There is nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nowhere to graze. The sweltering heat bites through the corrugated iron sheets, making the house without a ceiling an uncomfortable oven. Thirst is killing but the safest drinking water is fifteen kilometers (about 9 miles) away.

 

 


Monica with little sister Agnes
When fifteen-year-old Monica Kimiti leaves school, she has to trek this distance to get water for her family. And she is the only one who is guaranteed a meal during the day, through the World Vision supported school feeding program.

 

 

The environment in the Loodariak area of Kenya, representative of the entire country, is dry. Temperatures soar to over 100 degrees. There is nothing green in the vicinity. Most livestock, including wild animals like antelopes, are too weak to walk.

 

Each waking day this drought spells doom for families like Monica’s. They have sadly watched their precious livestock – source of livelihood for their Maasai community – drop dead, one after the other. This has now left the family destitute and vulnerable.

 

Large families aggravate the grave situation. And none of the parents have any formal employment and are totally dependent on livestock.

 

"We now have three goats and two sheep from an initial flock of twenty goats, twenty five sheep and seventeen herd of cattle," Monica laments.

 

She recalls with nostalgia the good old days when her father would sell off an animal and provide such basic needs as food, and pay for the water from a community project. This is now history for the student at Olepolos Primary School.

 

World Vision Kenya has effectively combated the rampant early marriages in this area, but poverty is a major risk as young girls are tempted to get married so they can be provided for instead of starving to death.

 

Monica says she knows of a girl her age who was driven into marriage by poverty. She married an elderly man.

 

She is grateful that her struggling father has not considered this option, although he has sold part of his land at a throw-away price.

 

In November, Monica’s father dispatched his eighteen-year-old son, Moses – who had his grade twelve national examinations last year – with two surviving cows to search for pasture.

 

“My brother, who is awaiting his examination results, is in Nairobi. I understand he treks from area to area grazing our cows and those of other relatives,” Monica says.

 

She says the grazing in the city violates the government’s by-laws that prohibit livestock in the city centre. This led to his arrest last month. She adds that he was locked up until her elder sister paid the fine. But she also knows that with the only other option is to let their remaining livestock starve to death, which would be disastrous for her family.

 

Monica also notes with regret that several businessmen are capitalizing on the calamity to fleece the people even more, while the government has abandoned its task of providing more water.

 

“Some businessmen are ferrying jugs of water to the very desperate areas and selling them for twenty shillings in an area where people have no money,” Monica says.

 

Monica is hopeful that God will be merciful to the suffering among people and animals and send rain.

 

She describes hunger that has hit the area as the worst form of human degradation, as those starving violate their dignity to access food to survive.

 

“It is very sad that a goat now fetches [two and a half dollars], instead of [forty dollars] before the drought,” she says.

 

Currently, 3.5 million people including 500,000 school-going children in Kenya require emergency food aid. The drought has been persistent for the last six years with five consecutive failed rainy seasons depleting all sources of livelihood.

 

The United Nations and other experts have warned that unless aid comes in now, a human catastrophe is eminent.

 

World Vision is working in these hard-hit areas of Kenya and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa to relieve the suffering. The funds raised by groups participating in the 30 Hour Famine this summer will be applied to US Government grants to help leverage those funds by as much as eight times their impact.