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Kenya: Rains Come Too Late for Lamu Villagers Hard Hit By Famine
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The Nation (Nairobi)
COLUMN
15 May 2008
Posted to the web 15 May 2008
Mathias Ringa
Nairobi
Our journey to Bargoni village in Lamu District, about took us seven agonising hours.
Buffalo, warthogs, dik diks and baboons occasionally darted across the battered murram road from the lush vegetation on either side.
But before we reached our destination, 370 kilometres north of Mombasa, the skies opened and bucketfuls of rain began to fall.
As we pulled up at the village, some grass-thatch huts came crumbling down, the downpour seemingly too heavy for them.
We decided to take shelter at one of the nearby huts as dozens of emaciated villagers mobbed us, some shoving their empty baskets at us.
"Have you brought us food because some of us are almost starving to death?" one of them asked.
He then pleaded with us to accompany him to one of the neighbouring houses.
In the house, an elderly man lay on tattered bedclothes, groaning. His eyes had sunk deep into their sockets and he could barely move his limbs.
Emaciated
At first we thought he had been struck by a bout of malaria but as the villagers lifted him up and supported him to a seated position, we learnt that the aged man was ravaged by hunger.
The emaciated Mzee Shore Titii had difficulties narrating his ordeal.
The 90-year-old man told us that he had been lying in bed with excruciating hunger pain - he had not eaten for three days.
"It is three days now that I have not eaten anything save for porridge made from mkarabwaka tree bark, which is not nutritious.
"Unless the Government brings me relief food I do not think I will last long," the old man said as his empty belly rumbled.
Mr Titii said the area was experiencing severe famine because of drought that started in 2006.
"For the past two years we have harvested nothing as our crops were wiped out by drought.
"Even water is a rare commodity in the village as wells dried up a long time ago," he said weakly.
"Do not be misled by the lush vegetation you see around as this is a result of the rains which fell a week ago.
"The reality is that the soil has been bare for long and food has been hard to come by," he said before he was taken back to bed.
Two sisters
We covered a few steps to another hut and stumbled upon two sisters who are blind. They were also on their beds, incapacitated by hunger.
Their ribs protruded and their feeble hands trembled due to loss of muscle and strength.
The elderly pair, Khadija and Fatuma Iju, explained with much pain that they could not climb out of bed independently. They too had not eaten for three days.
Said Fatuma: "We can no longer lift our limbs from our beds because of chronic hunger. In this state, we will not live much longer unless somebody somewhere urgently brings us something to eat."
"We were hoping that the Government will bring us relief supplies to save us from the jaws of hunger but several months down the line we have not seen any intervention. Are they waiting for us to die before they act ?" the blind sisters posed.
Ms Abale Machaka collapsed thrice due to lack of strength on her way to plant crops in her tiny shamba. She had not had anything to eat for two days.
"In order to beat the famine, I felt the urge to go and plant some crops in my small farm but I could not make it since I fell to the ground thrice. Hunger has eaten away all my energy. I can now smell death," she said.
Another villager, Mr Doza Diza, said for the past one week he had been surviving on mkarabwaka tree stem.
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Mr Diza said he cuts the stem into pieces, which he later dries in the sun for seven days. Then he grinds the dry pieces of stem into powder and uses it to either prepare some sort of ugali or porridge. He eats this to avert starvation.
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