Food for the Hungry Helping in East Africa Drought

|PIC1|Christian international relief and development organisation Food for the Hungry continues to work alongside East Africa’s drought-plagued communities as rains and food remain scarce in the region, reports Mission Network News.

Millions of men, women and children continue to suffer across the Horn of Africa as the severe drought continues to kill hundreds of cattle every day.

Food for the Hungry has been in the area providing food, water and love to some of the millions left malnourished and without secure sources of the most basic foodstuffs.

“The most noticeable thing when you go into the villages is the abundance of dead animals,” reports Food for the Hungry’s Sarah Sywalka. “The livelihood of the people in these villages is dependant on their cattle. That is their source of food, their source of income and their source of savings. They're losing their livestock daily."

|AD|The severe depletion of livestock in the region is now having a detrimental effect on the social structure of communities, as there is now no longer any cattle for dowry meaning a sharp drop in the number of marriages taking place.

And according to Sywalka’s reports, bleak situation is set to continue. “The predictions right now are for below average levels of rainfall."

Food for the Hungry has focussed much of its work on northern Kenya where its teams have been doing their best to help keep livestock alive.

“There are certain areas where they can find water and other areas where they can find pasture, but the distance between those two places can be 30 to 40 miles so the animals are having to walk that distance and they're getting very weak. And, of course the people go with the livestock and they're also getting pretty weak."

Sywalka was also grateful for the early warnings of famine last year that enabled a response to be assembled much more quickly.

"We are focusing on distributing emergency food rations, which we started doing in October and I think thanks to that we haven't seen a real large affect on human nutrition levels yet. If the situation continues we may start to see that," she said.

Thanks to its considerable work in the region already, Food for the Hungry has been able to establish strong ties with the local churches.

Although the focus of the work remains emergency relief, the Food for the Hungry workers in the region remain committed to being a living testimony of the love of Jesus Christ.

“If people ask us what's motivating our work, we are more than happy to explain what that motivation is and that comes from our relationship with Christ."