A long silence...

It’s been a while since I updated this thing and despite eye-witness accounts to the contrary, I have been working. In fact, I’m providing photographs just to prove it.





I spent a night up in Lira, a northern town at the southern edge of the territory roamed by the Uganda’s Lords Resistance Army rebels. The town is home to Uganda’s first and only battered women’s shelter, where women who are being terrorized by their husbands or family can take a break, make a decision about what they want to do: leave, stay or send their abuser to court.



The most interesting part of the north was getting a chance to see the area that the UN has called the world’s most forgotten humanitarian crisis. For the past 20 years, the LRA has absolutely terrorized the region, abducting and conscripting children, burning, looting, raping, pillaging. They seem to have no political purpose, other than using their weapons to cause mass unrest. The government has forced hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes and into internally displaced persons camps, ostensibly for their own protection. But then they simply left them to fend for themselves, without property, farms, businesses, homes, water, electricity or even basic sanitation. For the past 20 years, the children have undertaken “night commutes,” sometimes walking dozens of kilometers to reach night shelters that protect them from raids by the rebels. Their families have lived with the upheaval, moving in and out of camps depending on the security of the area. (This is often hard to gauge. At the moment the LRA is being blamed both for raids in southern Sudan and attacks in northeastern Congo.)

The problem lately has been the government soldiers stationed in the area: they’re not being paid, apparently, so they’re taking it out on the people living up there. Then there’s these red-suited volunteer groups, who are given a stipend of some sort by the local community and a very large weapon. According to Hellen, the police superintendent who runs the shelter, women and children are incredibly vulnerable to these soldiers. We saw one, off-duty, harassing a woman who was trying to pass a checkpoint with a basket of vegetables. Then we met 12-year-old Grace, who was raped by a soldier while she was out collecting firewood for her family. She’s now pregnant.





Then I spent a couple afternoons at “Reach Out,” an HIV clinic that’s being touted as the model for AIDS care by the good, hardworking people at UNAIDS. (SEE STORY BELOW) The clinic is run out of a Catholic church – presenting the obvious problem that they believe in treating the disease, but not preaching prevention by using things like, say, condoms – but it has a holistic approach that cares for virtually every area of a patient’s life once they’ve contracted the virus. Body, mind, family, community is their motto. On the body front, they run a clinic every day and make home visits one day a week. They give out drugs for free and can enroll patients on lifesaving anti-retrovirals (ARVs) for free. They also run a World Food Program feeding program that hands out a basket of food once a month to clients who have been identified as unable to feed themselves or their families. When clients aren’t eating, their drugs actually become more lethal and depending on their health, some are not able to work. Others are overwhelmed by caring for themselves and their children, who are often also HIV-positive.

On the mind front, they offer adult literacy classes and training programs for women and men wanting to learn tailoring. They offer microcredit loans to help set up small business and pay school fees for children who qualify under the “Operation School Fees” program. From a community perspective, they train volunteers to do home visits, have clubs and programs for HIV-positive adults and clubs for children or teenagers of positive clients. Like I said, it’s a holistic approach and costs somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2 million for some 2,000 clients. That’s a lot of cash, almost a thousand bucks per client per year. (Probably petty cash when we think about what we cost our Canadian health care system on an annual basis.)

We went on a home visit – five of us; I hate crowds when I’m trying to be a journalist – to see a young man who’d come to the clinic the previous day in such a stupor he couldn’t even speak. On the Saturday his baby daughter had died. On the Sunday his wife had left him. On the Monday he appeared at the clinic for an HIV test, which came back positive. When we saw him, he was at least speaking, but still seemed confused. He was literally wide-eyed and seemed to have trouble following what was going on around him. He was skin and bones: when he got up to walk for the doctor, he had to hold up his pants, as they seemed to be about four sizes too big. His clavicle bone jutted out and his cheekbones were so sharp they could have cut something. He had been fevered, suffering from malaria, diarrhea, dehydration. The clinic gave him four pills, we left him with three more, plus oral rehydration salts. I suddenly understood why some AIDS patients do not take their medications: they can’t remember to take them, can’t remember when they’re supposed to take them, can’t keep them down. It seemed like the man’s aunt was completely overwhelmed and confused: which one was taken in the morning, which was taken twice a day, which was for diarrhea and which was for the fever?



Then I finally got around to seeing a dance troupe made up of kids who’ve lost parents or been abandoned. One had walked all the way from Kenya after losing his parents to AIDS. Another had come to the dance troupe after her family’s hut was hit by lightning and her entire family burned to death. Others did not have such dramatic stories, but ended up on the streets in one way or another. They were actually incredibly talented, led by a 24-year-old who’d become fed up with being exploited as a musician and had gone out on his own. Now they live – 30 of them – in a government building. Unfortunately they have almost no money. He pays for their school fees, food, clothing and other basics out of the profits of private drumming lessons and the few thousand shillings they have left over from a weekly gig at a local hotel. Essentially they’re only a year old, but they’re in risk of collapsing.

So yes. I’ve been working. And in my final week, I hope to visit a home for abandoned babies, known as “thrown” babies, and finish up some interviews on “Memory Books,” scrapbooks written by parents dying of AIDS for the children they leave behind.

***

HIV patients care for others who have virus; Reach Out volunteers find simple ways to solve problems vexing larger clinics.

By Karen Palmer, UGANDA
Special to the Star
915 words
14 May 2006
The Toronto Star
A15
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star

On an unseasonably damp and chilly morning, most patients arrive breathless at Reach Out headquarters, weakened not by the virus in their veins but by the cruelly steep incline leading to the HIV clinic.

Nearly all clutch bags filled with pill bottles.

Annet Namayanja greets them with a smile, inviting each patient to step on the scales and see whether their weight shows they're thriving or sliding.

For these people, Namayanja is an inspiration.

After all, she weighed fewer than 100 pounds the first time she stepped into the clinic.

"I was almost dying. I was dying," she says, then giggles as she tells of gaining nearly 40 pounds since starting HIV treatment.

"What Reach Out has done for people living with HIV is beyond measure."

In a way, the clinic is run by patients for patients. Reach Out uses volunteers called CATTS - for Community ARV and TB Treatment Supporters - many of whom are themselves HIV-positive.

"With the number of people living with HIV in Africa about to eclipse 25 million, innovative programs like Reach Out are finding simple ways to solve some of the problems that plague larger, more expensive programs.

And as AIDS organizations gear up for the big August international conference in Toronto, Reach Out is being hailed by such organizations as UNAIDS and the Stephen Lewis Foundation as the kind of holistic service that works.

"Small is beautiful," says Dr. Margrethe Juncker, the Danish physician whose volunteer work got Reach Out rolling.

"It's important to keep close contact and a little bit of a family feeling, even with 2,000 clients."

Reach Out teams up with research programs to test patients' CD4 counts, which show the number of white blood cells in the immune system.

Local nurses receive intensive HIV training to become "medical officers" who work four days a week at the clinic.

On the fifth day, they sling backpacks over their shoulders, grab coins for the matatu bus and head into the community to aid patients too sick to visit the clinic.

"I've worked with the poor forever," says Juncker, who has hopscotched around the world, following her husband's rise through the ranks at the World Food Program.

"You learn that there's so much more to health than the physical problems."

In addition to offering free access to medication and life-saving antiretroviral drugs, the clinic operates a food distribution centre, a training workshop for tailors, a micro-finance program to help clients pay rent or set up small businesses and a school fees' fund to get their children into school.

Reach Out began humbly enough in 2001, when Juncker's husband was transferred to Uganda and she was looking for a place to volunteer while caring for their five children.

After being stymied by the rigid bureaucracy of most charities and non-governmental organizations, she teamed up with a group of nuns who were trying faith healing with destitute AIDS patients, essentially praying for them as they slipped closer to death.

She and her helpers rushed to get people the drugs that would save them and found more and more people turning up as they saw their friends and neighbours not only surviving but thriving. And right from the start, Juncker says, patients began gaining strength simply by seeing that someone cared about them and was looking out for them.

"It was a revelation, how much people can improve with a little TLC."

Dozens of patients offer testimonials to the power of the clinic, but the best evidence is sitting in the waiting room at Our Lady of Africa Church, where the clinic has taken over virtually every available inch of space.

Patrick Edamu, for example, has seen his CD4 count rise dramatically in the past year. Patients qualify for anti-retroviral therapy when their CD4 count drops below 250; they are considered to be very ill if it sinks below 100.

When Edamu first arrived at the clinic, his white-cell count was one. Now it is 137 and he smiles when medical officer Rosemary Atim asks whether he has any complaints.

None, he replies in Luganda. He only came to get a refill on the pills that are helping keep him alive.

The key with anti-retroviral therapy is keeping patients healthy enough to take their drugs and getting them to adhere to taking them on schedule.

The concern over adherence has kept many countries and HIV programs from distributing ARVs, because they fear patients on multiple medications will do themselves more harm than good if they're not carefully monitored.

Reach Out has an astounding rate of drug adherence: 80 per cent of the 618 clients on free ARV therapy have a 95 per cent adherence rate, thanks in part to CATTS counsellors who help patients sort out their medications and conduct home visits to ensure they are managing.

Meanwhile, start-up kits are being prepared to share with other clinics and Juncker is confident the Reach Out approach can be implemented almost anywhere.

"There's nothing really to it, except that it works," she says.

| Karen Palmer FOR THE TORONTO STAR CATTS adherence counsellor Moses Ogabe helps patients sort out their medications at the highly successful Reach Out HIV AIDS clinic. |

***

A mother's memories; The dog-eared pages of the scrapbooks may be smudged with fingerprints from repeated readings For young Ugandans orphaned by AIDS, they offer a precious link to the past

Karen Palmer
Special to the Star
1269 words
11 May 2006
The Toronto Star
A03

Kampala, UGANDA -- When Ivan Sekajjigo was a baby, he was so sickly with fever and convulsions his mother worried he would die.

With time, he grew into a precocious child who loved school so much he would happily set off for class seven days a week, but only if his best friend Henry accompanied him.

Yet what his mother remembers most about Ivan, now a strapping man of 18 and the eldest of five boys, is their shared love of local Ugandan music.

Whenever it came on the radio, Ivan would crank up the volume and belt out the lyrics, earning a reputation for his singing that caused neighbours to stop him on the street and request an impromptu performance.

Soon, these random memories, written in a spiral-bound scrapbook and decorated with a few faded photographs, are all Ivan will have to remember his mother, Betty Namubiru.

His father died of AIDS when he was only 5; one day the virus will claim his mother too.

These books, being written by HIV-positive parents across Uganda, said Jacquie Nabwire, who distributes the materials used to write the book through NACWOLA, a national coalition of HIV-positive women.

Known as "memory books," the scrapbooks not only have sentimental value, they often prompt HIV-positive parents to think about what will happen after they die.

Who will care for their children? How will they ensure any property meant for the children actually ends up in their hands?

Sometimes they even remind parents they have a lot to live for.

"They fear for their children if they die and leave the children behind. They don't want to give up on life," Nabwire said.

"We see more people seeking treatment for every opportunistic infection and joining campaigns for (access to) drugs."

The book's first chapter details the history of the parents' marriage, a subject that is not always the stuff of fairy tales in a culture where polygamy is still practiced and where men sometimes pay a bride price to a woman's family before marrying her.

The next few chapters are often the favourites among the children, their pages dog-eared and smudged with fingerprints from repeated readings.

The chapters outline their birth, the meaning behind their names, their days as a baby, then as a toddler, their school days and school chums, a fond or secret memory, and finally, their parent's aspirations for them as an adult.

Nazziwa Yudaya began writing a memory book for each of her four children in 1998 and has never stopped writing.

She was a co-wife, married to a man with a first wife who took most of his money and attention.

As she wrote, Yudaya began to realize that she had poisoned her children against his memory, blaming him in bitter tirades for bringing the virus into their home.

She also realized she knew almost nothing of the man who had fathered her children and infected her with HIV.

Now, she laughs, she uses every family funeral to collect up bits of information about the man she married.

Cousins sit in back rows, scribbling details about his days in nursery or elementary school, about his first jobs, about the lives of his ancestors.

The book has helped her prepare for the inevitable: the lifespan for a person living with HIV in Africa is about 10 years, but Yudaya is taking anti-retroviral drugs, which should help her live longer.

She has left a plot of land to her children, picked out a niece who will help them with their troubles or worries. She's even decided where she'd like to be buried.

"It was very painful," she said.

Her children were not surprised by her HIV-positive status, but they were upset by the book.

"At first, they cried," Yudaya said.

"I realized that they were thinking I was going to die, but I told them, 'I'm still with you.'

"I realized that they trust me, that I'm still useful. They're very supportive, asking after my health and whether I've taken my drugs."

Parents go through a special memory book training to help them decide first how to disclose their HIV status, then how best to communicate the memories, hopes and dreams for their children.

"This is not really a part of our culture," Nabwire said.

Ugandans rely on oral tradition to pass on the things they know, whether it's an old recipe or the story of how their ancestors came to live in one region or another, she said.

"Since the generations are not even existing - they're dying in the middle of their lives - we need to put it down," she said.

"It's a new culture we're trying to teach."

Many families delay writing the books, either because the parent doesn't read or write and needs help getting their memories on to paper, or because they simply don't have enough information to offer a child about their heritage.

"It's amazing," Nabwire said. "They really realize they know very little about their partner. Sometimes they know very little about their own family."

Some wait until they are sick before putting pen to paper; some wait a little too long.

"By the time they're ready, they're too sick. When you're not feeling well, you can't think of writing a book," she said.

"The major aim, even when you've passed away, is that when the child reads this, he sees you as a person who lived and had likes and dislikes, just like any other person," Nabwire said.

When a person is sick with AIDS, their final days are a slow misery of pain, and often leave a child with a skewed recollection of their parent.

That's a memory the book can help erase, Nabwire said.

"When you leave a book, it brings life to that miserable person that the child used to see all the time," she said.

"It puts life in a miserable situation that the child would otherwise remember for the rest of his life."

It also helps the child remember that there was a time before their lives were all about drugs and infections and extra chores and pitching in to replace a parent too sick to look after the home and children.

"They remember themselves as being involved in work throughout," she said.

"They don't remember whatever childhood they had."

For Yudaya, writing the book also made her realize that she can't wait until she's on her deathbed to pass on all of her wisdom to her children.

"For them, I have filled what I want," she said.

"Anything I think of for my children - every good thing I feel - I have to tell them."

Karen Palmer is The Star's stringer in Africa

Crouching Hippos, Sleeping Lions

When I crossed into Uganda, the border guard asked me how long I would be saying and when I replied one month he said, "I'd better give you two months then. You'll need lots of time because there's lots to see. You won't want to leave."

So far Uganda has really rolled out the red carpet. My first week here they had three public holidays -- two for voting and one for international women's day. Now, I want to assimilate with the culture, so I resignedly took the time off too. On Women's Day, I joined a bus full of muzungus to check out some Bugandan kingdom sites. Tourism in Africa is obviously a little different than at home and instead of little plaques or videos or people in period costume, there is mostly just someone who comes running out of their kitchen when visitors arrive to point out the sights, like the lump of ground where the Bugandan king is crowned. The slab of concrete where he is coronated Western-style. The rusty shed where he spends his last night as prince and holds "council" meetings. The prison "ditch" where the king once held his marauding brothers and sisters (before setting them on fire.) A missed lunch means I was more grumpy than touristy, but once we got some matoke in our stomachs (steamed under ripe banana, mashed into dense balls and eaten with your hands) I was much more in the mood for singing and dancing.

I spent the last three days in a car, sometimes getting out periodically to pee or take a photo or feed myself. We went to Ichacha falls, over by the Congolese border, to see the tree-climbing lions. It was a long ride, but totally worth it. We slept in the park, in tents down by the hippo pools. They snorted and snuffled and groaned all night, sometimes sounding like they were searching for grass under our tents. The water buffalos were also pretty vocal and the baboons screamed every now and again. We managed to see seven lions -- a pretty good record considering many people go there and see none.

I'm thinking about working again this week. Thinking about it.

Dried up and Dying

Today it pissed rain in the afternoon, while I was typing away at the Internet café, solving the world’s woes via email. Figures. I just got back from four days up north, eyeballing the worst drought to hit Kenya since the 1970s.

When we were touring around at Christmas time, things looked pretty dire to our Western eyes. There was little water anywhere north of Isiolo, the geographical start of the neglected northern territory where literally and metaphorically, the pavement ends. We saw dozens upon dozens of women carrying heavy jerry cans filled with water, donkeys laden with water, even small children carrying containers. There was no water at a few of the campgrounds and a couple dead goats at one of the missions.

People were waiting and waiting for the short rains to arrive. They’ve given up on the short rains and are now waiting for the long rains to begin. The forecasts seem to be mixed: Nairobi is showing fairly promising signs that the rains have come, yet they don’t seem to be extending very far north. Up there, weather readers are predicting a lighter-than-usual rains, when what they need is downpours to slake the thirst of the dry, dry land.

I arranged a trip north with CARE Canada, a non-governmental organization that works literally all over the world, in some of the least glamorous places. They have operations in refugee camps throughout Africa, are often the first on the scene at disasters like the tsunami, and help pick up the pieces in countries like Afghanistan. We hopped in an air conditioned four-wheel drive and headed some 400 km northeast. (SEE STORY BELOW)

The road was beautiful all the way up and as we got further and further from Nairobi, the scenery got browner and browner. The Del Monte crops seemed stunted. There were a few camels on the outskirts of town, which one CARE employee thought meant that things were so bad herders were heading that far south, while another felt they were simply being brought to market. It’s hard to know: there are markets and far more demand for camels in the north, yet there’s water to be found in the north as well.

As we drove, the digital thermometer on the car’s dashboard kept rising and rising, finally hovering around 38 degrees. The town where we were headed – Garissa – is the provincial capital of the northeastern province, which is bordered by the Tana River, a permanent body of water whose levels have dipped, but whose beds still hold water. (We passed at least 10 empty riverbeds on our way north.) The northeastern province is one of Kenya’s poorest, with a huge refugee population – at least 130,000 Somalis divided amongst three massive camps – a large Muslim influence, an astounding level of illiteracy, a stubborn refusal to give up female genital mutilation, a strong Saudi influence, pathetically low rainfalls (even in the best of years) and a total of 6.2 km of paved roads.

The day after we arrived, I turned up early at the CARE offices, where a tall Kenyan-Somali named Soulieman took me on a tour of some of their food distribution points. When we arrived in one village – a collection of round stick huts supplemented with bits of cardboard and plastic, plus a shiny white mosque – we pulled up under a tree and Soulieman announced that we had arrived. They’re no frills, for sure. He asked if I’d like to see a carcass and I crassly said yes, then commented that he obviously had some media experience.

We drove to a semi-permanent collection of stick globes called Jerirot, home to almost a thousand people and, at one point, 2,500 cattle. The men came to greet us almost immediately and I have to say, there’s something a bit frightening about these fierce looking men walking with determination towards you. I was happy to have Soulieman around. But of course, they simply laughed and talked, shook hands, were more than happy to lead me to a carcass and expressed sympathy when I’d land my heel down on a sharp thorn that had worked its way clear through my plastic flip-flops. (Some of them are strong enough and sharp enough to cause punctures in car tires.)

One of the men told Soulieman he’d spent the previous night out in the bush with his herdsman and a dying cow. The Somalis (and by that I mean anyone of Somali heritage, not necessarily someone with a Somali passport – even the Kenyans refer to the people in the region as “Somalis,” even though, like Soulieman, their grandparents were born in Kenya) have a strange and endearing affection for their cattle. They say the Dinka in Sudan write love poetry about their herds of cattle, and while the Somalis are maybe not that dedicated, they believe that their cattle are a gift from Allah and only he can decide when to take that gift away. So they very rarely slaughter their animals. They may sell them at the market when they need meat or money for other commodities, but in this time of drought, they have watched them die, rather than sell them en masse and put the money in the bank until the rains return. Banks are not something these nomadic pastoralists understand or trust, Soulieman said.

We drove on, passing more dry rivers and women and donkeys carrying water. We even passed a few dik diks, a couple squirrels, a few antelope and a family of reticulated giraffe. By late afternoon, when the temperature was dropping to almost bearable levels, we reached a village where the World Food Programme and CARE deliver rations for more than 500 people. The diet in the north consists mainly of meat and milk – herders, for example, will milk their camels, goats or cattle and live off that for days at a time. But in times of drought, the community is fed maize or beans. The village chairperson told us the children were suffering from this unfamiliar diet, complaining of stomachaches from the lack of milk. They were tiny and inquisitive, initially unsure what to think of me and shied away whenever I came close. Then they piled onto the bags of maize and I snapped a picture and showed it to them. They stuck pretty close after that, maneuvering into pictures as best as they could.

We had a pretty quiet drive back as the sun dipped lower and lower, Soulieman peppering me with questions about the Somalis in Canada, and Mohammed asking my opinion of things like the Ugandan election. I often felt quite bumpkin-y around these two: they’re incredibly literate and are devoted listeners of the Beeb in English and Swahili.

As we were passing a collection of homes near the road, Mohammed noticed a bunch of newly dead cattle and we stopped so I could take photos. At least three of the cows – some of them looking like they were born in the last few months – had died that day. There were other bits of skull and bleached out bones around, suggesting other animals had died in the past few days and been carried off by carrions like hyena. Their skin seemed to stretch over bony spines and ribs, little pools of blood surrounded different parts of their bodies. Their bowels had relaxed and maggots were squirming throughout the black liquid that was released. The smell was coppery and frankly, not overwhelming. I kept thinking of the Star’s former Latin American correspondent saying she raced out to a plane crash because she wanted to “smell” it, so I kept breathing deeply, which disturbed Mohammed.

While I was shooting pictures, an old wrinkly woman came to talk to Mohammed and Soulieman and she asked that I visit her cattle. She was cooking when we arrived and explained that she was cooking for her family of 10, plus some passing migrants moving in search of water, plus her collection of cattle. She’d once had 70 cows, but was down to three skinny cows and five calves and was feeding them from the family’s stores in an effort to keep them alive until the long rains came. If they lived, they’d be used as breeding stock to rebuild the herd. She had virtually no reaction to her own photo, but was positively tickled by the image of her skinny cow.

Imagine, Mohammed said. What will your viewers in the West think when they hear that Africans are sharing their pots with their animals? I thought about that from the backseat while we drove back. He would probably be sickened to learn that a lot of Westerners feed their animals from the same pots, that the amount spent on pet food and treats in the West could feed a mid-sized African nation for a long, long time, that there is enough waste that many animals live off table scraps and that some pet-owners are so crazed about their animals, they cook food specifically for them. I was once at the hairdresser when this woman from Woodbridge went on and on about cooking organic food for her Pomeranian. She looked like she hadn’t seen a green vegetable in years. Kenyans, in fact, were outraged when a woman from New Zealand offered to send a highly nutritious protein blend from her dog food factory. The papers were full of indignant copy about how whites treat blacks, thinking they could feed starving Africans dog food! She clarified her position, saying she eats the food herself and suddenly white columnists were writing explaining that people in developed nations are, well, nuts.

Anyway, after seeing all this, I retired to the Nomad Palace hotel, the only place of note to stay in Garissa, where rooms are all self-contained, air conditioned and come with satellite TV. It seemed wrong, somehow, to leave a village where a woman is cooking a pot of beans, maize and tomatoes for at least a dozen people plus her livestock, then tuck into a plate of rice and a plate of chicken so massive I was unable to finish it, have a hot shower, step into a freezing room and flip to a Kate Hudson movie.

The next day, I spent the morning at a conference on female sexual mutilation and gender based violence. Somehow all these terms seem so sanitized. They were basically talking about women who have their bits sewn together and how men beat and rape them and basically treat them like chattel. The attitude in this part of the world is backward and I know that’s not politically correct, but that’s how it is. There were 30 people invited to the conference, some people working with pastoralists, others working with girls who’d run away from home to avoid being “circumsized.” In the name of Islam, these girls have are sewn shut at the age of six, then married off, sometimes at the age of nine. Sometimes to men who are in their 70s! There were many, many Muslims there who shook their head at the notion that this is a religious rite and the group talked about organizing forums to educate people that this is not something the Koran advocates. They swapped stories of worst cases: the girls who suffered through the first 10 days of marriage as their husband tried, without success, to penetrate them. The girl who was tied to a post by her father and repeatedly raped by the man he’d sold her to for a couple cows. The 16 year old refugee who was sent to the hospital when her husband beat her with a pipe until her lower jaw was pulverized.

On Sunday, we were up at 6 a.m. – the extend-a-mix call to prayer would have ensured that anyway – and ready to head out to the Dadaab refugee camp, another 400 km north and closer to the Somali border. Dadaab is home to 130,000 refugees, the largest refugee settlement in the world. The UN demands vehicles travel in a convoy with a police escort to ward against bandits, so we were waiting for the vehicle that would carry the soldiers armed with rifles almost as long as my leg.

It was a long, bumpy drive and again the mercury kept rising, reaching 43 degrees shortly before 10 a.m. The aid worker compounds on the southern edge of Dadaab are surrounded by officious security officers and three layers of razor wire. After exchanging pleasantries with the CARE staff, we hopped back in the Land Cruisers and headed for a borehole on the other edge of town. The “town” was like something out of a Western, dusty streets lined with market stalls made of sticks, with women in flowing veils and darting children stepping out in front of the vehicle. Deforestation has stolen the home of the marabout storks, so they were crowded about, their ugly bald heads, fringed with fuzz, reaching almost four feet in the air as they sampled from the ample garbage heaps.

At the borehole, there were at least a hundred groaning camels with their ribs and hip bones pressing against their skin waiting for a drink. Their “bells,” hollowed out seed pods with sticks as clangers, gave a wooden knocking sound as they dipped their long necks to drink. Apparently they can take on 100 litres in one go, enough to last them 30 days, but because of the drought situation, they’re usually only healthy enough to take on enough water to last them five days.

That becomes an issue for people like Gala, who we met at the next borehole. She and another woman had risen at 4 a.m., tethered together six camels, loaded them with dozens of jerry cans and set out searching for water. They arrived at a borehole outside Dadaab nine hours later, having walked 40 km alongside their camels. (Somalis are baffled by the suggestion that camels can also be ridden. It’s just not something they do.) In seven days, Gala will set out on the 40 km journey again, since the water is spread amongst some 80 people and the camels will need to be watered again.

The CARE staff threw a party for the visiting senior vice-president that night, again making it difficult to believe that only a few feet away, people were going hungry. They invited all of their 100-or-so staff, plus a few dignitaries from the six other NGOs and UN agencies that work at Dadaab. The next day we visited a few of them on courtesy calls and I was surprised to hear the UNHCR and WFP heads ask CARE for money to support their projects. As Nancy Gordon explained, CARE is a privately-funded NGO, raising about $7 million each year through the generosity of donations from average Canadians. While the UN groups sometimes have access to hundreds of millions of dollars, it seems their budgets have been slashed of late because governments are not living up to their commitments, or are simply not making commitments in the first place. Things like the drought have to be paid for through “emergency appeals,” which means going to governments and asking for special cash infusions. With so many emergencies going on in the world, and an increasing sense of “donor fatigue,” few countries have donated anything toward the east African drought. WFP figures they need more than $500 million to feed the 11 million people who are facing famine, but so far they’ve only managed to raise about $130 million.

In the late afternoon I decided to leave CARE and head off with Carol, the new country director for Handicap International, which is not technically in Dadaab, but helps with the medical care of refugees transferred to the hospital in Garissa. We went to see a couple deaf classes, where the kids taught us some simple signs, and where the deaf students are mixed with the mentally handicapped children. I think this has more to do with space constraints than anything else, but it’s a bit stigmatizing to think that deaf children are somehow mentally handicapped. CARE has a deaf staff member named Stephen and he’s done wonders for drawing deaf children out of their homes, where parents kept them hidden for fear the community would find out they had a disabled child.

At the next school we met 12 year old Zainab Abdi Salam, who seemed to have been born with spina bifida. Her father was on the PTA and aftzer an intense campaign focusing on handicapped children, he confessed he had a daughter at home who couldn’t walk. They gave the family a wheelbarrow and for the first few months of her school career, she was wheeled to school and slid into the classroom. The children were mercilessly cruel, pushing her over, pushing the wheelchair she eventually received into corners or walls. Her father takes her to school and picks her up at lunch and spends many an anxious morning worrying about what he’ll find when he arrives. (Now, think about the values toward daughters expressed at the FGM conference versus the sacrifices this father was making and you’d understand that this man was a saint.) Carol suggested a few games the children might be able to play in order to instill a sense of understanding and I snapped a few pictures of Zairab, who smiled at the sight of them. I also asked the translator to tell the dozens upon dozens of children who’d crowded around the classroom windows that they should be nice to our friend. Who knows what effect that will have.

We visited another primary school, where the students were learning how to calculate percentages, but appeared to be in their late teens. One student was balding. They had a long list of complaints: they were failing their exams because the teachers were not proficient in both sign and Kiswahili and they needed those exams in order to get into the better deaf schools off the camp, in Mombassa. They wanted Islamic teaching materials and better textbooks, or at least ones not covered by newsprint. When we got in the car, Carol asked the administrator what he was doing to prepare these boys for the eventuality that they may not go to Mombassa, no matter how hard their teacher tries.

By noon, I was so hot and dehydrated that I sat out while Carol visited a workshop for handicapped people, where they learned a few skills that could translate to real jobs building shelters and other structures.

By 4 p.m., we were on the tarmac of the Dadaab airstrip, sweating through every pore in an un-air conditioned tin can that had been sitting in the blazing sun since 9.30 a.m. It was a short but excruciating flight and it was positively chilly to step out into Nairobi’s night air, where temperatures were a much more reasonable 19 degrees.

WORLD; BRIEFING: AFRICA
Killer drought rendering Horn of Africa bone-dry ; As cattle die off, so does region's hope
Karen Palmer, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
1192 words
16 March 2006
The Washington Times
A17

In the pre-dawn hours, with temperatures still in the teens and a gentle breeze blowing across the dry, dusty dunes where Kenya meets Somalia, Gala began walking with six tethered camels in a desperate search for water.

Not long after noon, as the mercury topped 105 degrees Fahrenheit, Gala - whose name means "camel" in Somali - finally reached a borehole where gas-powered pumps helped draw a steady stream of hot, clear water.

She walked for nearly nine hours, matching the pace of her groaning camels for about 25 miles, past dry riverbeds and small round huts patched with plastic and cardboard, sheltering nomads also moving in pursuit of water.

"Where is water? Where will we find it otherwise?" the woman asked in Somali as she struggled to control the lead camel.

All across the Horn of Africa's remote and barren regions, a crippling drought has pushed people incredible distances in a frantic hunt for water.

"We anticipate that the situation is going to get much worse because the rains have not yet come," said Evans Ktule, district officer for the Liboi Division on the border between Kenya and Somalia, where months without rain have produced severe drought.

Tied to Gala's camels were dozens of yellow 5- and 10-gallon jerrycans, meant to supply 10 families, each with at least eight children, with a week's worth of water for washing, cooking and drinking.

In seven days, as the skinny camels start complaining of thirst again, Gala's long walk will start over.

After three years without sufficient rain, at least 11 million people spread over five African countries face famine, according to the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP), which has begun a fundraising tour of the region in hopes of drawing attention to the plight of the most vulnerable people.

So far, $186 million has been donated by the developed countries, but the WFP expects it will need $574 million to meet the needs of emergency cases in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

"It's our top priority," said Umberto Greco, head of the WFP office in isolated Dadaab, where there are 130,000 Somali refugees.

If nothing happens to improve the food supply in the next couple of months, the drought's victims will find themselves in a "terrible situation," he said. Already, more than 40 people have died from drought-related causes in northern Kenya. Estimates suggest that by next month, half the cattle in Kenya and 80 percent of cattle in parts of Somalia will have died.

"If there's no rain, there's no pastures. If there's no pastures, the cows cannot feed, and therefore, they die," said Margaret Mwaniki, project coordinator for Caritas International, which groups 162 Catholic relief, development and social-service organizations.

"When a cow suffers," she explained, "the whole community suffers because they're the only source of livelihood."

Behind a thorny fence in Kamuthe, a dusty roadside village, Amina Sahib ran a wooden spoon through a large pot of bubbling tomatoes, beans and corn, a meal to be shared by her family of 10, a couple of visitors moving in search of water and Mrs. Sahib's remaining cattle.

Once the proud owner of 70 cattle, Mrs. Sahib's herd has been reduced to three emaciated cows and five calves too weak to stand, now corralled beside the house in an attempt to save them from marauding carnivores.

Just steps from her home, three newly dead cattle rot in the fading sun, surrounded by the bleached bones and skulls of animals eaten by hyenas.

The skin of the newly dead cattle had split over bony spines and ribs, releasing little pools of black blood.

"There are a lot of people desperate just like me," Mrs. Sahib said, explaining that she was feeding the cattle from the family's food, hoping to keep them alive until the long rains came.

If they live, they can be used as breeding stock to rebuild the herd, she said.

Rebuilding the cattle herds "will take them years," said WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon. "This is, sadly, the cycle. The number of cattle yo-yos according to the drought years. That's why it's such a complete waste."

In northern Kenya, the blazing sun brings temperatures that bake the ground and evaporate pitiful rainfalls. The landscape is dotted with wiry bushes and spindly trees, whose thorns are sharp and strong enough to puncture auto and truck tires.

The nomadic population has always coped by simply keeping on the move, shifting herds from one water source to a greener pasture to another water source.

"The natural area where anyone might go with his or her family and animals is no longer available because the area has no pasture and no water," said Mohammed Qazilbash, emergency coordinator for CARE Canada.

At Abakdera, a poverty-ridden collection of stick-and-mud huts, CARE Kenya workers patiently call out the names of dozens of families registered to receive WFP rations.

"The cattle is over," said Hussein Abdi, chairman of the relatively peaceful Abakdera settlement, about 28 miles from Garissa down the Tana River's eastern bank. "The cattle are the most affected, and they have already died."

Virtually all its cows and goats have perished, so the usual diet of milk and meat has been replaced by 22 pounds each of rice and beans, plus about 40 ounces of oil.

The allotment is meant to last each family an entire month.

Village women walk nearly two miles to the shrinking river to fetch water, though it's not considered safe for drinking. Mr. Abdi said the children complain of stomach aches on the unfamiliar diet and are suffering without milk.

"Just look at them," he said, waving his walking stick toward dozens of small children in filthy rags loafing on bags of donated corn. "They are weak."

Normally, the goats and sheep would go to market in Garissa, but Mr. Abdi said they wouldn't fetch much in their current condition, and most would die on the journey.

Caption: It has been months since the last rain across the Horn of Africa, and the severe drought has made it impossible for the grass that cattle feed on to grow. The cattle are starving to death. [Photo by Karen Palmer/The Washington Times]; Amina Sahib cooked a meal of tomatoes, beans and corn to be shared by her family of 10, her cattle and visitors passing through the area. She fed her cattle her family's food to try to keep them alive until it rains again. [Photo by Karen Palmer/The Washington Times]; Gala walked with her camels about 25 miles over nine hours in search of water before finding a borehole near Dadaab, Kenya. She was able to fill up the large jugs, or jerrycans, tied to her camels with a week's worth of water for washing, cooking and drinking. [Photo by Karen Palmer/The Washington Times]

News
On the brink of famine; 6 million face starvation as drought ravages livestock, wipes out crops in 5 East African countries Animal carcasses line roadways and there is grave concern for Kenya's wildlife, writes Karen Palmer
Karen Palmer
Special to the Star
790 words
22 February 2006
The Toronto Star
ONT
A03
English
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star
Nairobi More than 6 million people across East Africa are facing starvation in a worsening drought that has already killed at least 80 people and destroyed nearly half the livestock in some areas.

Charities and non-governmental organizations working in five countries in the region are making a desperate plea for donations.

"At the end of the day, if nothing is done now, six months from now we'll start using the F-word, which is famine," said Mohammed Qazilbash, program manager for emergency operations with CARE International in Kenya.

Five cycles of failed rain have led to crippling conditions in northeastern Kenya and southern Somalia, as well as severe water and food shortages in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

"This is something I have never witnessed in my life," said Margaret Mwaniki, East African co-ordinator for Caritas Internationalis.

A farmer herself, she said she lost all of her bananas and the cereals she planted dried up so profoundly she wasn't even able to harvest enough seeds to plant again.

"If I was relying on that farm, what a disaster!" she said. "What would I be feeding my children?"

Water levels in Lake Victoria have plummeted to the point some Ugandan fishermen have given up their trade.

In Tanzania, low water levels mean there is not enough hydro-electricity to meet the country's needs.

Planned power outages have left cities without electricity for 12-hour stretches.

Across the region, nomadic herders have simply watched their animals die of starvation or thirst.

Carcasses line roadways and there is grave concern for Kenya's famed wildlife, struggling to find water.

The horizon is bleak and brown, with a few thorn trees and a type of plant poisonous to cattle providing the only green. Even cacti have wilted and withered.

Initially, hospitals began treating patients for dehydration and eventually reported a few deaths from the condition. Then malnourished children began showing up, usually coupled with other illnesses, like malaria or diarrhea related to drinking dirty water.

Agencies like Oxfam and CARE have attempted to help, using rations dropped at designated food distribution centres.

Serious malnutrition cases, caused simply by not getting enough to eat, are expected to hit hospitals now.

"There's just not enough support right now for (emergency) feeding centres," said Peter Smerdon, spokesperson for the United Nations' World Food Program.

In Kenya alone, the World Food Program is feeding 3 million people, plus another 500,000 schoolchildren.

That requires 395 million tonnes of food, at a cost of $225 million (all figures in U.S. dollars).

So far, only $36 million has been donated, including $17 million from the Kenyan government, $15 million from the U.S. and $1.3 million from Canada.

The World Food Program is already facing a food crisis in southern Africa, where 12 million people in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe are facing starvation due to poor rains.

The situation is only expected to get worse, since long-range forecasts predict that the usual rains in April will also fail.

"If that happens, it will be a disaster," Smerdon said. "That will mean an even larger number of people going hungry. Even if it rains, unless they're brilliant - which they haven't been for the past few years - everyone will have lost their cattle anyway."

Government estimates suggest 50 per cent of cattle in northeastern Kenya have already died and another 80 per cent in southern Somalia have starved to death.

A child malnutrition survey conducted in October found that up to a third of all children under five were suffering from acute malnutrition.

"Whole communities are entrapped within this whole circle of drought," Qazilbash said. "They cannot move out of this circle because the distances are so vast and there's a potential for conflict."

Alarmingly, aid agencies report deaths of donkeys and camels - two hardy animals accustomed to severe desert conditions.

"You start to imagine that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better," Qazilbash said.