The great drought: Disaster looms in East Africa

[progressiveGI]

Source: The Independent On Sunday

Rotting carcasses testify to the scale of the disaster looming in East Africa

On the plains of Marsabit the heat is so intense the bush seems to shiver. The leafless scrub, bleached white by the sun, looks like a forest of fake Christmas trees. Carcasses of cattle and camels are strewn about the burnt red dirt in every direction. Siridwa Baseli walks out of the haze along a path of the dead and dying. He passes a skeletal cow that has given up and collapsed under a thorn tree. A nomad from the Rendille people, he is driving his herd in search of water.


He marks time in seasons but knows that it has not rained for three years: "Since it is not raining there is no pasture," he says. Only 40 of his herd of sheep and goats that once numbered 200 have survived. Those that remain are dying at a rate of 10 every day. Already a herder before Kenya's independence he has never seen a drought like this.

"If I was young I would go to look for cash work. I am old. I may just die with my animals."

Across East Africa an extraordinary drought is drying up rivers, and grasslands, scorching crops and threatening millions of people with starvation. In Kenya, the biggest and most robust economy in the region, the rivers that feed its great game reserves have run dry and since the country relies on hydropower, electricity is now rationed in the cities.


Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-great-drought-in-east-africa-1797003.html

[davidhilton]

1. i had no idea...

the situation in that part of africa was so bad. ppl need assistance to move where they
can live without the utter despair their current home plagues them with.

[World Traveller]

2. I was in Marsabit, Kenya in 2005 with a non-profit

We drove from Nairobi to Marsabit. The last 7 hours were on a dusty, unpaved, gravel road that I'll never forget. It was VERY dry.

We spent 2 days with Redille people just outside Marsabit. In 2005 we heard about all the same issue touched upon in the article. Increasing drought, cattle raids in which family members were killed, very serious inter-tribal conflict due to scarcity of water and in a effort to replace dead animals. Area has beome increasingly violent also due to greter prevalence of guns leaking over the Somali border. The people herd animals because it is too dry to grow crops, would be kind of like trying to farm in Arizona.

The government of Kenya at that time (and probably today also) was making an effort to tamp down on the violence and inter-tribal violence. But the problems were overwhelming in some ways. The BIG problem is that the Sahel (dry rim south of the Sahara) is moving south due to increasing drought. These people are totally dependent on their animals.

We spent one day in Marsabit National Park. Amazing. It's SO dry on the plains, then you start climing the mountain range, and it's like paradise. The mountains catch the mist from overhead clouds, and are green, lots of trees, shrubs, and wildlife. We actually on a remote mountain road came face to face with an elephant! Marsabit National Park guest lodges are slightly uphill from a crater lake where wildlife come to drink. Lake was shaped like a bowl, so my guess was that the "mountain" was probably a dormant volcano.

If that mountain is being denuded now, as article says, that is a serious poblem, it's the only green spot in that area.

I think the article nails it. Africa will be one of the placest hit hardest by climate change and the earth's warming, mainly because it will push the winds and rains further south, seriously increasing the size of the Sahara and the Sahel.

[alfredo]

5. I lived with the Hamasein in Eritrea from 66 to 69. The big drought was

just starting when I left. The whole time there we looked north to the expanding Sahara, knowing that someday Asmara and surrounding regions will be bone dry.

[NecklyTyler]

3. I can only hope that President Obama is fully engaged in the Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen

The work of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen is instrumental in the survival of our civilization. President Obama needs to be in complete agreement with the world consensus on dealing with the problems of global warming. These types of drought are becoming more frequent, and if carbon pollution from CO2 is allowed to continue, drought will become the norm for most of the arable land

[ro1942]

4. Global warming,greed got us here what a shame