Water/Sanitation

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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PORTLAND, Ore. – The global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps and ITT Corporation (NYSE:ITT) today announced the next stage of their multi-year partnership: risk reduction programs in six developing countries where people are particularly vulnerable to water-related disasters.

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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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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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These children are a five-hour walk from the nearest water source. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

These are the children of Qaraa. Covered in dust, thin and dazed, they are on the brink.

They and their families were once nomads, travelling with their animals from place to place. But two months ago they stopped where they found themselves, eight miles from the nearest water point on a dusty roadside, because they couldn’t continue any longer.

The last of their cattle and camels had died. They were too weak to continue and simply had no place else to go. They stopped out of desperation, abandoning the only life they knew, with no means to provide for themselves and no alternative.

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This was a small lake that served the water needs of families and their livestock — now it's mostly dried up.

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Earlier this week in Ethiopia's drought-hit Somali Region, I saw a small boy kneel and drink from what was left of a pond. I'd been talking all day with local people about the major shortage of water across the area, but it was only when I saw this boy — covered in dust and drinking what I'd thought of only as mud — that the reality of the crisis really hit me.

This was a small lake that served the water needs of families and their livestock — now it's mostly dried up. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

I've since learned that this boy was one of the lucky ones. Many more across East Africa face the months ahead without even dirty water to drink. Rains have barely touched the land here since the middle of last year, and aren't expected again until October.

It's made worse in parts of Gashamo District, where I have been, because there are no natural underground water sources to make wells or boreholes when rains fail. People survive by catching rain in big pits, and save it through the dry months to keep them, their families and their animals going. But now, as two consecutive rains have barely appeared, these pits are drying up — and there's still two months until there's any hope of more rain.

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