Dateline ACT

Kenya 0306

Thousands in camps in northeastern Kenya in need of assistance

By Caroline Waterman, ACT International

El Wak, northeastern Kenya, March 10, 2006--Outside the town of El Wak, on the Kenya-Somalia border, more than 200 families are living in makeshift camps, waiting for assistance. Four months ago the camp did not even exist.

Everyone in the camp is there for the same reason. They are all pastoralists, and after two years of drought, all of their cattle, sheep and goats have died. Without their livestock, these people have no food or source of income.

The conditions in the camps are terrible. There are no sanitation or health facilities, and the makeshift huts provide little shelter from the sun and dust clouds that sweep across the town.

“We have nothing here,” explains Abdia Mahat, one of the camp’s residents. “We only came here because there is some water, and now we just sit, waiting for someone to help us.”

Abdia walked for three days with her husband and seven children to reach the camp. They arrived in El Wak with what they could carry. They had to leave most of their belongings behind because their donkeys, which would normally carry their things, have died.

Her family used to have more than 100 cows – now they have only three.

When she first moved to the camp, she was able to earn a little money by making and selling charcoal, but now so many people have done this that the women often have to walk for days to find enough wood.

Camps like this one have formed outside of every town and village in northeastern Kenya, and the numbers are increasing everyday.

On March 4, on a visit to El Wak, James Morris, director of the World Food Program, said the situation in this region was as bad as anything he had ever seen.

ACT members in Kenya are responding to the drought through life-saving efforts by providing access to water and food as the situation reaches a crisis stage. They are also addressing longer-term needs to help communities survive future droughts.

Caroline Waterman is communications officer for U.K.-based Christian Aid, a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.