Deafening sound of unending anguish as drought wreaks havoc 

Nation 

What you need to know:

• The dreadful reality of changing climate is hanging menacingly over pastoralist communities.
• The International Rescue Committee says climate change will continue to run roughshod over communities.      
•    

Every dawn brings despair and emptiness to Hawa Muhmed, with the burst of sunrise a harsh reminder of the torment she has endured throughout her life.

When the sun begins to burn in Ohio village, Balambala, Garissa County, the mother of 11 can only wish for one thing: A breeze to make the day bearable. But with virtually no vegetative cover here, the wind brings with it all evils.

A sandstorm can turn this remote village into hell on earth in a few minutes. By 10 O’clock, the sun hits this outpost north of Kenya with savage intensity, grinding all human activity.

When she crawls out of her manyatta at daybreak, Muhmed, 40, walks to the animal shed to inspect her livestock. Sometimes she wakes up a few animals short, some too overwhelmed by starvation to last the night. From a flock of 35 goats, 20 have died in the last few weeks. She can’t sell the survivors—all too weak to walk to the market and too emaciated to fetch any reasonable prices.

Holding the weakest among them in one hand and her youngest daughter in the other, Muhmed feeds the goats with a mixture of water and maize flour, letting them lick the paste off her palm. Thereafter, she heads to a tree in the compound where her only cow lies, to water it.

Then she and her neighbour support it to its legs. Muhmed then leaves to feed her young children and aged mother. This is her daily ritual. 

For this woman, life never changes. She grew up in this wilderness where drought has been the only constant factor in her life. Her parents lived through it and, somehow, survived. Now she’s raising her children in the same environment. Illiterate and dirt-poor, there’s no hope that her family’s circumstances will likely change—at least not in this life.

“It’s always been dry but never like this,” she says, guiding her shy three-year-old daughter into the family manyatta.

Across a dusty stretch from her compound, Hassan Farah tethers his only surviving cattle to a tree. The father of 16 has lost more than 50 goats and seven cattle, each animal’s death pushing the family closer to the brink of starvation. Even the camels are on the verge of dying. Only rain here will save his livestock; except the sky here isn’t promising at all.

“This is the worst drought in the 20 years I’ve lived here. What we’re seeing now, I haven’t experienced before,” says the 60-year-old, feeding the animal some range cubes donated by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)…