More than cows

Guest blogger Jessie Thomson is the emergency response program manager for CARE Canada and recently returned from Kenya, where she was part of the CARE emergency response team. Jessie is travelling back to Kenya this weekend.

In Kenya, there is a saying that when a cow dies in a drought, it dies facing the nearest water point. You’ve likely seen the photos on the news – pictures of cow carcasses laying where they fell on the dry, cracked earth in East Africa. Perhaps you find the pictures shocking or perhaps you barely notice and think, “that’s sad, but it’s just a cow.” For me, it’s not only sad to see an animal that has died trying to reach water and food, but with each death there is a family that was dependent upon that animal for their food and income.

Three men assist a cow to stand up. Due to the shortage of pasture, most cattle in Borana, Ethiopia, are very weak and cannot stand alone. Credit: CARE/Gemechu Dida

I travelled by road to Dadaab, now the world’s largest refugee camp in the world. It’s about an eight and a half hour journey from Nairobi – and the place you start couldn’t be more different than the one you arrive at. After you leave the bustling metropolis of Nairobi, it’s a long journey of increasingly less and less greenery. The closer you get to Dadaab, the drier and less hospitable it gets – and the more the animal carcasses start to appear.

The cow carcasses – one every 100 feet – got to me. I grew up in a small town in farm country. I know what a cow means to a farmer: it’s more than an animal, it’s your livelihood. To lose a cow is to lose your ability to feed and care for your family. For the new refugees arriving at Dadaab, this is the situation they’re in. Many have sold off all their belongings or simply left them behind in order to get to Dadaab where they hope to find help for their family.

Newly arrived refugees from Somalia wait to be registered at Dagehaley camp, one of three camps that make up the Dadaab refugee camp.

I’ve worked in a number of emergency situations, from Haiti to Pakistan, but Dadaab was like nothing I had seen before. People were arriving hungry, many having walked for weeks. They arrive to join thousands other people in a similar situation as them. When new refugees arrive they receive a food ration that is good for 21 days in the reception area.

I was in Kenya to help work on CARE’s emergency strategy. We’re responding now, with life-saving food and water, but we’re also planning activities to help families recover from this crisis and to build resiliency in communities both inside and outside the camps, so that families don’t have to face an emergency like this again in the future.

Defining famine

Across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, a prolonged drought has placed more than 11 million people – most of them children – in need of immediate food assistance. On July 20, 2011, the United Nations declared a famine in two parts of southern Somalia, the Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions. Famine is the highest food security alert level.

We asked CARE’s Stephen Cornish, director of bilateral projects, about what declaring a famine means and what the implications are for CARE’s work.

What does declaring a famine mean?
Basically, it’s the difference between hunger and starvation, emergency and catastrophe. It means there’s a complete breakdown in people’s ability to access food, of the government’s ability to provide and protect, of family support systems and other safety nets. People have no access to food, no ability to grow food, no livestock and no livelihood. In desperation people sell off their assets and uproot from their homes in search of help – they are literally left with no other alternative.

Technically, a famine means that 30% of the population is malnourished, that two people in 10,000 will die per day from the general population or that four children per 10,000 will die per day. In some parts of Somalia, that number is currently at five or six children out of 10,000 dying each day.

How did we get here?
This situation is sadly preventable. Although no one could have said they knew famine was coming, the international humanitarian community knew the area was in a precarious situation. Successive years of poor rain were further compounded by challenges and restrictions on aid in Somalia and the rising cost of food in the affected areas. A famine isn’t like a hurricane or an earthquake, it happens slowly and it is often difficult to see the effects until the crisis is well-underway. However, there is an early warning system in place and it was sounded at the end of 2010. CARE and our partners in East Africa have been trying to bring attention to the situation; unfortunately humanitarian response appeals have been insufficiently funded.

How does the declaration of a famine change the way the international humanitarian community responds?
The declaration itself doesn’t necessarily change how we respond, but the fact of a famine does. It means we ramp up our response significantly. We’re at a stage where we need to provide emergency life-saving needs, such as food, water, medical treatment and shelter. Many of the children need a medical nutrition program. Many areas outside the famine areas are suffering under a drought crisis and we must also ensure that they are able to access food and water.

Newly arrived refugees from Somalia collect water at a water point that is having water delivered to it by a CARE water truck at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

What are the implications for CARE?
We have scaled up our delivery of life-saving assistance, including emergency food, water and sanitation, as well as protection activities. This means sending our emergency response team to the region and hiring new emergency staff. We are also advocating that a concerted, coordinated response is necessary from everyone.

This isn’t a temporary situation – one rainfall, or even one harvest, won’t see everyone returning to their homes. We need to help people get through this emergency by providing the life-saving support that they need, both those affected by famine as well as those affected by the prolonged drought.

In the mid to long-term, people will need support in rebuilding their lives. They will need assistance with getting livestock and tools so they can develop and later increase their own livelihood. We will want to empower families to be more resilient economically against these situations in the future and to develop their own social safety nets. Our ongoing development programs have done this for tens of thousands of people in the region, but, as a result of the drought, it needs to happen for hundreds of thousands more.

The people affected by this crisis are dignified farmers and livestock raisers who were affected by something beyond their control. We have the capacity to save lives; we just need the resources and funds to do it. I believe we all must act – it’s our duty to ensure things don’t get worse.

For more information on CARE’s work in East Africa, visit care.ca.