Letters from the field

24 July 2011 - The epic scale of the food crisis that is gripping the Horn of Africa is beyond comprehension. I’ve been in Nairobi for five days now and I still can’t get my head around the figures. An unimaginable 11.5 million people across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are struggling to survive – their villages have no water, their animals are dying all around them and due to radical rises in food prices, people can no longer afford to feed themselves. Tens of thousands of people have already died and the numbers are growing rapidly. As ever it is young children who are the most vulnerable to hunger and who are suffering the most.

Families have not experienced a drought like this for 60 years. People are desperate and are fighting for their lives. Usually farming communities can prepare themselves against insufficient rain and if none comes for a while, they move their animals to another area to graze, and once that area dries up they find another and so on. Not this time though. This time it’s different. Pastoralists have tried moving their animals to more fruitful land for months – the problem is there is none left. They have nowhere to go and so they are forced to watch their herds – their only means of income to provide food for their families – die around them. Emaciated bodies of dead cattle gather on the side of the roads. It is heartbreaking.

People are desperate. Without animals there is no milk for their children, no meat, nothing to sell. They are left without any means of an income and along with the staggering rise in food prices (the cost of maize in Ethiopia has increased by 100% since December and the other regions are suffering just as badly), people are simply left with no means of feeding themselves. They watch as their children grow thinner and quieter and many are forced to make the decision to leave their homes and their possessions to walk in the search of food. Where they are going, they don’t know, but they hope they will find someone, somewhere who can help them.

Thousands are arriving at the overcrowded refugee camps after weeks of walking through the arid land, exhausted, dehydrated and malnourished. For many the relief of finding the camps and accompanying help swiftly fades as they soon realise there is no room left. Too exhausted to do anything else, they find a spot to sit with their families outside the camp, in the open elements, and just wait. Sadly many mothers have already lost their children to malnutrition along the way.

I am in absolute awe of Action Against Hunger’s humanitarian aid workers, who are working tirelessly, around the clock to save lives. Our teams are assessing and treating children for malnutrition, distributing emergency food rations and building facilities to provide clean, safe water for families in desperate need. And that is just brushing the surface of what they do. Our teams are in a race against time to save lives and as the drought worsens, they know that every hour that goes by, more children are dying. As our Programme Coordinator for Somalia said to me today – every second counts.

I also believe that every pound counts to save the lives of thousands of young children. Whether it’s £5, £50 or even £500, every pound raised will help our teams reach more children and save more lives. What could be more important than that?