BBC
BBC News Africa
8 July 2011 Last updated at 10:18 GMT
Horn of Africa drought: 'A vision of hell'
Somali man who fled violence and drought in Somalia with his family sits on the
ground outside a food distribution point in the Dadaab refugee camp in
northeastern Kenya on 5 July 2011
The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has launched an emergency appeal
to help the more than 10 million people affected by severe drought in the Horn
of Africa. The BBC's Ben Brown reports from the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern
Kenya, where more than 1,000 people arrive each day seeking help.
At a makeshift cattle market in the middle of the refugee camp, herdsmen are
trying to sell off what little livestock they have left.
But no-one wants to buy the cattle and goats on sale here, for the chances are
that very soon they will be dead.
There is nowhere for them to graze: the pastures here are parched and arid, and
it has barely rained for two years running.
"I'm selling my cattle at knock-down prices," said one man. "I'm practically
giving them away."
Not far away, the landscape is littered with the carcasses of dead animals.
In this part of the world, livestock are everything: they represent a family's
entire assets, capital, savings and income. When the animals die, it frequently
means the humans do as well.
Continue reading the main story
Extended drought is causing a severe food crisis in the Horn of Africa,
which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Weather conditions over
the Pacific means the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to
return until September.
An estimated 10 million people in the region are affected by the drought.
The UN has declared a famine in two areas of southern Somalia, where 30% of
children are acutely malnourished and four children out of every 10,000 are
dying daily.
The humanitarian problem is made worse by ongoing conflicts, which means
that until July militant groups had only allowed aid organisations limited
access to large parts of southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia.
Since the beginning of 2011, around 15,000 Somalis each month have fled
into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food and water. The
refugee camp at Dadaab, in Kenya, has been overwhelmed by an estimated 400,000
people.
Farmers unable to meet their basic food costs are abandoning their herds.
High cereal and fuel prices had already forced them to sell many animals before
the drought and their smaller herds are now unprofitable or dying.
The refugee problem may have been preventable. However, violent conflict in
the region has deterred international investment in long-term development
programmes, which may have reduced the effects of the drought.
Development aid would focus on reducing deforestation, topsoil erosion and
overgrazing and improving water conservation. New roads and infrastructure for
markets would help farmers increase their profits.
The result of climate conditions, conflict and lack of investment is that
6.7 million people in Kenya and Ethiopia are currently existing on food
rations, and relief agencies estimate 2.6 million in Somalia will need
assistance a new emergency operation.
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Across the sprawling mass of the Dadaab refugee camp - some 50 km sq (19 sq
miles) - there are several graveyards now, full of small mounds of earth, where
chronically malnourished Somali refugees have been buried.
Usually the graves are horribly small: infant mortality in this camp has risen
threefold in the last few months, according to the United Nations.
Infants - children aged five and under - are especially vulnerable to
malnutrition and all the illnesses and diseases which frequently accompany it,
such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.
With more than 1,000 refugees arriving here every day, Dadaab is becoming
overcrowded and insanitary. The camp director told me there could soon be half
a million people here - more a city than a refugee camp.
Many of the new arrivals have walked for days or weeks to get here, desperate
to escape not only from the drought in Somalia but also its endless civil war.
The children especially are malnourished and dehydrated when they finally get
here. The tragic irony is that some of them will die within a day or so of
their arrival.
Crisis frontline
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote
The baby... died in my arms and that is really hard to cope with, I just
cried with the mother"
End Quote Katharina Andrey Nurse
Katharina Andrey, a Swiss nurse from the medical aid agency Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF), has the job of helping to prioritise which children need the
most help the quickest.
Babies are measured and weighed - often they yelp and scream as they are placed
into a large black plastic bucket so that their weight can be read.
Sometimes babies of six months or a year weigh little more than newborns.
Ms Andrey is on the frontline of this unfolding crisis - one woman surrounded
by a sea of faces, working frantically to save lives, while winds whip up dust
clouds around her and babies scream and vomit.
"I arrived here a few days ago and my first reaction was: 'Oh my God'," she
told me.
In this file photo of Thursday June 26, 2009, A Somali child eats as he is
waiting to be registered at UN. registration centre in Dagahaley, Northeastern
Kenya Some mothers are letting the weakest children die, while they try to save
the stronger ones
Ms Andrey rushes around, handing out high-energy biscuits and checking which
babies need to be taken to one of the camp's clinics.
Recently, a child she was trying to save didn't make it and she grieved
alongside the mother.
"The baby was dying. I tried to do something but it just died in my arms and
that is really hard to cope with, I just cried with the mother. It may be hard
to go back to work but it can be a motivation as well because I am here to
improve things. "
But sometimes, Ms Andrey has to persuade mothers to go with their severely
malnourished children to hospital.
'World doesn't listen'
Frequently, they do not want to go - they say they need to forage for food,
water and firewood for their other children - often as many as seven or eight -
and they cannot afford to be away from their families.
Continue reading the main story
Disasters Emergency Committee
* DEC is an umbrella organisation representing a number of aid agencies
* Participants in the appeal include ActionAid, Age UK, British Red Cross,
Cafod, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief,
Merlin, Oxfam, Plan UK, Save the Children, Tearfund and World Vision
* To make a donation call 0370 60 60 900, text 'CRISIS' to 70000 to donate
£5, post a donation to PO Box 999 London EC3A 3AA
* Disasters Emergency Committee
To some mothers, the weak, malnourished child has become a burden and they are
prepared to let it die - a sacrifice in order to save their other children.
Aid workers like Abubakar have to negotiate hard with mothers to convince them
to change their minds.
"Some families had already prepared children for death and we had to intervene
and tell them: 'No, this is not possible, this child is still alive and he can
make it, so you have to give us a chance to try.' So we have to negotiate with
them. It's hard but sometimes we win."
The place to which he wants to take the most seriously ill children is MSF's
intensive therapeutic feeding centre.
Inside, it is a vision of hell.
Tiny, emaciated children with wrinkled skin hanging off their bones, rib cages
jutting out, bulbous eyes gazing out forlornly, flies covering their faces -
the all-too-familiar images of African hunger.
"Some of them die on the way, some die in the wards," said Dr Christopher
Karisa. "What we are doing here can seem like a drop in the ocean but the ocean
will be a drop less if we don't do it. It's a challenge, a really big
challenge."
But how could this be happening again, in July 2011?
One aid worker told me: "We were supposed to have an early warning system but
what is the point of warning the rest of world when it doesn't listen?".
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