Three Kenyan Plauges: COVID-19, Locusts, Flooding
As of June 8th 2,127 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Kenya, including 85 deaths. Meanwhile, over 150,000 people have been displaced by flooding and landslides that have claimed nearly 250 lives, including many vulnerable children. Additionally, Kenyan harvests are being decimated by the worst locust swarms in 70 years, leaving farmers without crops to harvest and communities devoid of food. Harambee Centre is raising funds and developing new programs to bring aid to those in need in the Chwele area.
Rural areas, like Chwele, are among the affected communities. The flooding effects are causing homelessness, hunger, and water-related illnesses due to home-destroying floods, mudslides and excessive water sipping into home foundations from the ground up. With the COVID-19 stay-at-home guidelines, which have been extended to mid-July, people cannot leave their homes for help. The elderly are especially isolated due to stay-at-home guidelines, which have some cities such as Nairobi and Mombasa on complete lockdown status. As a result of these lockdowns, family members in urban areas are not able to travel to visit with their elderly relatives in rural areas – leaving them isolated, hungry, and sometimes ill.
Robai, 72 years old, lives alone and is suffering from severe arthritis. During rains, water sips through the ground into her home. Her only child is on COVID-19 lockdown in a large city and is unable to visit her to bring her necessities like food and assist with home repair.
Dorcus, 30 years old, has two children, including a newborn who was just 4-days old when this photo was taken. Her home has been severely damaged by floods.
Action Plan
Through Harambee Centre, the Chwele Community Resource and Peace Centre leaders are coordinating a team of essential community healthcare workers to source available produce from local farmers and other basic dry food items from a near-by town, Bungoma, to distribute to displaced and other needy families to address the basic public health issue of hunger and nutrition. Under the management of Paul Kuto, funds raised will be used to reach out to at least 100 households with varied needs as follows:
Food from local farmers for affected families. This will additionally support local farmers by providing an avenue to sell any produce not destroyed by floods or locusts.
Repair homes whose walls or floors are partially swept away by flooding. This will additionally provide some income for labor workers in the area.
Medical care at Chwele Health Clinic for emergency water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid from the floods.
Costs of coordination and distribution of aid (up to 10% of funds raised).
Josylene, 40 years old, has 8 children. She and her husband are brick makers, but due to rains they have lost their livelihood. They are not at peace because their roof leaks water when it rains.
This is the family of Salome. She is a widow, a mother of 9, and a grandmother of 11. She lives with all the grandchildren and only one of them is able to work so they can buy food. The floods swept away one side of their home. It is still pouring rain and they are not certain that they will be safe in this half structure where they all shelter during the cold nights. During normal times they plant maize in a quarter acre of land to help feed their large family, but due to the floods this crop has been destroyed.
Thank You
Thank you to our partners who have joined our efforts to start building this fund for much needed emergency relief efforts.
Tigard Community Friends Church
Reedwood Friends Church
Eugene Friends Church
Ken and Carol VanDomelen
And thank you to all of you who are able to donate to this much needed cause during a time when so much support is needed both at home and abroad.
Wishing you and yours good health during these challenging times of COVID-19 and calls for overhauling social reform with racial justice.
With warmest regards and much gratitude,
Grace Kuto and the Harambee Centre Board