Abigail Lucas
9/15/09
11:23
The land in the shadow of Mount Kenya was very fertile until recently when Kenya was hit by a severe drought. Elizabeth Wambui a local farmer says “I came here with a lot of hope; I hoped to plant crops and have a little income. Now I’m just praying for rain”. Wambui and her family have lost two seasons of crops and even now if it does rain they are uncertain that they will even be able to afford the seeds they would need to plant again. Currently there are millions of other people across East Africa in similar situations. There are approximately 24 million people in this area who are lacking basic food. In Kenya 80 percent of the wells have dried up and half of the livestock are expected to die. John Lenyarawa a resident of Kenya had 600 cattle six months ago now has 200 that are still alive. “Every day they die. If there is no rain by the end of September, we will have nothing” Lenyarawa said.
Somalia has been one of the worst hit countries by this drought. A field officer in central Kenya for the World Food Program said that the situation was desperate. This food program has to close 12 of its feeding centers for mothers and children in Somalia. The UN estimates that about half of the population is in need of food aid and one in every five children are malnourished. Therefore the decision to close the feeding centers was a hard decision but they no longer have what they need to run the centers.
It seems as though each week the news covering this drought gets worse and worse. These people are really running out of food, and there is not much that they can do about it. Before even knowing about the situation that is occurring now I had heard that so many people had poor health conditions in these countries and this drought is definitely making these conditions worse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8256031.stm
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