Pastoralists starve as drought kills livestock

Over the past two months, Ali Duba, a 49-year-old schoolteacher in Isiolo district in eastern Kenya, has seen his entire flock of 230 sheep and goats die from lack of pasture and water - and his dreams of financial stability along with them. "I had borrowed 200,000 shillings [US $2,780] and invested in buying livestock. After two months, everything has disappeared, and only God knows how I am going to pay the loan," Duba said. High livestock losses due to drought in the mainly pastoralist district have left many families destitute and in need of food assistance. The Kenyan government has distributed food aid to the most vulnerable families in some parts of Isiolo since January 2005. Worsening drought caused by the failure of both rainy seasons in 2005 has aggravated food insecurity in the district, however, and food distribution no longer meets the demand of the local population. "The situation has worsened. Almost everybody is in need of help, but the food aid has not increased," said Habiba Madobe, who lives in Sericho, one of the worst affected parts of Isiolo. A rapid assessment team from the Kenya Food Security Steering Group - which consists of government officials and representatives from donors, United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organisations - visited Isiolo the second week of January and reported that 60 percent to 65 percent of Sericho's estimated 7,000 residents need food aid. On 12 January, several hundred people gathered outside the chief's office in Sericho to receive government rations of about 6 kg of maize per household. The rations, however, were unlikely to solve the worsening problem of malnutrition among children whose parents have nothing else to give them.

Samburu herders look at the skeleton of a cow killed by drought at Ntungai village, Isiolo District.

Abdullahi Gonjobe, the chief of Sericho, said many children had stopped going to school because they had moved with their parents to one of the few areas with water access or because they were too hungry to attend. Only 25 out of 547 pupils enrolled in Sericho Primary School turned up for lessons on 12 January, according to Duba, who teaches at the school. "Most of the pupils are 10 km to 30 km away, where they have gone with their parents to be close to watering points," he said. Gonjobe said he had lost 40 heads of cattle during the past two months. He appealed to the government to quickly buy for slaughter the remaining animals from herders before all the livestock perish. "I am a man of 50 years, and I can tell you I have not seen a drought this severe," said Gonjobe. "The problem has been exacerbated by total overgrazing everywhere, which leads to environmental degradation." He said most of the cattle had died of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, a respiratory disease to which they were vulnerable, mainly because they were weak and emaciated.

A woman receives a ration of maize at drought-ravaged Sericho village, Isiolo District.

At Bandana village in Sericho, fodder and water had become so scarce that villagers were pulling dry grass from the roofs of their huts to feed the calves. Some people had turned to the desperate coping mechanism of making charcoal, which is likely to lead to further environmental degradation. Charcoal sellers now dot the roadsides of Isiolo. "We can no longer depend on livestock," said Beatrice Lenamunyi, a resident of Ntungai village, about 25 km outside Isiolo town. "We sell whatever we can to buy some food. We collect firewood or burn charcoal for sale. Others are selling handmade brooms and other handicrafts to survive." The Kenyan government has a donor-funded Arid Lands Resource Management Programme (ALRMP), whose mandate includes drought early warning and mitigation, but residents criticised the department for doing little to alleviate the problems of populations in areas where rain failure is a common and recurrent problem. "There seems to be a total lack of policy or programmes on the part of the government to address the problem of drought, which is a cyclical phenomenon in this area," said Yusuf Dago, the Isiolo district coordinator of an NGO called Friends of Nomads International. Lordman Lekalkuli, an official at ALRMP's Isiolo office, however, said the department was engaged in many drought-mitigation activities, including borehole rehabilitation, transporting water to those affected and producing monthly drought early-warning reports. Duba said that the government must also take measures to make pastoralists less vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather. "The government needs to have a livestock policy," he said. "There should be a permanent market for livestock." Local herders currently sell their livestock to individual buyers, usually in small quantities at informal village markets. A more formal, centralised agency to serve as a broker for larger livestock transactions would benefit pastoralists in remote areas like Isiolo. According to local news reports, more than 30 people have died of hunger in Kenya during the past two months. Aid agencies report that 2.5 million Kenyans and millions more in the neighbouring countries of Somalia and Ethiopia are suffering from hunger due to severe drought. The forecast for Kenya is not likely to improve: According to the country’s meteorological department, food relief efforts "may need to go beyond December 2006 in some parts of the country."