Horn of Africa Famine: Continued

The famine in East Africa is still continuing.  I've been out of town for the last few days so I'm not up to date on the exact statistics but here's what I'm hearing.  Dadaab (the refugee camp) is still being inundated with refugees.  The last number I heard was 1500 new refugees daily.  As I said before, the camp was already 3 times over capacity before this new influx of refugees.  Things are over crowded, difficult and dangerous.  Girls are being raped when they go out to collect fire wood.  Its bad. 

Here in Kenya, the drought is effecting everything as well.  The areas of Northern Rift and North Eastern are as devastated as  Somalia.  Couple that with the sky rocketing food prices and the rising inflation (and horrible exchange rate of the Shilling against the Dollar, Euro and Pound)- things are complicated. 

The front page of the paper today reports that the price of all major staples has increased drastically over the past year.  Cooking oil has gone up 47%, wheat has increased 55%, sugar has gone up 62% (not to mention I haven't seen sugar in the store in more then a month) and maize- the ultimate Kenyan staple food- has increased 84% in the last year.   In Kenya, its not a meal without maize in some form- maize flour makes Ugali (the starch that accompanies EVERY meal).  Families literally can't survive an 84% mark up. 

If you are interested in helping financially with the famine and the influx of refugees to Dadaab, send me and email and I can connect you to our organization's fund for the East Africa Famine Relief.  All funds raised are being routed to a local church we partner with who is currently working in the camp. 

For the next few days, I'm going to be posting pictures the situation in Dadaab.  I didn't take these pictures and as soon as I find out the name of the photographer from UNHCR, I'll give him his credit- he's taken some amazingly haunting pictures.   The picture at the top of the post shows some of the tents in Dadaab.  The picture below is of some new arrivals to Dadaab.