Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 19:13:56 +0200
Drought in northern Kenya: 'Today you are rich, tomorrow you have nothing'
Prolonged dry spells push pastoralists to the brink of starvation as food
prices soar and cattle raids spiral out of control
* Jessica Hatcher <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-hatcher>
in Lodwar
* <http://www.theguardian.com/> theguardian.com,
* Wednesday 30 July 2014 06.59 BST
This time last year, Samuel Aboto had 600 goats; today, he has none. "I am
not exaggerating - everybody knew my goats," he says as he shelters from the
sun under a thatch of reeds. Twenty-six months of
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/drought> drought has hit
pastoralists in northern <http://www.theguardian.com/world/kenya> Kenya
hard, and Aboto is facing the fourth poor rainy season in a row. The last
good rain in Nayanae'angikalalio, central Turkana, was between March and May
2012.
Two weeks ago, there was one small shower. Aboto points to an outcrop across
a few miles of tawny sand and scrub. "There," he says, jabbing with his
finger. A line of camels cross the horizon, the only animals the land can
currently support.
Aboto, who has four scrawny sheep remaining, draws a comparison to three
years ago, when
<http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bn-east-africa-food-crisis-2
00711-en.pdf> drought triggered a famine in Somalia and almost 4 million
Kenyans were at risk of starvation (pdf). "It was almost the same as this,"
he says. "That was a combination of lack of grass and disease; this time
it's just drought."
The findings of a Kenyan nutrition survey, published this month by the
health ministry in consultation with the UN and NGOs, have alarmed experts.
In the most vulnerable arid and semi-arid regions, which span about 80% of
the country, one in four children is acutely malnourished and requires
medical attention.
Overall <http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/malnutrition>
malnutrition rates in Turkana, Baringo and Mandera counties, and in the west
of Wajir, have deteriorated significantly, according to the World Food
Programme (WFP). A malnutrition rate of more than 15% is classified as a
critical emergency by the World Health Organisation; in many parts of Kenya
it exceeds 20%. "The survey found truly alarming levels of malnutrition,"
says Challiss McDonough, a WFP spokeswoman.
In Turkana Central, the rate of moderate and severe acute malnutrition is
60% higher than a year ago, according to Kenya's health ministry. Last year,
17% of those surveyed - pregnant women, nursing mothers and under-fives-
were acutely malnourished. That proportion has risen to 29%.
Aside from drought, numerous factors are affecting access to food in Kenya's
arid north, where the majority of people are pastoralists. Rapidly
increasing populations have piled pressure on resources, and people have
become less mobile. During a dry spell, herders once moved freely across the
borders of Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda in search of fresh pasture.
These days, national and regional boundaries, and the proliferation of small
arms along them, have made it risky to do so.
Cattle raiding is out of control on some borders. "Conflict in the south and
east [of Turkana County] is not traditional cattle rustling. It has become
commercialised. There are businesses; men and women waiting to load [the
cattle] and take them to market," says the deputy county governor, Peter
Lokoel. It must be understood, he says, that conflict is contributing to
malnutrition rates across the county, especially either side of Turkana's
southern border. "Today you are rich; tomorrow you have nothing," he says,
referring to the clashes between raiders in Turkana and Pokot.
As herds dwindle, men in Turkana are increasingly relying on their wives,
many of whom sell charcoal or handmade jewellery and baskets. They buy maize
flour and oil with the few hundred shillings (only a few dollars) they earn.
"The quantities are very small: that's what's hurting the most. Food cost 50
cents or a shilling during the first president's era. These days, you pay
hundreds and get nothing," says Rodha Lokirion, an elderly woman who lives
in a village 10 miles north of Lodwar, the capital of Turkana County.
In Lodwar, 2kg of maize costs about 180 shillings ($2.14); in outlying
areas, it can cost more. Residents say the decrepit road that connects
Lodwar to the rest of Kenya has contributed to high food costs.
For a trader to travel 300km (186 miles) by bus to Kitale, the first town
south of Turkana, it takes about six hours and costs 1,600 shillings -
approximately what the average Kenyan earns in a week, according to the
<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD> World Bank. "It's very
expensive. When the road is good, the journey would be two to three hours,"
says Michael Emekwi Peikan, 31, who scrapes a living by driving a rented
motorbike taxi.
On Lake Turkana, one of the region's few reliable sources of protein, fish
catches are dwindling. "A lot of people are now engaging in fishing. They
lack proper gear, so are putting a lot of pressure on the shallow waters
that they are able to access," says Billy Kapua, projects manager at Friends
of Lake Turkana, a community-led environmental trust. The shallower waters
are critical for breeding fish. "If the government could scale up support
for fishermen to make the deeper waters accessible, that would help."
An
<http://www.africareview.com/News/Kenya-finds-huge-water-reserve-in-arid-Tur
kana-region/-/979180/1988644/-/81b6m2/-/index.html> aquifer below Turkana,
which raised hopes of drought relief when it was announced last year, will
yield nothing in the short term, Kapua says. There are resources and enough
capacity to bolster the relief effort until the end of September, according
to WFP, but the country could be hit by a severe funding shortfall
thereafter.
Jessica Hatcher reported from Turkana with the assistance of a grant from
the <http://pulitzercenter.org> Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting
MDG : Drought in Turkana, Kenya : Children collect water in dry bed of the
Turkwel river at Kalokol
Kalokol, northern Kenya: children collect water from holes dug in a dry
riverbed. The town's only other water source is a defunct borehole.
Photograph: Jessica Hatcher for the Guardian
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)