Horn of Africa: War and Hunger

He is the local District Commissioner and he spends quite a lot of time during our meeting talking about how he really needs a photocopier in order to produce the receipts for food distributions. His district is among the seriously drought stricken areas in Ethiopia – alarming even for a country where hunger has become the rule ever since 1982.

2. "We’re eating the seed grains now"
55-year-old Ashu Mahamed is a woman who knows how to take the floor - even when all 2000 inhabitants of the village are standing around her:

"Now we’re all equally poor. We have lost all our cattle and we can no longer feed ourselves. Usually, we would help each other cope with hard times but everyone is under this pressure so we all have to fend for ourselves. Every day is a fight for survival and for food. If you’re strong enough you can try to find work. Or go to the woods for firewood to sell. If we do not find any we’ll just have to starve. One should be grateful for just a meal a day". The village harvest has been steadily reduced over the last three years because the rains failed.

"We have always known hunger but not like now. Back then – before the drought we did not loose our cattle. Now we’ve lost everything. We’re eating the seed grains now, just to survive but what can we do afterwards? Then we’ll not even have a harvest to hope for".

"There is no hope for us. We have applied to the government for some help but it is hopeless – and the prospects for the next harvest are even worse".

The Sasakawa Global 2000 Foundation, which is being promoted by the former American president, Jimmy Carter, among others, has contributed to the demise of several peasants in the village. They were persuaded to borrow seeds and fertilizer from the Foundation. But the harvest failed completely. Afterwards they were left not only without a harvest but also with a debt that had to be paid back, with interests. Nobody wants to repeat this experience – apart from the fact that fertilizer is costly and their money is already gone because the cattle have been sold or perished in the drought.

3. "No, the children aren’t ill- that is: apart from hunger"
East of Ginir the road winds its way through the reddish brown African mountains and down towards the "lowlands" as the Ethiopians say. The lowlands are basically everything below 1500 metres above sea level. There is a view over hundreds of kilometers of bone dry bush – all the way towards the horizon and Somalia. 900 people live in the village Gamodouksi. They used to be framers and herders but the rains have failed for 6-7 years and now they are surviving on relief supplies and gathering and selling charcoal. One of the men, Ahmed Abda, tells us that 1500 heads of cattle have died and you cannot really claim that the survivors are "living". The drought has eradicated the divisions between rich and poor.

"We used to measure our property according to heads of cattle but that does not mean anything today", he says. They are receiving 10 kg of grains per family – per month – and the ration has to be shared among 10-15 people. They make a little more through food for work projects on road maintenance and construction of canals.

"We used to sell the cattle whenever we needed anything. We had milk for the children and we could buy grains and clothes, shoes and other things we needed. And we were in good condition. Now the children have to stay in doors as we haven’t got any clothes for them, and they are too weak to play."

Again – the women have to fetch water. Sometimes they walk for hours – sometimes a few showers have left puddles of mud brown water in the neighborhood.

"No, the children aren’t ill, so far", Zeynaba Hussein says – "that is: apart from hunger".

The Ethiopian government has promised to distribute 100.000 MT of grains to be bought locally. On the other hand the government spends millions of dollars fighting a war with Eritrea. In Somalia fighting between militias and clans which prevents general development from happening as well as reduces international relief efforts. In Sudan war has been going on for years – a war not only about culture and religion but also about the exploitation of Southern resources such as oil and soil.

5. "Just go ahead and see"
Outside the Kakuma refugee camp live the Turkana, a pastoral people related to among others the Karamajong in northern Uganda. And a people with a long tradition for cattle raiding. But nowadays the many wars in the regions have made it easy to lay hand on automatic riffles. Ten year old shepherds are watching the family cattle with AK47s hanging down their frail backs.

But now there are no cattle to watch. On the plains even the wind is burning hot, dry and dusty. There is no grass around for miles and miles.

"Just go ahead and see", they say, "our situation is desperate". They confirm that ever since the rains failed they have survived on relief supplies from relief agencies including ACT members National Council of Churches in Kenya (NCCK) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). But the relief supplies are not exactly plentiful and the toddlers cannot stomach the coarse maize very well.

Another reason for the diseases can probably be found in the muddy water that the women collect from wells dug by hand into the riverbed.

The men have left with the cattle to look for pasture. Or they look for work in the nearest towns, first and foremost Lokichokio where relief flights to southern Sudan take off every day. Many have gathered around the Kakuma Camp where they can sometimes find work. Even the meager rations of the refugees are luxury compared to the everyday provisions of the Turkana.