Food shortages force coastal residents to eat wild roots

Dick Ngome, 60, sits forlornly in his homestead in Mtaa village of Kwale District, one of the areas seriously affected by drought in Kenya's Coast Province. "We have harvested little during the past four years, and this year our crops withered and dried up a few weeks after planting," Ngome told IRIN on Thursday. "The flour to make this meal was donated to us by well-wishers yesterday, but many are the days we have gone without food," said Ngome, whose livestock trade business collapsed due to a lack of money. On days when the Ngomes had absolutely nothing to eat, younger members of the family of 30, including his sons, their wives and children, would go to the bush to look for the roots of a plant known locally as mtungulu, he said. The tubers are then pounded into paste, dried and the powder used to make porridge. "It is a daily struggle for survival," said Luvuno Zuma, a 34-year-old mother of six married to one of Ngome's sons. She said she had feared the situation would get worse when she decided to sell all her remaining chickens and goats at a loss to feed her children. The under-fives did not go to school and therefore could not benefit from a school-feeding programme launched by the government in the district, she added. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has estimated that food production in five of the country's eight provinces will be about 40 percent of what is required this year, while drought conditions in pastoral areas have rendered nearly a million people severely food-insecure. Aggravating the situation are findings that government grain reserves, as well as stocks from UN agencies are contaminated by aflatoxin, a poisonous mould rendering staples unfit for human consumption. UN relief agencies will soon be appealing for international aid on behalf of the Kenyan government, which has already declared the shortages a "national disaster". WFP reportedly plans to ask for food aid within the next few days, while UNICEF is responding to concerns over health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is also consolidating requests for agricultural and livestock assistance. Kwale District Commissioner Fred Mutsami told IRIN there had been a "total" crop failure in the Kinango, Sambulu and Lunga Lunga divisions of the district. He said the government had been carrying out general food distributions in Kwale since October 2003, but stocks were inadequate. The government was distributing 5,000 bags of maize to an estimated 191,000 people in Kwale every month instead of the required 21,000 bags, he said, adding that the district had an estimated population of 500,000 people. "But ours is just general food distribution, and we are appealing to aid agencies to come forward and help us carry out targeted distribution, which is more effective," said Mutsami. The Kenya Red Cross Society had helped distribute food donated by companies and individual donors a week ago, Abdulhussein Molu, the chairman of the society's Mombasa branch, told IRIN. On 14 July, President Mwai Kibaki appealed for US $76 million to fund emergency relief operations for some 3.3 million people affected by drought. He told reporters in the capital, Nairobi, that the situation could worsen if the short rains expected towards the end of the year also failed, in which case the number of affected people would rise to 4.3 million and the cost of relief operations would soar to about $90 million. Help for the affected people will be offered through general food distributions, food-for-work schemes and supplementary feeding programmes, according to the text of the government appeal for food aid. Non-food drought recovery measures to be undertaken in agriculture, livestock, water, sanitation and health would cost an additional $32 million, the president added. The worst-affected areas are in the Coast, Eastern, North Eastern and Rift Valley provinces, according to a consolidated inter-agency report prepared by the Kenya Food Security Steering Group, a multi-agency team comprising representatives from the Kenyan government, the UN and NGOs.