Dateline ACT

Rwanda 02/00

"There are not enough crop, food and income"

By Rainer Lang, Kigali and Geneva, July
A pastoralist is leading his cattle through the country in search of pasture and water. Enoch Katabarwa's two boys help him keep the small herd together. The animals with their fearsome horns look emaciated. The land doesn't yield enough grass for the cattle, because of a long lasting drought.

The northeast is the hottest part of Rwanda. The sun parches the land in Umutara prefecture. The distance between the few waterholes is very far.

"The draught started in May and there will be no rain till October", Enoch Katabarwa explains. Every day the 49 year old man makes his way from Bihinga-village to a well near Kabarore, 30 kilometers back and forth, that means some 12 hours walking with the cattle.

"Some of the cattle herders already shifted to other areas", Enoch says. "Kids even leave school to look after the cattle.

"Travelling through the Umutara region one meets pastoralists with their browsing herds all over the area. The Northeast is cattle land. "The huge number of cattle eats off all the plants transforming the savanna step by step into a desert", a relief worker from the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) says. The LWF, a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT), has constructed 65 wells in the area. This still doesn't meet the needs of the people. LWF has also distributed drought resistent seeds such as sorghum and helped the villagers in constructing trenches around their fields to protect them against wild boar eating the crop.

The drought is the main problem people are facing in the region bordering Tanzania In Umutara prefecture the civil war started in the Nineties. Many people fled the fighting. After the rebels took over government in 1994, the refugees returned from camps in Tanzania and Uganda. Enoch Katabarwa came back in 1996.

When the refugees arrived in Umutara they scattered all over the area. The government encoureged them to live in villages because then its easier to provide schools and especially water for the people. LWF in partnership with UNHCR build five resettlements, each comprising between 100 and 440 houses.

83,000 families or around 500,000 people live in Umutara prefecture, 30,000 of them are returnees. LWF also constructed 11 schools and rehabilitated 3, many families were supplied with seeds and were supported to construct rain water tanks. But these tanks have now been empty for a long time.

In the resettlement villages the children show the swollen bellies caused by malnutrition related to the general lack of food. Although there are irrigation facilities the soil is dry because the water is too scarce for irrigating the land. "Only 20% of the trees grow when we plant them", two elder villagers say.

The area is generally very dry. But this year the prolonged drought has brought hunger close to the village. « There are not enough crop, food and subsequently not enough income », a young men in one of another settlements points out.

The urgent need of water has changed the life of the villagers. They have to walk 10 kilometers to the river to get water. « We don’t have time to do any other work than fetching water », the young man says.

"Still they are trying to survive on their own now", the LWF relief worker says. A further difficulty is that much of their lifestock died during the war and they have no money to restock it. The two elder villagers, returnees from Uganda, express their cocerns about the situation. They fear the lack of rain and the wild animals eating the crop will force the villagers to depend on relief.

The situation could turn as bad as in some southern areas of the country. Famine there has claimed the lives of over 400 people since last September, according to official sources in the area. During the last three years there have been no harvests in the Bugesera region and as a result many families have left the area for other parts of Rwanda, the German news agency dpa reports.

Drought and famine has gripped most of the countries in the region. Some 115 people in Karamoja in the northeastern region of Uganda have reportedly died of hunger since June. An estimated 600,000 to700,000 people are believed to be affected by drought in Burundi, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Some parts of Tanzania are facing acute food shortages due to the drought experienced during the last 1999/2000 rainy season and Kenya is suffering from a severe drought.