Kenya's inmates feed the starving
2006-01-01 14:03
Nairobi - Thousands of prisoners skipped their annual New Year's lunch on Sunday and instead sent the food to hundreds of thousands of Kenyans affected by food shortages, a senior prison official said.
Most of Kenya's estimated 50 000 prisoners gave up their ration of beans and stiff porridge made from corn on the day that President Mwai Kibaki declared the food shortages a national disaster in a bid to speed up relief efforts.
"In the next six months, up to 2.5 million of our people will be in need of famine relief. This represents close to 10% of the country's population," Kibaki said during new year celebrations. "To ensure that we have adequate interventions on the ground, I am declaring the famine a national disaster."
Prisoners wanted to help after watching images of starving Kenyans on TV, reading about food shortages in newspapers and discussing the situation with visiting relatives and among themselves, said John Isaac Odongo, the commandant of Kenya's prison staff training college.
People detained in Kenya's 93 prisons "move about when they are taken to court and this is how the ideal of skipping a meal was spread," Odongo told The Associated Press.
"As human beings, they also feel like other Kenyans ... They asked themselves can they forgo one meal in a lifetime for the sake of other Kenyans? The answer was that will not even affect their health," Odongo said.
Kenya need $153m for food
Initial estimates show that Kenya needs about 11 billion shillings (US$153m) to provide emergency food to victims of drought. More money is needed to provide water to people and animals, education, health care, seeds to farmers in preparation for the next crop season and restocking livestock, Kibaki said.
Officials are trying to determine how much money would be saved in the prisons, Odongo said.
Convicts at the Naivasha Maximum Security Prison said the food shortages also affect their relatives.
"Those suffering out there are our brothers and sisters and we need them once we get out of this place," said One James Kamutu, who was sentenced to death.
Drought has also triggered food shortages in neighbouring Ethiopia and Somalia, a country that has had no effective government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1994.
More than one million Ethiopian cattle herders face extreme food shortages after the failure of rains that normally replenish water sources and sustain livestock through the dry season.
In anarchic Somalia, where about two million people need humanitarian aid, drought has affected its southern region, leading to increases in admissions of severely malnourished children to therapeutic feeding centres there.
Associated Press reporter Anthony Gitonga in Naivasha, Kenya, contributed to this report.
- SAPA