Kenya: Hoping for rain

A scorched landscape. Famished people, malnourished children, dead animals. No fictional scenario, but reality in large parts of Kenya. Increasing aridity, poor rainy seasons, low harvest yields – these are things which the inhabitants of the East African country have already had to live with for a long time. But it hasn’t been this bad for decades: between six and ten million Kenyans have little drinking water, and four million don’t have enough to eat any more, and are reliant on aid. The country’s small farmers and herdsman are particularly hard hit. They still hadn’t recovered from the last drought in 2006.

After three years without any rainfall to speak of, now even wide rivers have dried up. Due to poor harvests, the prices of the scarce foodstuffs have risen sharply, and the basic foodstuff, maize, costs twice as much in many places, and has therefore become unaffordable for poor families. In some regions, over 20 percent of the children under the age of five are acutely malnourished.

For animals too, the lack of water and grass is being dramatically highlighted. In normal times, the cattle are the main asset and the pride of the nomads, above all of the Masai. A number have already died, and those that remain are a pitiful sight. Desperate herdsmen are even driving their emaciated cattle right into the suburbs of the capital, Nairobi, in the search for a few blades of grass in the ditches by the roadside.
The situation is very critical above all in the district of Kajiado in the South of Kenya. Half of its 520,000 inhabitants, who belong to the Masai ethnic group, are suffering from chronic poverty. The level of malnutrition amongst children is one of the highest in Kenya.

Here, as in the districts of Makueni and Mwingi, Welthungerhilfe has already been successfully working for several years alongside the local population. The construction of rainwater collectors and tanks in schools, and the repair and building of wells, go some way towards helping them to get through future droughts better. Cisterns which have been built as part of an extensive project for collecting rain water on rock plateaux are filled during the acute emergency period using tanker lorries. This enables the people to keep themselves and their cattle alive, because the situation could get even worse over the weeks to come. Even if the coming rainy season marks a return to normal, it will take years before the farmers and nomadic herdsmen can manage to feed themselves from their own resources.

For the work they contribute towards the building of further dykes, wells and water tanks, the inhabitants receive food and some money to tide them over the immediate emergency. After years of recurring droughts they have neither stockpiles nor savings which they could fall back on.

All the measures are accompanied by training sessions on the correct use of drinking water and on how to avoid illnesses. The inhabitants form water committees, which are responsible for distributing the water fairly and for maintaining the water structures. And they hope that it rains soon.