<Grace Adhiambo reporting from Kakamega, Kenya

How funny can this world be? Sometime back there was drought in most parts of the country. People died as a result of lack of water and food.

Pastrolists from Turkana and other parts of Kenya had to walk for long distance in search of water and food for their animals. We cannot help but hear that people are being carried away by water as a result of the heavy rain.

Kenya Red Cross Society says that at least 50 people have died from floods since March. Transport in most parts of the country has been paralysed due to flooding. 

A few days ago three people lost their lives when their vehicle was swept away around Ngong. The trio was driving past the Kwekwe river bridge in Nkoroi. According to the area residents the seasonal river had burst its banks giving room for water to flow on top of the bridge that had no rails.Innocent Kenyans are loosing their lives daily and seemingly nothing can be done. In Imenti central district, Meru county, a body of a man who drowned in river Kwetu, Gaitu location was recovered.

http://www.africanpress.me/ Floods in Kenya

The river does not have a bridge so residents have to step on stones to enable them cross the river. The man was carried by water as he was stepping on the stones. The residents of Kariobangi South, Nairobi are at a greater risk of contracting cholera because the area is now covered in sewerage water. The flood mixed with sewage water exposing the residents to diseases like cholera.

When the rains started their were celebrations everywhere as Kenyans had been eagerly waiting for the rains. The floods recently swept away more than 300 acres of paddy rice in Mwea Irrigation Scheme. This occurred after the river Murubara burst its banks sweeping away the rice.

http://www.africanpress.me/ Floods in Kenya

A number of our learning institutions have not resumed studies because of the floods. This is because some schools have been flooded and classes  completely destroyed.

Kibonjos primary school in Sacho, Baringo district was a victim after the administration block was also destroyed and documents with vital information lost.

Pupils in Rachuonyo north and Nyakach district cannot resume classes as their schools are camping sites for the displaced. Some schools are not in a position to reopen because floods cut off roads. 

http://www.africanpress.me/ Floods in Kenya

How does it feel when young citizens cannot get education because of floods?  They are being denied a chance to learn like others thanks to poor management.

Traders in Narok have lost property estimated to be worth 200 million shillings to floods in the last three weeks. If nothing is done then Kenyans should expect the worst.

Related stories:

• Kenya’s dirty Politics, a threat to a stable society by Grace Adhiambo

• Kenya: Varsity girls fear a protruding stomach due to pregnany than HIV/AIDS by Grace Adhiambo

• Kenya: Disrespecting passengers should be a thing of the past by Grace Adhiambo

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Following the recent political baptism of President Obama and change of his political vision which did not go unnoticed, US media says – “Despite the fact Barack Obama is married with two children, Newsweek magazine is dubbing him “The First Gay President” on its latest cover, crowning him with a rainbow-colored halo. The cover comes in the wake of Obama’s newly declared support for homosexual marriage in America.”

This is desperate move by the President to woo homosexuals to support his bit for the second term in office so as to avoid being a one term president.

This calculation may actually be his downfall now that most Americans have come out castigating him for doing this just to sway voters who have homosexual tendencies.

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NSANJE,  – Visitors arriving in Nsanje, the sleepy capital of Malawi’s southernmost district, are greeted by a large yellowing billboard announcing: “The dream becomes reality. Nsanje Port opens October 2010.” But those who go to the port will find little more than a concrete quay with a couple of dozen mooring posts, and a few fishermen manoeuvring crude dug-out canoes through the murky brown waters of the Shire River.

For former President Bingu wa Mutharika, the construction of an inland port at Nsanje meant linking land-locked Malawi with the Indian Ocean port of Chinde, 238 kilometres away in neighbouring Mozambique, through the Shire-Zambezi Waterway project. The aim was to reduce the high costs of importing and exporting goods by road via Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre and the Mozambican port city of Beria – a round trip of about 1,200 kilometres.

But Mutharika’s enthusiasm for the project was not matched by his counterpart in Mozambique. As Mutharika presided over the official opening of the port in October 2010, flanked by former Zambian president Rupiah Banda and Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, he had to admit to the crowd gathered to witness the arrival of the first barge that the Mozambican government had called for environmental and feasibility studies before it would allow any barges to navigate the Zambezi River portion of the waterway, which flows through its territory.

There’s no evidence that Nsanje will ever be a big port city

Since then, the port has sat idle, gradually shedding nuts and bolts to vandals and becoming the focus of increasing resentment from local people promised jobs and development. Nsanje resident Rose Samuel, 32, said the only improvement to the town has been the paving of a 50-km stretch of road linking Nsanje with Bangula, the next town. Much of the remaining 130km of road between Nsanje and Blantyre has yet to be tarred.

“There’s no evidence that Nsanje will ever be a big port city,” said Samuel. “We’ve heard that down the river it’s so narrow that a ship can’t pass, so we don’t think [the port] will be in use anytime soon.”

Land grabbed

Samuel has more reason to be bitter than most. Her family was among about 300 that used to farm land now occupied by the port. In early 2010 the government communicated through the local Traditional Authority [the chief], that the land was needed for the port and families would be compensated according to the size of their plot.

“Those families affected had to uproot maize that was already planted,” said Samuel. “Some were old people who left crying – that was their only source of income.”

Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN

Rose Samuel’s family was among about 300 displaced by construction of the port

Samuel’s family received a mere 5,000 kwacha (US$20) for one hectare of ancestral land, for which they had no title deeds. Her family now survive by doing piece-work and renting a small plot of land to grow food. “The weather here is bad always, and most of the time we live on potatoes. By the river it was wetter and the soil was better,” she said.

Many others have yet to receive anything. “People are worried that if they can grab land without paying, what will stop them removing more people from the area.”

Her concern is justified. Townspeople have been told by the Traditional Authority not to build any new houses because the land has been earmarked for development, and Nsanje’s District Commissioner, Rodney Simwaka, told IRIN that his office has received 4,000 applications for land from developers who are banking on the port eventually becoming operational.

Simwaka said the applications had not yet been processed but village headman Black Richman Khembo told IRIN, “Lots of land has been bought by rich people hoping to make money. So far they are letting people remain on the land, but someday they will probably kick them off.”

Project shelved

Simwaka declined to comment on recent statements by Jerry Jana, Director of Economic Affairs for the People’s Party, Malawi’s new ruling party following Mutharika’s unexpected death in April 2012, that long-term projects like the Nsanje port would be shelved for the time being while the government focused on issues of immediate concern like the country’s crippling shortages of fuel and foreign exchange.

“We need full support of the Mozambican authorities to go ahead,” Jana told IRIN, adding that the requested environmental impact and feasibility studies had yet to be carried out.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has agreed to fund the feasibility study that formed part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Shire-Zambezi Waterway project signed by Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia in April 2007.

Responding by email to questions from IRIN, AfDB’s resident representative for Malawi, Andrew Mwaba, said the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the executing agency for the project, is “working on fulfilling conditions precedent to the first disbursement [of funding for the feasibility study],” and that the study was proceeding. “The project is in the interest of three governments and shelving [it] will be against the MoU the three governments signed.”

Village headman Khembo was among those who lost land when the port was built, but unlike Samuel, he holds on to the hope that the port will eventually open and provide opportunities and employment, “if not for me then maybe my children”. Lack of jobs has already pushed two of his eight children to leave Nsanje, one for South Africa and the other for Mozambique.

“If the port starts operating, Nsanje will change for the better,” he said. “Then I won’t mind about my land.”

ks/he

sourve www.irinnews.org

Photo: Brahima Ouedraogo/IRIN

Malian refugees at Somgande refugee camp just outside of the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou

DAKAR/OUAGADOUGOU,  – Sahelian governments and local and international aid groups are struggling to cope with both the continual arrivals of people fleeing the regions of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal in northern Mali, and the mounting number of hungry people across the region as the lean season gets underway.
 
Altogether some 284,000 Malians have fled the north according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 107,000 of them thought to be displaced within Mali; 177,000 in neighbouring countries. New arrivals have pushed refugee numbers to 56,664 in Burkina Faso and to 61,000 in Mauritania, and to 39,388 in Niger, according to UNHCR. These governments are already struggling to get aid to millions of their inhabitants, who are facing hunger due to drought. Fleeing Malians have told the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) they want to avoid getting caught up in possible conflict if government soldiers or foreign troops intervene in the north.

The UN estimates that 16 million people across the Sahel are facing hunger this year, and hunger levels are rising as the lean season gets fully underway. Families across the Sahel are also experiencing a significant loss of income as hundreds of thousands of Mauritanians, Burkinabes and Malians fled conflict in Libya, bringing a halt to the remittances they regularly sent.

New appeals

This complex mix of slow and fast-onset crises means the UN will be revising or launching new funding appeals from the current US$1 billion to $1.5 billion in coming weeks, said Noel Tsekouras, deputy head of office at the West Africa bureau of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Dakar.

Donors have given or pledged US$750 million in aid, most of it for food or nutrition needs, which many in the chronically underfunded region welcome as a strong response, but mounting demands will make this just half of the total necessary.

The World Food Programme (WFP) alone needs $360 million to bridge its immediate funding gap, having received just over half of the US$790 million it requires for the Sahel so far, said Claude Jibidar, deputy director of WFP in West Africa. The agency desperately needs cash so that it can start buying food in regional markets, he said.

In early May most food sectors remained severely underfunded. The Niger cluster appeal is only 7 percent funded for protection activities, 19 percent for water and sanitation, and has received no funding at all for education.

UNHCR will also be upping its Sahel refugee appeal beyond the $35.6 million requested, of which just 41 percent has been received. UNHCR spokesperson Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba said refugee camps in Burkina Faso and Mauritania will need to be expanded to keep up with the growing numbers.

Mounting demands make this [current funding] just half of the total necessary

IRIN looked briefly at the refugee and IDP situation in each affected country.

Mali displaced – unknown numbers

It is difficult to know the exact number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mali – the UN estimates 107,000, with 75,000 staying in the north, though some observers in the area say as many as half of the population in some regions has left. Several aid agencies, including Catholic Relief Services (CRS), are diverting part of their aid response intended for the north to help displaced people who have fled south to Mopti in central Mali, or Bamako, the capital.

WFP plans to support 200,000 IDPs and host families with food aid, but there are fears for the estimated 75,000 in the north. Some NGOs have good access across northern regions, but UNHCR says the situation is still considered too insecure. “We have a real problem accessing IDPs in northern Mali,” said Lejeune-Kaba. David Gressly, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, says agencies have reached 40,000 of the northern displaced, but 35,000 are without any aid.

In Mopti, just south of the area declared as Azawad by National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), CRS is leading the IDP response and says they are seeing approximately 2,500 people pass through each week, most of them moving on to villages and urban centres such as Ségou and Bamako further south. CRS gives hot meals to those in transit and has recently started distributing food and other goods, much of it diverted from the agency’s planned food aid response for the north.

The Mali Red Cross, UNHCR, and other groups are also trying to provide aid to IDPs sheltering in Bamako.

Mauritania – scale-up needed

Malians in Mauritania tell UNHCR that the two main reasons they have left are fear of more violence, or difficulty getting by with minimal aid and breaks in basic services.

Most of the 61,000 Malians sheltering in Mbéra camp, near the town of Fassala in southeastern Mauritania, come from Timbuktu, over which Ansar Dine, a jihadist Muslim group, claims control. Others come from the towns of Niaki, Guargandou, Tenekou and Goundam in the Timbuktu region, according to UNHCR, which says it needs $18 million to help the refugees for six months, as long as numbers do not rise significantly.

Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Niger is in a “very critical” state – these children in Ouallam have survived on wild foods since last year

With hundreds of new arrivals every day, mostly women and children, agencies working in the camps – UNICEF, WFP and NGO Médecins sans Frontières - are having to scale up their activities far beyond the anticipated needs. MSF says camp conditions need to be urgently improved – by mid-April there was just one toilet for every 610 people. The nearest hospital to Mbéra is in Nema, a six-hour drive, so MSF is trying to provide basic services, including maternal health care and nutrition for children. An MSF communiqué notes that many Tuaregs are arriving with respiratory tract infections and diarrhoea.

Niger- the most critical

There have been no recent arrivals of refugees in Niger, leaving the population at 39,000, most of whom are staying in Ouallam camp, 100km from the Niger-Mali border.

However, Niger as a whole is in a very critical situation, with the same number of people facing hunger as in all the neighbouring countries combined. When it comes to getting enough cereals and other basic foods into the country to stem hunger, “Niger is the biggest problem at the moment,” WFP’s Jibidar stressed.

Mariatou Adamou, a nurse at the nutrition treatment centre in Goudel, northern Niger, where many Malians originally arrived, said they were receiving higher numbers of malnourished children than in 2011, and adults were also suffering severely. “The grain banks are empty… so even the parents are malnourished and have nothing at home.” After an initial screening of newly arrived Malian children aged under five, 100 percent were considered malnourished.

UNHCR and WFP are supporting refugee families in Ouallam camp, while NGOs are also trying to include refugee needs in their ongoing responses. NGO Plan International is distributing food, conducting malnutrition screening and setting up drinking water distribution points and latrines for refugees staying outside of camps. They are also making available psychosocial support for people who witnessed violence or experienced devastating losses.

“Bandits came with guns and stole many of our things… in my village they were taking animals [representing the main family assets] away right in front of us… when I left I couldn’t bring anything because I had to bring my children. I didn’t bring any food,” Azahara Naziou, a Malian in Goudel, told Plan International.

Niger is the biggest problem at the moment

Another refugee, Adaoula Harouzen, said more than 20 animals were taken from him. “They have not stolen them… they would tell me, ‘You have to choose your animals or your life.’ You stand there looking at them, helpless. You prefer saving your life, so they take the animals and go.”

Burkina Faso – water critical

More Malians are arriving in Burkina Faso every day, leaving the government’s National Commission for Refugees (CONAREF) overwhelmed, said its coordinator Denis Ouédraogo. The agency has only 13 staff members. “We were expecting refugees, but not to that extent in this context of food deficit in Burkina,” he told IRIN. ‘’The problem is how to respect our commitments towards our populations, who are faced with a food shortage, and to assist refugees at the same time.”

The government is mapping out a response plan for the 60,000 refugees, but Ouedraogo fears it will be “quickly outdated”.

Only half of the government’s $170 million appeal to fund food security and refugee response has been met, said Roger Ebanda, head of the UNHCR in Burkina Faso, and the UN Refugee Agency’s funding is also low, making the response “difficult”. Ebanda and Jean Hereu, head of MSF in Burkina Faso, say water is the urgent need in the camps.

Refugees in camps in Burkina and Mauritania are receiving a maximum of 10 litres of water per day, but agreed minimum standards for disaster response puts rations at double that.

Mohamed Ag Mohamed Maloud, 60, a trader from Timbuktu who is now acting as a refugee representative at Somgande camp on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, the Burkina capital, told IRIN he had been forced from his country during the fighting in the 1990s, but this experience is worse. ‘’The problem is that we do not have enough food… these are difficult days, but we try to cope.”

Each refugee is given a ration of 7kg of food for two weeks. “It is just not enough,” he said. The refugees have a money-lending system for those who arrived with none, prioritizing families who are 100 percent dependent on WFP for food. Other agencies are also helping – the Burkina Faso Red Cross is distributing 400 million CFA worth of food vouchers, as well as tents and water.

Health facilities are weak but improving. MSF has set up mobile clinics in Dibisi and Goutoure in the north, where 10,000 refugees are sheltering – before, they had to walk 17km to the nearest health clinic. The World Health Organization’s Burkina Faso representative, Djamila Cabral, said children have been vaccinated against meningitis, measles and polio.

aj/bo/he
source www.irinnews.org

Photo: IRIN

Tweeting for peace

KHARTOUM,  – As Sudan and South Sudan sink deeper into full-scale conflict and hostile rhetoric nine months after the country split in two, people from both sides of the border are tweeting a very different message, one of peace, solidarity and frustration with their leaders.
 
These voices are galvanized around the microblogging site’s keyword-marking hashtag “#NewSudans” – a pluralized echo of the unitary, democratic “New Sudan” espoused by John Garang, the late leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which fought Khartoum during a 1983-2005 civil war and is now in power in the newly formed Republic of South Sudan.
 
Secession in July 2011 may have irrevocably put an end to Garang’s vision of a single Sudan free of oppression and marginalization, but, judging by the thousand or so tweets incorporating the new hashtag since its 28 April inception, the underlying ethos lives on.
 
Some examples:
 
“NEVER AGAIN to war”, wrote @MimzicalMimz.

“Everyone must put his gun down. Let’s talk it out. Money you spend in war can be better spent in development , health & education,” said @Neo0rabie.

“The ruling elite is drumming on patriotism 2 cover for their failure for da passed 6 yrs n those to come, We r small prawns being played bout in da waves” lamented @afabdelaziz.
 
“No entrapment by false and/or artificial identities. It doesn’t matter if you’re Arab or African as long as you’re SUDANESE,” said @simsit.

“I’m from Shendi, El Fasher [in Darfur]. I’m a Northerner, a Southerner, a Nuba, a Zaghawi, a Fur and a Hadandawi”, wrote political blogger Moez Ali (@his_moezness).

“I’m not Arab, I’m not African, I’m not Afro-Arab, and I don’t belong to any tribe, I’m just Sudanese. I’m not from Khartoum, nor from Omdurman, I’m from Sudan,” tweeted @moaltaweel.

For @kashiff111, #newSUDANS is “powerful with its individualism, colorful with its diversity, tolerant with its unity, peaceful with its faith.”

@AhmadMohamed10 looks forward to “Sudan and South Sudan – living side by side in peace with close economic, cultural & social cooperation/exchange” through an “EU style federation with all the freedoms & economic cooperation that entails.”

@MimzicalMimz appealed for: “No more new vague laws targeting women, activists, journalists, lawyers or students” and “No more racist newspapers, yes; no more Al Intibaha!” – a reference to the government mouthpiece and the most widely read newspaper in Sudan.

Counterpoint

The new hashtag was jointly launched by Aguil Lual, a public health manager of South Sudanese origin, and Khaled Albaih, a cartoonist and fellow tweeter from Sudan, amid the battle for the borderland oil fields of Heglig earlier in April, and the accompanying jingoism in official media.
 
One of the most visible manifestations of these increasing tensions was the 23 April attack on a Presbyterian church in Khartoum.

“I thought we can still engage in dialogue around unity, respect for diversity, need for transformation and being united in our ‘Sudan-ness,’ since we don’t expect our leaders to achieve peace,” Lual told IRIN.

“It’s important to keep such dialogues going since here are many Sudanese on all sides who don’t understand or don’t have the knowledge or choose to ignore that many groups were marginalized or had rights limited, not just Southerners,” she added.
 
Usamah, another prolific microblogger in Khartoum, told IRIN, “I think the war in Heglig and its ramifications domestically on each side proved that, to the dismay of many, Sudan’s and South Sudan’s future are so much tied to each other. And that has forced peoples of the two countries to realize that it’s not merely an NCP-SLPM issue.
 
“In the light of this, Lual’s initiative is pretty much spot on, and interaction between Sudanese and South Sudanese will definitely increase, which is great,” he said, adding however that the impact of this initiative was likely to be undermined by Twitter being “for the foreseeable future, very elitist.”

sa/am
source www.irinnews.org