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.