East Africa Food Crisis: One Year On
Aid-worker Raphael Wamae was witness to the devastating drought and hunger crisis that hit the eastern Africa region last year. One year later he reflects on how we helped.
I was shocked the first time I saw so many dead cows, lying everywhere, and people hungry from their crops having failed. It hit me how bad things were when I met a woman who’d been walking for eight hours, across the parched dry ground, just trying to find food for her family.
I still remember her face. She told me her children were surviving on any wild fruits and leaves she could find. It was taking her nearly all day, every day, to find one meal.
Droughts come quietly. It’s hard to see the hunger that’s building in each home, in each village. Every time the rains failed the situation of the people got worse, until it reached a crisis. CAFOD had seen it coming in 2008, so we started providing food, but by October 2009 it had become a disaster. We finally turned to our supporters to appeal for money, and they responded generously.
Helping the most vulnerable
We saved people’s lives. But they are still so vulnerable.
We spent that money everywhere we could, but the need was so great. The hardest thing for me was trying to choose the most vulnerable people when so many were affected. It hurt to think about what it wasn’t possible to do.
Things have changed now. The last rains made a lot of difference. There is grass and natural ponds on the plains. People talk excitedly to me that the land had been regenerated, their animals are healthier, and they are not hungry.
But this time of plenty is double-edged - there is a lot of grass and water to go around partly because families lost almost all of their animals. So with these rains the peak of the crisis has passed, but their lives are still so vulnerable.
What we did was save people’s lives, people who didn’t know how they were going to make it to the next day. But the best way we spent the money was on making people more resilient to droughts. We gave food to families in exchange for the community building something for their own future, like water dams in Kenya and Ethiopia, or a school classroom in Uganda.
Climate justice
But there is still a worrying gap between what we did and what needs to be done. This region will be repeatedly affected by unpredictable droughts and floods. These communities are facing a changing climate, and we have not resolutely changed their lives so they can withstand disaster. CAFOD has the strategies, but the funds so far are simply not enough for this global challenge. That is the dilemma.”
Our partners have provided:
• 6,300 people with emergency food
• 2,700 families with food or cash in return for working to build things for the community.
• Water-points giving more than 31,000 people clean water.
• 17 health clinics supplied with medicines
• 2,457 families received seeds to grow their own harvest.
• 110,000 livestock vaccinated to make strong cows.
