“Our Goats are our Gardens” – Evening Herald

March 24th, 2006

LOKICHAR, KENYA – Ekiru Lotiayan walked for two days with his herd of 35 goats just to reach this dried-up river bed near Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district.

He points to a mountain on the horizon. “That is my home. My family wait there for me to come back”, he tells us.

We have been suffering with the hunger for many years. In Turkana, we have not had proper rains for two years. Our animals are dying. And we are suffering. We need our animals to live. We have no other way.”

This part of northern Kenya is home to 600,000 people, out of an estimated 11 million people across eastern Africa that are affected by drought and food shortages. 3.5 million of those are in Kenya, east Africa’s wealthiest country. Elsewhere, 2.6 million Ethiopians and 1.7 million Somalis are vulnerable.

The area where north-eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and Ethiopia share borders is especially badly affected. Lack of infrastructure, remoteness, marginalisation, and insecurity combine to not only undermine local people’s ability to deal with the harsh landscape and arid conditions, but hinder whatever aid effort can be mounted.

Ekiru’s goats scrimmage around a freshly-dug pit in the riverbed. After cutting 7 feet into the surface, the underground water welled up. Now a 10 foot X 7 foot pool of brown stagnant water is lapped-up avidly by the thirsty animals. (more…)

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Even Camels Thirst Here – Irish Examiner

March 24th, 2006

On the road between Lodwar and Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district, we met a woman carrying 15 litres of water in a container balanced on her head.

She got the water she carries from a borehole further along the road. It is shared between around 100 families. And with the water table depleted, the water must be rationed. Moreover, the water she brings will be given to animals as well as her family. It will not go far.

It is an onerous task in any circumstances – but ordinarily Turkana women would not stop to rest while ferrying water even on the 7 mile roundtrip she is making.

It is now evening, and Esther is tired, weakened by months of not having enough food, and as she says;
“We don’t know if we will have enough food, there is not enough water.”

Here, where people’s lives are inextricably bound to their animals, no water means no food.

She adds, “Our animals are dying and they are our food and our livelihood. Without them we are nothing”

With 5 rings around her neck in the Turkana style, Esther is – or was – deemed well-off by local standards. (more…)

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Drought, disaster loom – ISN

March 21st, 2006

Simon Roughneen in Turkana, Kenya

The failure of the long rains in late 2005 has left at least 11 million east Africans vulnerable to a severe drought and debilitating food shortages. As animals die due to lack of water and pasture, the people who depend on their livestock for milk, meat, and income are growing hungrier by the day. A region characterised by persistent food insecurity, eastern Africa now faces the real possibility that a famine could devastate its drought-affected areas.

Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya are the hardest-hit countries, with food insecurity also a problem in Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, and Tanzania. Meanwhile, in Sudan and Uganda, over eight million refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) languish in camps, dependent on food aid. (more…)

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Kenya needs reform – RTÉ 5-7 Live

March 13th, 2006

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0313/57live.html

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Cradle of Humanity in Need – The Irish News

March 13th, 2006

KANGAKIPUR, KENYA – “The area is dry, the problem is water – we have none. And when there’s no water, there’s no food”, says Paul Enyang, Chief of Kangakipur, a tiny village 30 miles from the nearest road in northern Kenya’s Turkana District.

To reach Kangakipur, we drove in scorching heat, weaving between the termite mounds and thorn bushes, the sole vegetation still alive in the scorched northern Kenyan terrain, as random camels, whose humps now almost flattened due to lack of water, scatter as the jeep approaches where they forage for whatever bit of scrub they can find.

Dried-up river beds intersected the road as we drove on, at first glance appearing like a regular crossroads on the approach. (more…)

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‘They come at night, sometimes they kill’ – The Irish Times

March 6th, 2006

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2006/0306/1141298078447.html

Letter from Darfur: The Roman philosopher Seneca said “merely to live is an act of courage”. Three years after the onset of the Darfur conflict in Sudan, courage is still needed – and demonstrated – by Darfur’s war displaced.

And courage is still needed by those inside the apparent sanctuary provided by the many large camps for those who were forced to abandon their homes and move elsewhere in their country – internally-displaced people (IDPs) in humanitarian parlance.

The Darfur conflict began militarily in February 2003 when the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) launched attacks on El-Fasher and Golo, further south in Darfur. Protesting at what they saw as marginalisation by Sudan’s central government, the rebels’ initial success incurred government reprisals. (more…)

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Darfur: putting people first – The Voice

February 26th, 2006

While the United Nations’ Security Council ponder options for a UN-led force to take over from the African Union in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, from the comfort of their New York Plaza headquarters, as many as 5,000 people in Darfur are dying every month.

Almost three years to the day since the Darfur conflict began, 2 million people remain displaced, driven from their homes and farms by a government-backed militia known as the Janjawid, and caught in the crossfire between government troops and Darfurian rebel groups. And their plight looks set to worsen with recent fighting forcing aid agencies to suspend their operations on security grounds. The international aid agency GOAL was among the most recent casualties, forced to suspend part of their work in the wake of the tragic death of their nutritionist, Sudanese Hadja Hamid, who was killed in a helicopter crash during an evacuation from the fighting.

And worse, between 200,000-400,000 people are thought to have been killed. Various news, TV, NGO and UN reports and ample anecdotal evidence suggest that rape is commonplace, with hundreds of thousands of Darfur’s women having suffered.

One thing Darfur illustrates is that humanitarian relief cannot be divorced from security and politics. And irrespective of the bigger picture considerations of all actors, on the ground, and internationally, the first consideration for all concerned should be the Darfurian people, upon whom this conflict has exacted a terrible toll.

Naïve as this may sound – given the scale of the human loss so far – putting civilian protection first could potentially provide at least a spring-board for effective dialogue on the politically-divisive issues. (more…)

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Just a few plastic bags to start life again – Metro

January 3rd, 2006

Before the quake, Bagh district was home to almost 500,000 people. Then three out of four homes were destroyed. GOAL was the first NGO into the area, and is working to feed and shelter 10,000 families – almost 100,000 people – mostly at altitudes of 1,500m and higher.

Sorat Ahmed met us on the road from her village of Tengyat, at 1,370m in the Himalayan foothills. Alongside her stood her four daughters, aged from seven to nineteen, with a few plastic bags of clothes and utensils perched on their heads for the long walk ahead.

With the first layers of what will be up to 180cm of snow already on the fields, she is taking her daughters downhill.

The quake destroyed every house in her village, and killed four out of every ten people living there. One of those killed was her husband. The family have had no reliable water since the disaster. The area’s wells and streams have been blocked, covered or obliterated and Sorat has had to send two of her daughters on a 20km round trip every day to get fresh water for drinking and cooking.

Now with winter here, the trek is proving too much. We told her we were getting ready to distribute shelter materials to her village. (more…)

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An aftershock we can prevent – Evening Herald

December 27th, 2005

Since the October 8 earthquake that killed an estimated 73000-80000 people in northern Pakistan, there have been over 2000 aftershocks.

Some have been significant. On Friday December 2, an aftershock strong enough to shake each of the few standing buildings hit Bagh city in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the part of the old princely state of Kashmir now in Pakistan. Then, just last week, a 6.7 magnitude quake in Afghanistan was felt across the entire affected region in northern Pakistan.

There have been about 60 aftershocks between 5 and 6 on the Richter Scale. Strong enough to remind people of the first 7.6 magnitude quake, which left almost 3.5 million homeless, and anxiously wondering whether they would have enough of the right shelter to survive the winter.

An already-traumatised people receive an almost-daily reminder of the thirteen second disaster that wreaked such destruction. Fear adds to fear, and compounds the worries generated by the winter which is already here.

But at least nature can be blamed in its entirety for the destruction and massive loss of life caused by the quake.

Or can it? (more…)

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Christmas shopping in Kashmir – The Irish Examiner

December 23rd, 2005

It’s a familiar scene. Enthusiastic shoppers hurtle from shop to store in a frenzied spate of last-ditch spending. A variety of stalls offering a wide range of items, while pine forests and snow-capped mountains provide a suitably seasonal backdrop to offset the wizening winter chill. The streets are heaving, and laden shoppers load up vehicles with their wares.

To anyone reading this at home, you might think I’m talking about any shopping centre or street in Ireland any day during the past week or two. I’m not.

(more…)

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