Drought leaves trail of death
2006-02-10 13:42
Arbajahan - The gut-wrenching stench of rotting flesh hangs in the air in this remote northeastern Kenyan village, where the putrefying carcasses of cattle are a testament to a searing drought that threatens millions with starvation across east Africa.
It last rained here 14 months ago, but those showers were fast swallowed by the thirsty soil and there was now little, but dust and dead animals covering the parched earth, leading to widespread fears of human famine.
Mohammed Yusuf, a 28-year-old herdsman who brought his surviving cattle to a dwindling carcass-infesting watering hole, said: "I had 100 cows four months ago, now I only have 15."
Kenya's worst-hit areas
His emaciated herd jostled for sips of the brown water in troughs surrounded by dead cows in Arbajahan village west of the district seat of Wajir, one of Kenya's worst-hit areas about 500km north of Nairobi.
Yusuf, a father of four, who like many here was counting dead cattle every day and becoming increasingly if not entirely reliant on food aid, said: "We have to walk hundreds of kilometres to get to this watering point."
Yusuf Ibrahim, an official with a local non-governmental organisation supervising relief operations, said: "The land is completely bare, there is no pasture. This drought is completely unprecedented."
Livestock health and mortality were key indicators of human conditions in this region, populated mainly by nomadic pastoralists who were feeling the brunt of the scorching drought.
70% cattle 'already dead'
According to aid agencies that noted that tens of thousands of cattle, goats, sheep and camels had perished because of the drought in recent months, those indicators portend catastrophe.
Brendan Cox of the British charity Oxfam said: "Seventy percent of cattle have already died in Wajir district since the drought began."
The cattle deaths had raised fears of major inter-tribal clashes in the region, where clashes over scarce water and pasture had been exacerbated by the drought.
At least 40 people, mainly children in Kenya's northeast, had died of drought-related malnutrition and associated illness since December and the government had declared a national disaster.
3.5m Kenyans need food
On Wednesday, the Kenyan government and the United Nations appealed for more than $230m in urgent donations to help 3.5 million Kenyans who needed food aid to survive for the next 12 months.
Without the assistance, Oxfam said Kenya would likely face its "worst humanitarian crisis" since independence in 1963, noting that malnutrition rates in some areas were at more than 30%, twice the standard emergency level.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said without immediate donor response to the appeal, it would run out of food by next month. In Arbajahan, the shortage of relief was acute and apparent.
Residents said only 2 000 of the village's 15 000 people were receiving supplies, consisting of 10kg of dry maize and 600g of cooking fat every three months.