Food for Work Project

North East Province, Kenya

(Photo by Gabriel Craven)

Canadian Baptist Ministries Drought Response Project continues this week as we begin a "food for work project" with two vulnerable villages along the Tana River, South East of Garissa. Our colleagues Yattani Gollo and William Wako are coordinating efforts with village elders to clear scrub bush from roads and the flood plain. The communities have selected the sites for the work that will open travel between their villages and the larger town. "Removing the thorn bushes will improve security," shared Yattani. "Many women and children walk these paths in fear of attackers lurking in the mathenga (local thorny brush that covers most of Northeast Province)." The opened roads will also provide improved access to the community farms that will be cleared of mathenga over the coming months by the community members. Over the next three months, approximately 2000 people will receive supplementary food rations through this project as we help the community recover from the drought and rebuild their farms.

Drought Response in Kenya

Somali Children in Sankuri Division, Garissa

Rain is falling in Northeastern Kenya, but will it be enough?

Today is another cloudy day in Garissa. A fine mist of rain has raised the humidity, but there are no puddles of water to be found. After several years of failed rains, Northestern Kenya and the rest of the "Horn of Africa" are praying that this October-November rainy season will be different. They desperately need good rain as people rely on rainfall for pasture and rain catchments for water. If the rains do not come, the current famine and humanitarian crisis will only get worse.

During times of drought, tens of thousands of people are drawn to the Tana River. This mud brown river snakes from central Kenya eastward, forming a border with Northeastern Province and eventually emptying into the Indian Ocean on the Kenyan coast. Rate of flow is remarkable as water gushes past Garissa on its way to the ocean.

A few weeks ago, we were visiting farms started by the Kenyan Red Cross, north of Garissa on the banks of the Tana. As we visited with Somali farmers, a dark cloud opened up and wet our heads, but remarkably the ground beneath us never got wet. It was so dry, it was as if the rain evaporated before it could land. I've never seen anything like it before. If we can not trust the rains, why not the river?

As Canadian Baptist Ministries assists in famine relief, we are already beginning to work with communities to help them to literally tap into this resource and find food security and livelihoods through farming along the river. This represents a seismic shift in local culture and values, as we help traditional wandering pastoral communities settle into agricultural life.

This week, our colleagues Yattani, William, Laura and Pauline are carrying out a baseline assessment within three small communities where CBM will be serving. Please keep them and these communities in your prayers.

In Prayer:

* Please remember the people of the Horn of Africa.

* Pray for much needed rain.

* Pray for peace, humility and wise leadership that will be needed to stabilize Somalia.

* And please remember our CBM NEP team as we struggle to love and serve our neighbours in a way that will help bring about growth, healing and change.

To Learn More about how you can be involved with CBM's Drought Response

Click Here

Praying for Change

Children receiving vitamin supplements

at a CBM feeding project in

Northeastern Province, Kenya

In the past three months alone, approximately 30,000 children have died from malnutrition and preventable illness in the Horn of Africa. Canadian Baptist Ministries is partnering with the Sister's Maternity Hospital, in Garissa, to provide immunizations, medical services, and daily food and water to nine affected communities along the Tana River. This is an area where thousands of displaced people have come for help with small villages more than doubling in size from the influx.

Through the generous support of churches and individuals, we are working with partners in the local community to help vulnerable families survive. But more than survival, we are praying for change. The present relief efforts are only a first step, as Canadian Baptist Ministries works with communities eager to break a pattern that has held them in a feast and famine cycle for generations. Together with the local government, the Kenyan Red Cross and community elders, we are actively seeking sustainable change that will enable the communities we are serving to make better use of the waters of the Tana River to grow their own food and provide a rich economic benefit for the region.

Change is not easy. We all favour what we know over the unknown. Certainly, there will be a lot of learning, risk and failure on the journey ahead. But as we make this journey with local Kenyan churches and Muslim communities, we pray for deeper bonds of love, understanding and grace. God is a liberating God. Ultimately, we trust his Spirit at work in the lives of many to bring about healing, growth, and transformation!

Women and children lining up for water at a mobile clinic and feeding program of Canadian Baptist Ministries and the Sister's Maternity Hospital, near Garissa.

A Waliwana women participating in a small

women's farming cooperative near the

Tana River, in Northeastern Province.

Under the Acacia Tree

Erica and Diane Bannister speaking with Somali women

at a feeding clinic in Doloweyn,

Northeastern Province, Kenya

Children taking turns drinking from a large water container

at the Doloweyn feeding centre and clinic in NEP.

CBM NEP Drought Response

A little boy in the CBM Ambulatory Feeding Project

in Bula, Northeastern Province, Kenya

Since July, Canadian Baptist Ministries has been responding to the impact of the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, through targeted feeding projects and health care services in mobile clinics in Kenya's Northeastern Province. Through partnership with local community-based organizations and agencies, we are feeding 7000 people living in overlooked villages and informal settlements.

Presently, Erica and I are working with our CBM colleagues, Tim and Diane Bannister, Yattani Gollo, and William Wako, to implement the next phase of CBM's drought response as we seek to help vulnerable communities to become more food secure, and mobilize them for self help initiatives and improved public health.

Please pray for these ministries as we work side by side with communities desperate for change!

Sunday in Garissa

Salomi, Diana and Erica on the way

to an ACC&S worship service this Sunday

During our assessment trip, we had the joy of spending a Sunday with our friend William and the Gollo family. We decided to join the local ACC&S worship service in Garissa.

A little girl sitting next to us in the Church service

Dancing in the aisles!

Aaron with Titus at the ACC&S

Church and School in Garissa

It was great to meet some one of the teachers from the ACC&S school that has been serving the community of Garissa for nearly 25 years. The school is presently ministering to many young Muslim students who make up 70% of the student body.

Erica holding Joshua

Joshua turns three months old this week!

Yattani, Salomi and baby Joshua

Please continue to pray for our CBM team in Kenya, especially the remember our NEP team responding to the drought in Northeastern Kenyan.

Famine Relief CBM: Making an Impact!

Canadian Baptist Ministries Food Relief

Northeastern Province Kenya

Fifty-two children eating at the daily feeding project

in the village of Atheley, near Garissa.

Since the beginning of June, Canadian Baptist Ministries has been working with several partner agencies on accessing and responding to the drought that is impacting this entire region. One of our responses has been with the Sisters Maternity Hospital (SIMAHO) in Garissa.

Together with our colleagues Yattani Gollo and William Guyo, SIMAHO has been serving nine villages along the Tana River through mobile outreach clinics and daily feeding programs targeted at helping expecting and lactating mothers and children under the age of five. The project is called an "Ambulatory Feeding Program" as it is delivered in cooperation with mobile clinics carried out by SIMAHO's nurses and nutritionist.

Over the past month, Erica and I have become increasingly involved in CBM's Drought Response. This week, we are apart of an assessment team with Diane Bannister who is a registered nurse in Kenya and Canada, as well as Yattani and William. We are working with several agencies and consortiums as we coordinate our efforts and seek to make the greatest impact both for the immediate emergency and for longterm sustainable change.

Change That You Can See!

This is a photograph of our nutritionist colleague, Hassan Abdullahi, measuring the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) of a little girl a part of the Dololoweyn Feeding Project. Only six weeks ago, 35% of the children in Dololoweyn were underweight and among them several wasting away. The MUAC is a medical instrument for health care workers to measure sever and acute malnutrition. "It is incredible to see how quickly these children have bounced back!" Hassan told us. "I can see the change." Daily feeding, paired with the provision of monthly rations through the Kenyan Red Cross, USAID and the government of Kenya is making an impact upon people living in towns and targeted villages. But there are many gaps in the relief work, and the challenge is working effectively to avoid duplication and reach the people being missed.

While in Dololoweyn, a group of 40 mothers crossed the Tana River from a neglected community in the arid plains beyond. They have no other medical centre or source of food. This is it. Despite the danger of crossing the Tana, they came to feed their children and receive medical help. "We must ensure that everyone is immunized," explained the Zahra from SIMAHO. "Measles, whooping cough, and other communicable diseases are a great concern as so many refugees come to us from Somalia and the bush. We are already seeing outbreaks of measles in the camps, and cases of polio in the western parts of the country."

Erica helping a little girl too weak to lift the

heavy cup of unimix at the feeding clinic in Atheley

With the help of the mobile clinics and feeding program, the villages have attracted hundreds of new arrivals as an influx of pastoral families have moved into each of the nine villages in search of help, most having lost their herds to the drought. Dololoweyn's population, for instance, has jumped from 300 to over 800 in the past two months.

Despite the huge influx, the people are sharing what little they have and are caring for the neighbours. Camilla was one of the many pregnant mothers we met at the mobile clinics. She was carrying an infant and walking with a two year old into the feeding shelter, when we asked her about her children: she explained that her brother returned with the infant and five other children and asked her to care for them because his wife had died in the drought. "I can only feed these children because of the food I am given," she told us thankfully. "I have nothing else to give them."

Diane Bannister checking on a newborn

at the Bura Daily Feeding Project, near Doloweyn

In Prayer:

* Please pray for the 4 million people within Kenya presently affected by the drought.

* Pray for the frontline medical workers, churches, agencies and community groups that are responding to the needs of these people. We pray not only for lives to be saved in the immediate crisis, but for sustainable change that will enable these communities to mitigate against future crisis.

* We pray for hope and spiritual healing among the countless families who have suffered such loss and anguish through this famine.

* We thank God for the people he is using around the world and in tangible ways to show love and compassion to their neighbours. It has been heart warming this week to see men and women stepping forward and serving the sick and weakest among them. People who may not have eaten much themselves, feeding the children of their neighbours.

Aaron in Raya with Abdi, one of the volunteer

men helping in the feeding project

The Gollos

While in Garissa we were thrilled to have two opportunities to visit with our friends Yattani and Salomi who live in Kenya's Northeastern province. Some of you will know that they celebrated the birth of their first child, Joshua, this past June. He is growing strong and healthy -- and according to Salomi, he is a great sleeper!

Tunea with her nephew, Joshua