The entrance to Biyamadow, a village in Wajir County in northeastern Kenya, feels like the entrance to hell these days. The scorching heat caused the air to liquefy. On both sides of the road, sometimes you see a dead animal, leaving only bones and dry skin like a deflated balloon.
Ed Ram, a photojournalist and former BBC journalist, encountered a heartbreaking scene: 6 giraffes with emaciated bodies died in a pinched position. The deer were malnourished before dying of thirst. They appeared to have tried to reach a lake in the area, but by the time they got there, it turned out that the lake had also dried up.
Northern Kenya is experiencing one of the worst droughts in its history. Since September last year, rainfall in this area has dropped by 30% year on year.
Kenya Meteorological Department director Bernard Chanzu said the country still occasionally sees scattered storms that bring rain alternating with prolonged dry spells. But now, the storms have not returned.
“We are currently in a drought situation. And that’s not just happening in Kenya, it affects most of East Africa.”, Mr. Chanzu said. “BILLIONThis situation will continue until the end of the year. The previous storms are gone. So the situation is not expected to change much.”
Pets and many wild animals have died
Ibrahim Adow, a resident of Biyamadow village, said: “I’m 72 years old but I’ve never seen anything like this“. Prolonged drought caused the grasslands to die from dryness. Then the cattle did not have enough water and food.
Adow himself has lost more than half of his herd. The rest are also malnourished to the point of being too weak, no longer giving milk, and too thin to sell for meat. “No one wants to buy them anymore“, said Adow.
In the past four months alone, the price of cows has dropped from around 40,000 Kenyan shillings ($357) to KSH 5,000 ($45) a head.
The fate of wildlife in the area is even more tragic. According to The Star, a Kenyan news publication, the drought is threatening the survival of nearly 5,000 giraffes.
Kenya is home to three species of giraffe, including the Maasai giraffe, the Reticulated giraffe and the Nubian giraffe. The total herd of deer in the latest census conducted in August was more than 34,000.
But drought could now threaten the lives of one in seven of them. Giraffes are large animals and have relatively high water requirements to maintain their bodies. Like elephants, this is one of the species that will be affected first by drought.
In 2017, a drought in Kenya also killed 400 elephants. Other smaller wildlife species such as zebras, gerenuks, buffaloes and wildebeest are more resilient.
But the current situation in Kenya shows that they are also dying of thirst. Some wildlife species have had to go beyond protected areas to find livestock pastures and human settlements to find water.
Meanwhile, the farming activities of indigenous people on both sides of the river can prevent some species from crossing the human site to access the water source.
Fred Segor, general secretary of Wildlife Conservation in Kenya, said wildlife in the northeastern part of the country is the population hardest hit by drought. The Kenyan government is still trying to negotiate to resolve the situation. Segor has proposed installing pumps and sprinklers to support wildlife in the area.
Meanwhile, Wildlife field workers are still working to tally the damage and death toll of wildlife, which they hope can prompt the government to act faster.
The next victim is a human
Drought, water shortage and next will be the food crisis. It’s a recipe commonly seen in northern Kenya in recent years. People in Biyamadow village like Adow have grown used to having to eat corn to survive.
They had only corn to wait for the rains to return, to freshen the crops, to fatten up the weak herds, to hide their bones back into their skins to sell for a good price and to settle their financial problems.
But this year it looks like the rain won’t come. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 2020 ranks as the third warmest year ever recorded in Africa.
Estimates suggest that temperatures in this region could rise up to 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. With global warming, extreme weather events will become more and more extreme.
The United Nations predicts this could be the worst drought Kenya has faced in 40 years. The super-drought cycle in this region is getting shorter and shorter, from five to seven years apart, now it happens every three years. This short period of time is not enough for grasslands and bodies of water to fully regenerate and store, making the problem worse.
Zenab Kule, a 25-year-old woman who is 6 months pregnant. But for the past 4 months she and her two children only had corn to eat.
Last month, the United Nations said a possible famine in arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya, including Wajir County. About 2.4 million people struggled to find food in November – up from 1.4 million at the start of the year.
Zenab Kule, a 25-year-old woman who is 6 months pregnant, has only had corn to eat for the past 4 months. Her family has two sons, one and two years old, who also eat only corn and are suffering from diarrhea.
Diarrhea is the first common symptom of malnutrition in children under 5 years of age. They also get sick very easily, says Kule. She fears her youngest child is too weak because he has just recovered from the flu.
Kule himself feels that these days he is often tired and his heart is racing. It could be a sign of dehydration. Faced with life becoming increasingly difficult, Kule said: “THEMy only hope left is for the rains to come.”
But the rains won’t come
To date, more than 465,000 children and 93,000 pregnant and lactating women in northern Kenya are severely malnourished. These are the two most vulnerable groups during the drought period.
According to the indigenous tradition, women will be the ones responsible for fetching water for the family. During the rainy season, wells can be located right in the village. But during the dry season, they have to walk for hours to reach the water source.
Statistics show that the average distance a woman in northern Kenya has to walk to fetch water during the dry season is 14 kilometers. During that time, babies at home will not be breastfed. And the mother herself, having produced little milk on a corn-only diet, is all like a row of dominoes collapsing when the rain doesn’t fall.
Wajir County Health Director Somow Dahir said:Number of cases of severe and moderate acute malnutrition [ở phụ nữ mang thai, cho con bú và trẻ em] reached a three-year high.”
This is a dire situation because about 200 settlements in Wajir do not have medical centers at all.
Many people in Kenya now have only corn to eat and have to walk tens of kilometers every day to get water.
Returning to the hope of rains, Gideon Galu, a meteorologist and field scientist and at the Eastern Africa Climate Hazards Center, said:The outlook doesn’t look good.”
Galu explains that climatic conditions in the Indian and Pacific Oceans – the main factors that contribute to the rainy season in East Africa – are currently unfavorable. According to this prediction, the next rainy season from March to May will also not come. East Africa will continue to face an unprecedented drought of duration and severity.
Half an hour away from Biyamadow village, farmer Aden Gidhayes and his family in Benane village are calculating the amount of food for tomorrow. Cattle, adults and even children will continue to eat corn. Children and livestock receive an additional serving in the morning or evening.
“If the rain doesn’t come, our animals will die, and we will all die too.” Gidhayes said as he raised five fingers to count the cows his family had left.
Consult Businessinsider, Aljazeera
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