Hunger

Things are not getting better in the Horn of Africa. In the nearly three months since I visited the region, the landscape has gotten drier, and people and animals have become more desperate for water and food. The forecast for fall rains is mixed at best, and even if the rains come in full force, the drought is so severe that they won’t provide lasting relief.

The drought and famine have slipped from the news headlines. It’s difficult for the media to stay focused on an emergency that’s characterized by a predictable slow squeeze rather than a single, surprising jolt. As public attention has waned, donations have fallen far short of what’s needed.

This lack of attention and donations makes it all the more important for large donors with strategic vision to fill in the gaps. I was happy to recently learn that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded Mercy Corps a $2.5 million grant for our emergency and recovery work in northeast Kenya, where devastating drought has been largely overshadowed by famine and conflict in its neighbor Somalia.

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I met Sangaba Abdi Gullet at Barmil during our cash distribution activities. She looked more distressed than the rest of the beneficiaries. From her face, we could tell she’d been through very tough times.

“Previously my family had 80 camels and 120 goats,” explained Sangaba, who arrived with five grandchildren — all but one under the age of 5. “All that is remaining now are two weak camels.”

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Benti and her family walked for more than 30 days to reach the displacement camp in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, where they now live in this makeshift shelter alongside thousands of others. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

I spent several days visiting the camps in Mogadishu where Mercy Corps is working to provide assistance to people who have been displaced by the famine, as well as years of civil war. There are almost 1.5 million displaced people in Somalia — and one-third of them, almost half a million people, are living in camps in Mogadishu.

Over the past 60 days alone, an estimated 100,000 Somalis — driven by drought and famine — have fled to Mogadishu in search of food, water, shelter and other assistance. Tens of thousands of people are moving in search of assistance and temporarily settle anywhere they can find a little space to set up a makeshift shelter.

For these displaced families, life is that of absolute destitution as they face a myriad of challenges ranging from thirst, hunger, exposure to the harsh sun, severe malnutrition, cholera, disease and more. Tens of thousands of people have already died.

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Halima and her baby Abdulrahman in one of Mogadishu, Somalia's overcrowded hospital. Abdulrahman is suffering from severe acute malnutrition and watery diarrhoea, a symptom of cholera. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

I joined the Mercy Corps team on an assessment mission to Mogadishu, where the drought and famine are taking the greatest toll. I have been responding to humanitarian emergencies with Mercy Corps for nearly a decade and have witnessed terrible suffering — but the situation in Mogadishu is truly the worst humanitarian crisis I have seen.

I visited the hospitals to assess the general conditions and identify how Mercy Corps can assist. What I found was truly heart wrenching. The hospitals are overcrowded and overstretched. Everywhere I looked I saw mothers holding babies sitting on the floor on scraps of cardboard because there are no beds or chairs available. Examination tables completely filled with little babies on IVs with their mothers anxiously watching them, filled with fear that they may die at any moment.

I spent an hour at a large hospital and witnessed three children, all less than four years old, die. Cholera is rampant. On Tuesday the World Health Organisation stated that Mogadishu is now experiencing a cholera epidemic.

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Yesterday my colleague Cassandra Nelson, on the ground in Somalia, sent in several photographs of what she was seeing in Mogadishu, the country's crisis-ravaged capital to which our emergency response team has deployed. Each picture struck me harder than anything has in a long, long time — but the one I'm posting here honestly had me sitting in my chair, quietly sobbing over the unimaginable situation it portrayed.

A young mother cradles her severely malnourished child at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

A young mother sits in a hospital, cradling her excruciatingly fragile-looking baby. It's hard to say how old the little child is. It's plain to see that the baby is critically malnourished and on the brink.

But it's the look on the young mother's face that breaks my heart — because it is such a strong and yet, at the same time, imploring expression. There seems both resolution and deep uncertainty. I wonder where she came from and how she got here. If she has, or had, other children. What I wonder most of all, though, is what happens after the moment within this photograph.

So many photographs I've seen during the ongoing Horn of Africa crisis have made me consider and empathize with the plight of parents in places like Somalia. It makes me think of holding my own son when he was a newborn. At that moment — whether you're a father or a mother — you're immediately and irrevocably imbued with a sense to protect that little life at all costs. Preserve the promise of those little hands and bright eyes. You know that you will fight and do anything you can for your baby.

Parents in Somalia and across the Horn of Africa are in the fight of their lives; they're literally fighting for life. At least 30,000 children have died in Somalia's famine in just the last three months, and all indications are the worst is yet to come. From pictures like these, it might look hopeless, but we can't give up. This woman certainly isn't giving up.

You can see in this young mother's eyes that she's still fighting, despite her own thirst, hunger and fatigue. She's determined to save her baby — and we can help her. We must.

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Eighteen-year-old Saadia Farah and her one-year-old daughter Amina, who are surviving the Horn of Africa's brutal famine with help from Mercy Corps.

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Eighteen-year-old Saadia Farah and her one-year-old daughter Amina, who are surviving the Horn of Africa's brutal famine with help from Mercy Corps. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

At only 18, Saadia Farah is one of the many thousands of mothers that Mercy Corps is helping survive the drought crisis in East Africa.

Her story is hard, but unfortunately far from unique. She lives in the tiny village of Bilil Burbur in northeastern Kenya, in an area scorched by the drought and more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the nearest water source. Her children — one-year-old Amina and three-year-old Abdihakim — were shy, quiet and lethargic at her side as she talked.

“Life is very difficult for us now. The drought has taken everything we had. My husband goes away for weeks at a time with the few goats we have left, to find water and food for them. Sometimes he is gone for a very long time. Mostly I spend all my time just waiting for him to come back and worrying about what we will do. It is very hard.

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Women in Wajir West filling containers with clean water from Mercy Corps. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps' emergency response team in northeastern Kenya is providing fresh, clean water to more than 186,000 people in 33 drought-stricken villages and towns.

Over the last week, we've doubled the number of places in Kenya's Wajir County we're reaching with lifesaving relief. But there are thousands of families displaced across Wajir, desperate for water and other assistance. You can help us reach them.

In order to ease Wajir's worsening water crisis, we're trucking in drinking water, providing free fuel for borehole generators and supplying towns with new water storage tanks. Over the last several days, we've installed six 10,000-liter tanks to store the water we're delivering to villages that haven't had reliable water for weeks.

Mercy Corps water storage tank in place in Wajir South. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

We're also beginning to provide water for families' remaining livestock herds, which are the main source of livelihood and income in this part of Kenya. Throughout the region, families have already lost most of their livestock to the worsening drought.

Our team is working hard to assess and begin other relief programmes, such as food aid to families struggling through the crisis. But with hungry, thirsty populations on the move in search of help — and families crowding into already-poor towns and villages that are already struggling to meet their own needs — the situation grows more desolate by the day.

Please give a donation to help us expand our efforts, find and reach more families trying to survive East Africa's worst crisis in decades. Thank you for your support, and we'll continue to report on our progress.

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Grandmother Halima. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

Once upon a time in northeastern Kenya, there was a huge stretch of land called Wajir. In the language of the people who lived there, that name itself meant ‘Once upon a time...’

Once upon a time, the land in Wajir was green, the rains came often and life was good.

Grandmother Halima, her son, his two wives and their seven children travelled far and wide with their camels, donkeys and more than 300 goats. Though they journeyed many miles and three of Halima’s grandchildren were born unable to walk or talk, they were happy. The children rode on the camels and they all kept moving, never settling in one place and enjoying the freedom to go where they liked. The family had milk to drink and meat to eat and life was good, just as it had been for generations before them.

But then, one day the rains stopped.

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