It is almost noon and the thermometer shows 38 degrees. The air is dry, the sun and dust take your breath away. I’m in the village of Nakinu, in the extreme north of Kenya, on the border with Ethiopia. This semi-arid area of Turkana county is a land of borders and conflicts, isolated and forgotten by the world.
Slumped in the shade of a tree near her hut, an 83-year-old lady lies almost without strength, her name is Dapal. She has glassy eyes, the skin of her face is wrinkled, furrowed by the sun and hardships. Under the numerous colored rings that elongate her neck, typical of the Turkana people, a slender and emaciated body emerges, the result of age but, above all, of the difficulty of living in such an extreme context.
I sit down and start talking to her. At first, I don’t understand what she is saying to me, but when she opens her dress to show me her belly, the universal gesture of hunger is clear to me. Dapal is hungry and like her are millions of people living in East Africa, in the region between northern Kenya and the Horn of Africa. It hasn’t rained in this area for over three years, and the people of this region are going through one of the worst droughts in history.
According to UNFPA data, more than 36 million people are facing severe problems related to food shortages and the consequent health emergency caused by the drought that began in October 2020. The current wave has surpassed, both in duration and in severity, the terrible droughts of 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 and is expected to continue to worsen in the coming months, with catastrophic consequences.
The Turkana region, from July to December 2022, received only 17% of what should be the normal rainfall and now, together with 9 other counties in Kenya, it is in an alarm situation: the condition of the vegetation has worsened significantly and this has caused the death of tens of thousands of livestock, causing a precipitous decline in the purchasing power of households. The latest studies published in January 2023 by the National Drought Management Authority have shown that in Turkana 62% of families are in a situation of serious food shortage and over 20,000 children, under the age of five, are seriously malnourished and in urgent need of care. “We have nothing left to eat, almost all our animals are dead. We only eat berries and the meat when a goat dies.”
“To get water – Chirute, Dapal’s son, tells me – we go to Lake Turkana every two days because it is over 20 km from here”. In this area the rivers have completely dried up, there are no wells, and the only water supply for these people is the lake water.But Lake Turkana is an alkaline lake and the quality of its waters would not be suitable for human consumption. Yet there is enough water in the subsoil in the Turkana area to largely satisfy the needs of the population. In 2013, in fact, an aquifer containing 250 billion cubic meters of water, was discovered near Lotikipi. This deposit could satisfy the needs of all of Kenya for over 70 years, but it has never been exploited due to the high cost that desalination would entail. Although the latest studies by University of Nairobi professor Gilbert Ouma have shown entire areas with pockets of non-saline water, the Kenyan government has nevertheless decided to ignore the project and abandon the exploration of the aquifer, deeming it “economically unviable”.
The lack of investment, infrastructure and aid from the government is exhausting both humans and animals and is causing numerous tensions and tribal conflicts. The Turkana are predominantly a population of nomadic shepherds who live off their animals, goats and cows. The shortage of pastures has increasingly pushed shepherds to invade the borders of neighboring populations in search of some grass for their animals. In the areas bordering Uganda, South Sudan and the Pokot territory, armed conflicts between populations are growing more and more for this very reason, making the area extremely unstable and violent. Attacks by bandits on rival villages or on cars passing through the border between two tribes are now increasingly frequent. At the beginning of February, at least 6 people were killed in an attack on a convoy escorted by the police near the town of Kainuk, a border post between Turkana territory and Pokot. “My sons would rather migrate to enemy territories and fight against rival tribes than stay here to die of thirst and let our animals die,” tells me Asgria Alemu, a 75-year-old lady who lives in the village of Loremet, in the northwest of the country.
This tiny village is located in one of the most remote areas of Turkana county: there are no schools or hospitals, and the nearest town is over 25km away. Here people can only rely on their own strength and that of their animals. Asgria tells me that she has ten children, eight of whom went with the herds to Uganda where the soil is a little more fertile thanks to the sporadic rainfall that region receives. She has a leg problem, she can’t walk and spends her days in the shade of her hut helped only by her two daughters. The extreme heat makes any activity difficult and the lack of food and water has severely tested the health of Asgria and all the villagers: “We eat every two days when we kill one of the goats” and adds: “When I was young this area used to be green while now we depend only on government help to survive and we haven’t received anything for more than a year. We have experienced droughts before, but this is the worst I’ve faced in my entire life.”
The inhabitants of Katama, a small village in Kapua area, a few kilometers from Lodwar, the regional capital, share the same opinion: “We no longer even have faith in prayers, we have lost hope. We had about 200 goats, now there are four left and these too are about to die”. Sitting around a tree, the women gnaw on the large woody kernels of the palm fruit, called Engol in Turkana language, the only plant resistant to those temperatures and the only food available to them.
To get water, the villagers dug a small well by hand in the middle of the river bed, now completely dried up and reduced to a sandy path covered with deep holes. All families have to help to dig in order to be able to enjoy some water for their people and their animals. A small well can be finished in a couple of days, larger wells require as much as two weeks of hard work. Once the water has run out, the now dried-up well is covered and another one is dug, a few tens of meters further on. In these small holes in the ground, brown and hot water flows out, full of soil and sand that seems impossible to drink but represents the only way to survive for these populations.
It is the women, or rather the girls, who take care of getting water from the wells while the men usually stay outside the village with the herds. The human chain is impressive: the youngest are those who go deeper because, thanks to their small size, they manage to get better into the narrow meanders of the well. Yellow plastic containers are thrown to the bottom of the well and once filled, they are passed from hand to hand until they reach the surface. The Locher-Emoni well, in the Lokichogio area, is the only source of water for over 5,000 people and some thousands of animals. When I arrive I immediately notice that all the shepherds are armed with automatic rifles to deal with any attacks from rival tribes and it is ongoing a continuous pilgrimage of people and animals, an epic and dramatic scene at the same time. Dozens of women and girls climb precarious wooden ladders forming a chain that descends more than 30 meters underground. Thirsty people and herds wait impatiently their turn and the shepherds, with their long wooden sticks, hit the unruly cows who want to skip the line. Men and animals drink the same water, from the same containers, to survive the same bitter fate that has befallen them.
Once the necessary water has been taken, the long pilgrimage to one’s own village begins. Along the roads or the sandy paths there is always one constant: people rolling plastic containers or carrying them on their heads for km and km, often barefoot and on the hot ground. Along one of these paths, I meet a mother with three children. She tells me that she is returning from Lokichogio 25km away from her village, after having transported and sold a 50kg bag of coal for about 250 shillings (less than 2 euros) and bought something to eat for her and her children. That’s how you survive in this part of the world. When I ask Peter, Chief Officier of Lokichogio, what could be done immediately to help the people of the village, he has no doubts: “It would be enough to dig a modern well to bring them at least the water necessary for the survival of their animals. With an investment of around 25.000 euros, in a few days it is possible to drill the ground and create a well. This would lead to a significant improvement in their living conditions.”
This dramatic situation is bringing millions of people to the point of exhaustion and unfortunately it will not improve without an active intervention of aid from the government and a serious fight aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. “The worsening crisis and looming famine in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa show how climate change can threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by destabilizing communities, countries and entire regions,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the ‘WMO (World Meteorological Organization); further arguing that “Increasing temperatures are driving changes in global and regional rainfall, leading to changes in rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, with major impacts on food security, health and human well-being.”
Although Africa has contributed negligibly to climate change, with only about 2-3% of global emissions, it disproportionately stands out as the world’s most vulnerable region. While climate change is global, the poor are disproportionately vulnerable to its effects because they lack the resources to afford the goods and services they need and to protect themselves from the effects of climate change. Droughts in Africa have killed more than half a million people and caused $70 billion in regional economic losses over the past 50 years, according to UN data, while rising temperatures have contributed to a 34% reduction in agricultural productivity growth in Africa since 1961, more than any other region in the world.
While industrialized countries are still struggling to find an agreement on cutting emissions and a serious compromise to deal with the climate emergency, millions of people in Africa, and in the poorest countries of the world, are suffering the heavy consequences of this situation.