Focus on poverty, food insecurity in Coast Province

Poor, pregnant and malnourished. These are the three adjectives that best describe Kache Nyoka, a mother of five, who is caught up in the drought that has ravaged Kilifi District in Kenya's Coast Province. Sitting next to the ramshackle mud-and-thatch hut that she calls home, Kache is in deep thought, agonising over what to do about her seven-year old daughter who has been sent away from school because the family cannot afford the ten shillings (US $0.13) that every pupil must contribute to pay the cook hired by the school to prepare meals for the pupils. On the evening of 23 July, Kache was not sure whether she and the rest of the family would have a meal. Her husband had gone into the bush to gather any edible leaves or wild tubers that many families in the Ganze administrative division of Kilifi District have been reduced to eating as food shortages worsen. "Life has been tough during the past three years," Kache told IRIN. "We have been planting maize and harvesting nothing because of inadequate rainfall," she said. Prolonged drought has rendered many subsistence farmers in many remote villages of Kilifi, where employment opportunities are rare and poverty widespread, destitute. "We go into the bushes to look for wood and hope that someone will come and buy it. If nobody comes we go hungry," said Kadzo Chengo, a visibly emaciated mother of seven children. She was reluctant to have her picture taken because she thought people might laugh at her thinness and the rags she wore. The chief of Kauma location in Ganze, Anderson Kahindi, said 4,000 of the area's 8,000 residents had nothing to eat following three seasons of crop failure, and that he had no means to help them cope with the situation. Those without employed relatives to help them are entirely dependent on food aid. "People are surviving on Kigwada [local name for boiled cassava leaves]," Kahindi said. "Malnutrition among many under-fives and breast-feeding mothers is becoming apparent," he added. A school-feeding programme run by the Kenyan government and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) was helping keep many children in school and had prevented higher malnutrition levels. WFP had provided 282 mt of food for an estimated 22,815 pupils in public primary and pre-primary schools in the divisions of Ganze, Vitengeni and Bamba in Kilifi district since the beginning of the current school term in May. The UN food agency provided all the food - maize, beans and vegetable oil - while the Kenya government, through the ministry of education, is responsible for distribution. "For many of the children, the daily meal at school is the only one they can hope for because food has become very scarce in their homes," John Mwatari, the assistant chief of Dzengo sub-location, told IRIN. According to Joseph Kamau Maina, the district officer coordinating government and volunteers' relief efforts in Kilifi, the government has been distributing food aid - mainly maize, beans and vegetable oil - in the worst affected areas since February, but supplies have been inadequate. "We wish we could receive some more (food), but we also do not want to create a dependency syndrome among the people, and we are urging to them to plant drought-resistant crops like sorghum and cassava whenever there is little rainfall, yet they do not have money to buy seeds and farm implements," Maina said. Even the relatively well to do have been seriously affected, Kahindi said. "I had spent 10,000 shillings (about $127) to prepare the land and plant the seeds, but everything dried up when the rains suddenly stopped. I had used my resources to the maximum and I am in a financial crisis, but as a leader I do not want to be seen to be complaining too much because there are many people worse off," Kahindi, who said he had nine dependants, added. Several years of poor rainfall in Kenya and the premature end to the 2004 long rains has hit several pastoral, agro-pastoral and agricultural areas of the country, leading to poor or no harvest. In five of eight provinces, food production is projected to be about 40 percent of what is needed, expected or normal. An intervention plan draw up by the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG) indicates that an estimated 2.3 million people would require a total of 136,000 mt of food for the next six months – August 2004-January 2005. The number of those affected could increase up to 3.3 million if the short rains in October-December are inadequate. Estimated relief food needs in the country would exceed resources available and the Kenyan government has already appealed for international help. On 14 July, President Mwai Kibaki appealed for $76 million to fund emergency relief operations for the 3.3 million people affected by the drought, saying crop failure amounted to "a national disaster". Kibaki said that 1.5 million of those affected were primary school children, who would be fed through school feeding programmes, which require 9,500 mt of food at an estimated cost of $2.1 million. Non-food items for the school feeding programmes would cost another $2.9 million. The worst-affected areas were in the Coast, Eastern, North Eastern and Rift Valley provinces, according to a consolidated inter-agency report prepared by the KFSSG, a multi-agency team comprising representatives from the Kenyan government, the UN and NGOs.