Anette Wanyaga will never forget the drought in Kenya. Her three-months-old son, Elias Mutunga, will always be a living reminder.
Together with a big group of people from the drought-ridden village of Uthuthuni in the North Eastern part of Kenya, Anette was trekking in search for food and water. After several days of walking, she gave birth to her son in unknown territory. With no water available, women in her company had to turn to the best option available. They tore her dirty headscarf into pieces and used it to clean the baby.
The other women carried her on their backs for the remaining part of the journey on the sun baked and rocky terrain of Mbeere in Eastern Kenya. They ended in Makima where ActionAid distributes food.
Anette is among the 24,000 people, that receives food from ActionAid in Makima. According to ActionAid coordinator Francis Njoroge, 75 percent of people in the area are food insecure and rely on relief food.
For the past two years, the rainfall has been too little to support agriculture and this has made the people here to be food insecure, since majority of the population are farmers who rely entirely on rain water
Francis remarked.
In addition to her routine duties of cooking, cleaning, and fetching water and firewood, Anette produces and sells charcoal in order to be able to feed her family. However, even that is becoming difficult, because the grass and leaves she uses to cover the cut wood for smoldering are scarce.
Anette owns three acres of land on which she grew maize, green grams and millet until two years ago, when it stopped raining.
