Category Archives: East Africa drought

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth (right), is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

It’s the end of an intense eight days across the Horn of Africa.

I’ve seen the impact of the drought and World Vision’s response to save the lives and reduce the suffering of hundreds of thousands of children.

I will carry home with me many images and memories:   Sabina scooping water from a dry river bed in Masaai land; Ralia and her unnamed daughter, born only hours earlier into the dust and drought of north-east Kenya; Fatuma and her daughter, Amina, lost to measles in Dadaab refugee camp; bright eyed Zam Zam recovering from malnutrition in Garowe; and Abdullah, the miracle boy who survived being shot in the head in Mogadishu only to find himself on the edge of survival again in the desperate camps of Buntinle.

Sabina and Justin

As I write this looking down on Somalia from the window of this UN humanitarian flight, I find myself reflecting on that complex, tragic yet hardy country.   In Puntland, we’ve met just a few of the 125,000 people displaced by drought and conflict.  I’ve seen that these numbers are growing daily.  Yet they are only part of what may be between one and two million of Somalia’s eight–ten million people that are on the move – fleeing from famine and war.

Imagine one in every five or six families in our own country homeless and on the run; how would we cope?  Yet these people are fleeing not to comfort but into other areas that are already desperately drought affected themselves – whether north within Somalia to Puntland, or west into Ethiopia and north-east Kenya.  Somalia was already one of the poorest countries of the world and simply does not have the resources to cope.  Ethiopia and Kenya have more, but nowhere near enough.

Zam Zam, 18 months, with her mum, Layla

This drought was underway well before the world woke up to it with the media attention in July.  It’s likely to continue and get worse over the weeks ahead.  Just this week, a sixth area of Somalia was officially declared as famine.  With what I’ve seen here it would be no surprise if Puntland follows and north-east Kenya too, and my colleagues tell me similar from parts of Ethiopia.

It’s over 20 years since I started working in places like this, from drought ravaged west Africa in the late 1980s, to cyclone devastated Bangladesh in 1991, to war torn Cambodia in the early 1990s.  Over the last few years I’ve helped lead World Vision UK in responding to the Asian Tsunami, earthquakes and floods in Haiti and Pakistan.  Each emergency has its own stories of tragedy, hope and courage.  In its geographic scale and chronic long term needs this drought in the Horn of Africa is as bad as anything I’ve seen.

World Vision’s response is impressive, seeing the local and international teams here scale up across three countries to reach 2.5 million people in need, and at the same time work with communities to find long term solutions that will help children like Zam Zam, Abdullah and Sabina not to face this again as they grow up.

As I return home to the UK tonight, my hope and my prayer is that the world will not forget, that we will not let our hearts grow cold to the incredible suffering here, which we can do something to change. 

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth, is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

Today was a day of tears.   Tears of Zainab as she wept, telling me: “I’m displaced, I’m pregnant, I don’t know where my husband is, I have nowhere to sleep, I feel like dying.” Zainab arrived here two months ago having fled Mogadishu, where her six-year-old son, Abdullah, was shot in the head amidst the violence and war.  Miraculously, Abdullah survived and after surgery has recovered sufficiently so that a scar and breathing difficulties are all that visibly remain.  The trauma though must run deep, and now they have been thrust from the frying pan into the fire of this new camp for displaced people in Buntinle.

Justin meets six-year-old Abdullah

We met hundreds of the 10,000 people in camps here living in real squalor without any of the international assistance that those in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya have had.  No food distributions, empty bone dry water tanks, no tents or other help with shelter.

Today, after a week in the Horn of Africa it was crystal clear to me that Puntland has been forgotten by many amidst this overwhelming emergency.   It’s not been forgotten by World Vision.  As I arrived in the camp this morning, I met three-year-old Mohamed receiving the nutritious Plumpy’nut therapeutic food for malnourished children. He was also getting vaccinated against measles so that he avoids the tragic fate of Amina, whose mother I met last week in Dadaab.

A child's arm is measured to identify the level of malnutrition

World Vision health staff had already weighed and measured 55 children by the time I got there this morning, ten of whom were acutely malnourished.   To meet the challenge here though, World Vision and others need to scale up our aid even more than we’ve done already.  Today alone we’ve agreed a range of new projects that will not only provide water to displaced people, but will combat drought long term by retaining precious rain water when it comes, rather than 80% being lost as it runs off down the hard dry river beds.  We saw one such project that World Vision’s already completed near Kalabeyr village where local leader Abdul Ghani told me how 700 families who’ve lost more than half their camels, goats and sheep to the drought would benefit from their new dam.

It was also a day of tears for me and for several of my World Vision colleagues.  Despite having been through disaster and poverty over many years in many places, it’s impossible not to be touched and troubled by the harrowing scenes we saw today.

Abdullah and Mohamed were just two of so many children we met today facing hardship that few of us could imagine let alone bear.  Fateh, a four-year-old girl paralysed from birth.  Subeyr, a nine-month-old boy with a misshaped head.  Both of these due to poor or non-existent care for their mothers through pregnancy and childbirth.  Hasteexo Abdullahi , a 12-year-old girl paralysed down her entire right side.  And there were more.  Within a few short hours today we encountered not just hunger and sickness but disability, trauma and mental illness – the deeper scars of chronic poverty, of repeated drought, of war and a country that just cannot provide the basics of life.

Children are still able to smile, despite all they've been through

As we left Buntinle, I prayed for those I’d met.  Today’s scenes made me think of the sick and the troubled that Jesus welcomed and reached out to, no matter how overwhelming.  At times like these, difficult as they are, it is just such a privilege to work for World Vision and play a small part in making a difference in the lives of so many precious people, each created in God’s image.  I cannot think of a better way to demonstrate God’s love.  I am also glad that my heart and others can still be touched, as World Vision’s founder Bob Pierce put it: “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”

The day I can’t feel that is the day to give up my job.

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth, is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

A wind as hot as a hair dryer greeted us as we stepped off the plane here for my first day in Somalia.

Somalia is renowned for pirates, war and famine, all of which are in evidence here, but what struck me as much as anything today is the intelligence and resourcefulness of the Somali people.

Layla, only 24 years old, a mother of five and pregnant with a sixth, fled to Garowe all the way from Mogadishu (almost 1,000 kilometres south from here) just three months ago. Her youngest child, 18-month-old Zam Zam, arrived severely malnourished. Local World Vision staff met her here amidst thousands of displaced people a few weeks ago and have helped Layla begin Zam Zam’s recovery to health, providing sachets of  nutritious Plumpy’nut, which we use worldwide to combat acute child malnutrition.

Layla, 24, with 18-month-old Zam Zam

Beautiful , bright eyed little Zam Zam has gained weight and Layla told me that after she gives Zam Zam the Plumpy’nut each morning and evening, “she has more energy”, but that “she’s still too weak to stand up”.

Surrounded by the press and hubbub of woman and children in this crowded camp of displaced people, I’m struck at the contrast with Dadaab. Although the numbers are much less here, more and more people are arriving each day and there is little sign of the many agencies bringing relief that I saw in Dadaab.

I’m in Puntland, one of the three major parts of Somalia, one that’s all too often forgotten despite the fact that it’s doing a pretty good job trying to forge stability in this, the world’s most famous “failed state”. We discussed this with the Vice-President here, a frank and constructive dialogue on what the government, World Vision and other agencies can and should be doing about the drought.

Like other places I’ve visited over the last week, drought is nothing new here. It’s been here all too often in recent years and what’s most needed is long term solutions, especially water.

Justin surveys makeshift homes in Puntland

World Vision’s programme in Puntland over the next few years has water at its heart – not just the provision of boreholes but innovative ways of helping the pastoralist communities preserve the water they do get from the occasional rains.

Simple earth-built structures can check the flow of water so that it’s absorbed into the soil rather than running away, leaving behind erosion and little benefit.

We’ve got a great team here – a mixture of local Somalis and expatriates drawn from across Africa and beyond. It’s quite a life for them in this remote place, living in the same compound as our office. Security is a daily concern, with close monitoring and strict procedures for communications and travel.

This small town seems deceptively quiet with its neat blue and green roofed houses, quietly atmospheric as the Muslim call to prayer echoes around the mosques as the sun sets. The armed guards are a reminder of the risks though, as was the news this weekend of over 20 killed in fighting not too far south of here. We’re headed in that direction in the morning, security allowing.

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth, is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

An overwhelming day in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, finding both tragedy and a resilient spirit amongst the nearly half a million Somali people there.

Amidst this mass of human suffering and humanitarian response, the stories of individual children, women and men still reach through powerfully.   The first person I spoke to this morning, at a distribution of World Vision family kits, was Fatuma.  She told me how she had walked for a week with her five children to get here just three weeks ago.  The journey took a tragic toll.  Her five-year-old daughter Amina had measles and in the chaos and confusion of those first few days waiting to be registered and housed in Dadaab, Amina died.   With countless such stories here it’s understandable that relief workers here monitor ‘mortality rates’ with a red flag if they exceed two per 10,000 per day.  That is still nearly 100 like Amina dying each day.

Fatuma, 32, and her daughter, Absa, two

It’s hard to know what to think, say or do in the midst of this.  Yet Fatuma is determined to make a life for herself and her remaining four children, as she told me with her youngest girl, two-year-old Absa, on her hip, opening up the kit of cooking pots, soap, buckets, blankets and mosquito net with real excitement at the prospect of making a new home.  I helped her carry this to the bus outside the registration area to take her there, and later we went to see the tents that World Vision and ShelterBox supporters have helped us provide to give 5,000 families like Fatuma’s a home.

Dadaab is a vast spread of tents and makeshift shelters amidst clouds of dust and thorn trees blowing in the wind.  There are over 430,000 refugees surviving here and with over a thousand more arriving each day it’s an almost impossible task to meet this scale of human need.

A ShelterBox tent that can house a family

Dadaab has been here for 20 years or so, but has doubled in size over the last year due to the famine and war in Somalia.   As we drove for 20 minutes through one small part of Dadaab to the newly expanded Ifo camp we past thousands upon thousands of domed tents and shelters – it’s easy to see that this is now one of the largest cities in Kenya.

This demands, and is getting, a huge international response, with an array of organisations working together tirelessly to set up and manage the camps, provide food, water, shelter, health, education and more.   I met with UNHCR (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees), the World Food Programme, the Kenyan government’s Department for Refugee Affairs, and saw many other agencies at work.   Clement, who works with one of World Vision’s partners in Dadaab, the Lutheran World Service, told me that “working here, a month feels like a year”. I can easily believe it.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it. As my friend Steve, who’s worked with World Vision in emergencies for 20 years, said: “None of us have”.

Dadaab refugee camp, where World Vision has set up 5,000 emergency tents

My next stop is into Somalia itself.   Despite the horror of famine and war there, the Somali people  seem to have an unquenchable spirit, as one woman who’d had her home in Mogadishu burned down told me today: “I’m appealing to the whole world to remember us and help us.   We really love our country and I will be one of the first to go back once we have peace and no more famine”.

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth, is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

A day full of the dust of drought here in the parched north east of Kenya.  After three years without rain the impact of the drought here is far more damaging and dramatic than in the south yesterday.  From dead cattle along the road to abandoned villages and dried up water points, from a vulnerable newborn baby to the hubbub of hundreds of women and children receiving food aid, it’s been a day full of powerful images.

The image I’ll most remember from today is the baby girl who as yet has no name, being only hours old as we met crouched in her small dark rounded house made of thorn trees and mats.  Her mother Ralia is only 24 years old, exhausted and poorly nourished having brought her fourth child into the world only months since trekking to this small town after their family’s livestock had died.

Ralia's as yet unnamed baby daughter

World Vision has been here long before and will be here long after this drought has faded from the headlines, helping children like Ralia’s daughter not only survive but thrive in this harsh, marginal environment.

I also met Ahmed, a six year old boy, whose mother Suldana was thankful for World Vision’s support in getting medical treatment for Ahmed following an injury to his eye.  Nutrition though is a serious challenge for mothers and their children here.  Over 30% of children under five are acutely malnourished.  Suldana told me: “We used to have milk and meat but since we came here it’s only rice and beans and some days we go without anything.”

Ahmed (right), six, received medical treatment for an eye injury

It was back in December that stories like these brought community leaders to see Jacob, World Vision’s programme manager here.   Jacob told us how these proud ethnic Somali local leaders literally cried: “We are dying without water, please help us.” World Vision responded by adapting its programme to the deteriorating situation and for over six months has trucked water to over 7,000 families.

Added to that is food distribution which we witnessed today, with rice, beans, oil and salt distributed to 525 vulnerable families.  Still, World Vision has the long term firmly in sight, now moving from providing water to establishing boreholes and rehabilitating dried up traditional water points, with plans to tap an underground water source for irrigation just like we saw yesterday in the south of Kenya.

Justin helps Shaley, a widow and mother of nine, to carry a bag of rice

Children are also vulnerable to the indirect effects of drought.   I met Shaley, a widow and mother of nine children, and helped her carry a 50kg bag of rice from the distribution.  She told me how she wasn’t able to support her 15-year-old son Mohamed to go to secondary school as they had no more animals to sell to pay the fees.   What a contrast with my own family, where our younger children, Maia and Luke, will no doubt be grumbling about going back to school next week in the UK.

So, it’s been a fascinating day, from the moment the little eight seater plane brought us into this desert-like area this morning to hearing the incredible stories of our local World Vision staff over dinner this evening.  Tomorrow will be different again – as we head 100 miles south to Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, full of Somalis fleeing the famine.

World Vision UK Chief Executive, Justin Byworth (right), is in the Horn of Africa, where drought is endangering the lives of some 13 million people.

The start of my week in the Horn of Africa was a full on day of meetings in comfortable Nairobi, Kenya, the hub of the international community’s response to the drought across the region.

It was Eid ul Fitr on Wednesday – the feast marking the end of the Muslim holy time of Ramadan – and so a national holiday in Kenya.

It’s good to help get my head around the complex causes and ever changing dynamics of this emergency, wrestling how best to meet immediate humanitarian needs in some very tough places while also addressing deep seated chronic issues.   Fascinating discussions through the day and evening on everything from humanitarian principles to politics, from security to spirituality.   Impressive local, regional and global World Vision colleagues leading our response across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and impressive too was the head of the UK government’s (DFID’s) response and longer term aid programme to Kenya and Somalia.

The next day, I spent a wonderful day visiting World Vision projects in southern Kenya.  In the sparse, dry savannah amidst the heartlands of Maasai pastoralists who suffered heavy loss of their precious livestock in the 2009 drought are now facing drought again.   Most are coping though and we saw the real difference that long term development can make to communities’ ability to withstand drought.

Sabina, 12, spends up to five hours a day scooping water from a dry river bed

The cost to children and their families’ tough search for water in this harsh dry environment was  powerfully clear as we met Sabina, a 12-year-old girl huddled over in a small hole dug out of the bottom of a dry river bed.  Sabina was scooping out water into plastic bottles for her family’s drinking water. She told me how she spends up to five hours a day doing this.  A far cry from how my own 12-year-old daughter, Maia, spent the day at home in England.

Sabina is full of hope though; she is sponsored, attends a nearby school which World Vision helped establish and although since her father died she’s looked after only by her mother, she has set her hopes high.  She told me she wants to be a pilot when she grows up and wanted to study hard to get there.  I’ll think of Sabina tomorrow as we fly north to see some of the worst drought affected areas.

In Mashuru, one of the 15 drought affected areas where World Vision’s been working long term in Kenya, we saw the transforming power that water can have.  In one village, with World Vision and government help, the community now has a deep borehole pumping out water that supplies cattle, health centre and school.   Their cattle can survive the drought and women, men and children have much more of that precious resource – time, which in turn means their 1,500 children are in school, while their mothers and fathers can strengthen their families’ living.  Like James who is now studying community development and wants to “help my community take the next step forward”.

Justin scoops water from a giant borehole that provides for nearly 2,000 people and their livestock

This is a far cry from the last drought in 2009 when they told us “it was terrible, many livestock died, we got sick, children couldn’t go to school and many of us migrated to Nairobi”.   Today the biggest challenge they spoke of was of animals from the nearby wildlife conservation area breaking the fence which guards their new water point.  I saw the physical evidence of this as I was shown first zebra, then giraffe and then elephant dung and followed big, fresh elephant footprints from last night through the dust.

Our final stop of the day was to see a verdant green vegetable garden and greenhouse in the midst of the red dust and thorn trees.   With drip fed irrigation from a water tank fed by piped water originating from far off Mt.Kilimanjaro, the villagers proudly showed us their crops of tomatoes, spinach, kale, pumpkins and newly planted orange trees.   “We’ve had five harvests of tomatoes, each one 21 crates full, and earning us 1,000 shillings (£6.50),” they told us.   The fruits not only of four kms of pipes and a water storage tank from World Vision, but of their own hard work as a community to tend the gardens and maintain the water supply.

Drought affected families are able to grow and sell tomatoes, thanks to a water project

The economic benefits are clearly helping them survive the harsh conditions, but they also told us how it’s improved their nutrition, especially for the children. “We used to eat only milk, blood and meat, but now we find that adding vegetables to our traditional Maasai diet is not only tasty but good for us,” they said.

After an enjoyable dinner catching up with my old friend Girma who leads World Vision’s work here in Kenya it’s time for bed before our early start in the morning to head up towards the heart of the drought in the north east of the country.