| Executive Director David Bull in Northern Kenya | ||||||
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Day One, Northern Kenya
By David Bull, Executive Director, UNICEF UK
Imagine walking through the dusty semi desert of northern Kenya, where the temperature is in the upper 30s day after day. Your whole community has lost all the cattle, goats and donkeys that provided the only livelihood in this parched landscape, where even the usual meagre rains have been largely absent for the last two years or more.
Eweet – who walked for 20 days to find water – in her final months of pregnancy
Now imagine you are in the final month of pregnancy, with two small children in tow, and you are only 22 years old. Now, imagine that walk lasts 20 days!
I don’t have to work so hard now to imagine it because it is the story of Eweet, a young Turkana mother who I have just met. She arrived at the end of her epic journey and gave birth to her baby daughter Akai, now three months old. She and her three children and their grandmother Eyepan were among 30 families that made this trek, arriving finally at the makeshift village of Kaichakar on the outskirts of Loki – the base for the massive 15-year aid operation supplying war-torn southern Sudan, just a few miles away across the border.
But for Eweet the walking is not over. Every day, she must walk for an hour to fetch 20 litres of water for her family. She has to queue in the searing heat for 4 hours, pump the water by hand, and then make the return journey carrying her heavy load. Her day is not done yet. She also has to risk her life to go to the bandit-infested woodland, where she collects wood which she sells in Loki town for about 25 pence, five of which is spent on the day’s water. The remaining 20 pence has to provide for all the other needs of the household.
A third of children are now malnourished in Northern Kenya
This is a land in which a third of children under 5 are suffering from malnutrition, where less than one in five girls go to school, yet where schools are closing due to lack of water. Around 73,000 children and 7,200 pregnant and lactating women are in immediate need of emergency supplementary and therapeutic feeding, yet 50,000 are not being reached due to lack of funds. Tomorrow I will visit a hospital which has to cope with the resulting emergencies and where babies are dying by the day.
But there is hope – a new UN appeal will be launched in early April. The crisis, now affecting five countries, is beginning to attract sporadic media attention. But it is not new – the warnings have been made with increasing urgency for the last two years.
This time, I hope that we can find the funds necessary to help people like Eweet and Akai, who have already lost their livestock and their way of life. UNICEF is planning to drill 5 new boreholes in this area, with solar-powered pumps – one in Eweet’s village. Each well will provide 10-15,000 litres of fresh water per day, without the trek and without the hand pumping at the end of it. Each costs about £10,000, but so far we only have the money for two of the five. The difference these wells would make requires a further effort of imagination. Imagine that Eweet was saved all this walking for water, and as Akai grows up, perhaps she (and many like her) will be able to spend her days at school instead of fetching water, and a new future could begin to open up for this proud community. Imagine that!
Donations to UNICEF’s East Africa Children’s Crisis Appeal can be made by calling UNICEF on 08457 312 312 or online with a debit or credit card.
