In order to keep the smell of death and scavenging hyenas away from their homes, people in drought-stricken northeastern Kenya have been compelled to drag their dead animals to far-off fields for burning.
Mandera County, which is located near Kenya’s borders with Ethiopia and Somalia, has been without rain since May and is already on the verge of experiencing a full-blown water disaster.
Tawakal village resident Bishar Maalim Mohammed, 60, told AFP, “I have lost all my cows and goats, and burned them here.”
The lone surviving bull in his village, where the majority are pastoralists who mostly depend on their livestock, is unable to stand. As his owner looks on helplessly, he has been lying in the same location for about a week, terribly dehydrated and with bones poking through his skin.
The artificial watering hole in the neighboring village of Banissa, which previously housed 60,000 cubic meters of water, is now dry, leaving a desolate area that kids have transformed into a playground.
Goat, cattle, and camel herds now have to walk up to 30 kilometers (20 miles) to the closest drinking well in Lulis village, where they must compete for the last of the water that authorities are restricting.
“We are in a very bad state. This water will be finished in two weeks,” stated 40-year-old local resident Aden Hussein.
With rainfall two-thirds below average during the October–December short rains, almost two million people in 23 Kenyan counties are experiencing growing food insecurity.
Nine counties have been placed on notice by the National Drought Management Authority, and Mandera County is at the “alarm” phase, which is just one step away from an official emergency.
According to a recent report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, between 20 and 25 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia require humanitarian food help, with over half of them experiencing drought.
In Tawakal, Maalim Mohammed declared, “Our children are the next ones who are going to die.”
No milk at all The paediatric ward at Banissa’s major hospital is overflowing with very malnourished children, some of whom are coming from neighboring Ethiopia.
Eight children with severe malnutrition were observed by AFP during a recent visit, including a 32-month-old girl weighing barely 4.5 kg and another kid who had been readmitted after returning to a home without meals.
According to hospital nutritionist Khalid Ahmed Wethow, “children are not getting an adequate diet because of this drought. They depend on camel and goat milk, but there is no milk at all now.”
There are just eight tins of therapeutic milk left in the hospital’s pediatric ward, which was supposed to run out this week. The hospital serves about 200,000 people.
The unit relies on donations from organizations like the World Food Programme, but it hasn’t gotten any supplies in six months due to Western nations cutting aid expenditures during the previous year.
The Kenyan government and humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross have stepped up their efforts to provide food, water, and financial support, but they claim they are unable to meet the demand.
attempted to flee
In a desperate attempt to find grass, Bishar Mohamed, who was unrelated to the first villager, drove his herd of 170 goats across 150 kilometers. Along the route, about 100 people perished, and the remainder perished after he got back to Hawara village.
Standing in a field where his goats’ carcasses were stacked, he told AFP, “We have tried to escape in search of better places and failed.” “We are thirsty, my head hurts a lot, and I’ve been walking.”
Headteacher Ali Haji Shabure told AFP that enrollment at a nearby school in the surrounding village of Jabi Bar has decreased by more than half.
According to Shabure, “only 99 children are in school; the majority have left with their parents.”
If there are any more rains, they won’t arrive until April.
“May God save them” is the only hope Bishara Maalim, a mother of ten in Hawara, has for her kids.
