Kenya has experience three consecutive years of failed rains, and it is now facing the worst drought in nine years.
Families have been displaced; forced to leave their homes and their way of life, to live in areas where there is some water so their children and remaining livestock do not perish. This news article describes how Hawa Hassan, along with many others from her village, journeyed for days leaving her home and her life behind to move to a settlement with access to water. “I can't feel good about being in a settlement,” she says. “It has been forced on me. I don't wish it for my life.”
Many Kenyan communities rely heavily on livestock and the maize
crop, which is very susceptible to climate change. Now, they painfully
watch as their fields turn to dust and their herds die of thirst.
Over a million people are currently in desperate need of aid and the World Food Programme (WFP) has described the crisis as a "very difficult situation." WFP has distributed aid to about 2.6 million people, out of the 3.8 million that need help. And if those numbers are not staggering enough, the Kenya Red Cross estimates up to 10 million people could face hunger and starvation within six months due to poor harvest, crop failures and rising commodity prices.
As one elderly woman so devastatingly predicted: "If the rains fail, we are all in trouble. It's not just going to be the animals dying. We'll die too, and it's not going to take long."