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KENYA: NORTHERN PARTS FACES STARVATION FROM DROUGHT December 23, 2005
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) Kenya’s remote plains in the northern region are undergoing a drought that has already killed at least a dozen people and hundreds of livestock.
Living in grass-thatched shacks and trekking miles each day to hunt for water. Desperate residents of Mandera district say the central government has done little to help since the drought began to bite three months ago.
Mandera district borders Somalia and Ethiopia and was already one of Kenya's poorest and most arid areas.
Ubah Karie, a mother of five children, watched helplessly as her three-year old son succumbed to starvation.
"My son starved to death the day before yesterday," she told Reuters in El-wak, 200 km (125 miles) south of Mandera town. "All our 100 livestock perished in the drought, we are desperate."
At least ten people have died, but many more deaths are going unreported in the remote region, Mandera district medical officer Boniface Musila told AFP on a trip organized by a local legislator to draw attention to the crisis.
"There are many more who have died in the wilderness," he added at Mandera district hospital, where dozens of mothers sat with their severely malnourished children waiting to be fed.