Somalis are used to hardship. Hunger, pestilence and violent death have brooded over their desiccated land ever since the first clans reached the Horn of Africa more than a millennium ago.

It is not in the Somali national character, enamelled by suffering, to complain. Setbacks are shrugged off and mortality contemplated with disdain. “I never saw a Somali who showed any fear of death,” wrote Gerald Hanley, the Irish author, who lived among them in the Forties.

Yet, even for the hardiest, the past decade has been testing.

Somalia is a nation of nomads. Of every five Somalis, four are pastoralists, moving their flocks and herds with the weather.

Such a life is fragile. When the rains fail, as they often do, the livestock sicken and die. Competition between Somalia’s myriad clans and sub-clans often leads to conflict, but in barren times the clan is also a great source of strength: water, grazing and breeding stock are shared in order to save the community’s lives.