t beg for help.
Krista Hewes
December 7, 2025 AT 15:55i just cried reading about fatuma and her daughters going to school now. i can’t even imagine walking 5 hours for water, then having to carry it back. and the fact that they’re using remittances to build berkads instead of buying phones or clothes… that’s love. that’s family. i’m gonna send some money to that committee. anyone know how?
Noriko Robinson
December 8, 2025 AT 23:49What stood out to me is how the elders still hold real power - not because they’re authoritarian, but because they’re trusted. In places where governments fail, community structures step in. That’s not a flaw, it’s wisdom. The fact that they’ve rebuilt after war, drought, and isolation without screaming for attention… that’s strength. We need more of that in our world. Not more aid - more respect.
ronald dayrit
December 10, 2025 AT 00:52Gerisa is a mirror. It reflects not just the conditions of rural Somaliland, but the failure of our global imagination. We have satellites that map every inch of the planet, yet we cannot imagine a life without Wi-Fi as valid. We fund wars in the name of democracy, but ignore the quiet revolutions of water collection and solar panels bought with $50 from Minneapolis. The real crisis isn’t the drought - it’s our inability to see dignity in silence. Gerisa doesn’t need saving. It needs witnessing. And yet, even witnessing is a luxury we’ve forgotten how to give. We consume stories of suffering like entertainment, but refuse to let them change how we live. So we keep scrolling while children walk five kilometers for water - and we call it progress.