Published on: 04/03/2011
A government drought monitoring team came face to face with the vagaries of the current drought when it visited starving and thirsty residents of Sosoma village in Mwingi East district.
During the Tuesday visit, the team from the National Crisis Centre found residents and their livestock milling around a dried-up Sosoma borehole.
The team led by Ruth Gathii, who is also the head of the Arid Lands Drought Management Project in the Ministry of Northern Kenya found the residents trying to pump water from the dry borehole. They had been doing it for days with no success.
The residents said since the borehole had stopped yielding water due to low underground water recharge, they had camped there hoping the water would rise to the pumping level.
The team distributed the few bottles of mineral water they had to the thirsty residents. "We found very old people and even pregnant women who begged us to give them the little water we had. We had to distribute all the bottled water we had as they appeared very desperate," said a member of the team.
Gathii directed officials in the ministry to start supplying water to the parched residents. She further directed the officials to get water bowsers to deliver water to Sosoma primary school.
About 4,000 residents and 30,000 livestock have been left without water after the Sosoma borehole dried up. They are now relying on water supplied by the bowsers.
The situation has been worsened by pastoralists from the neighbouring Tana River district who are camping at the Sosoma area with more than 1,000 camels hoping to get water from the dry borehole.
Source: Musembi Nzengu, Nairobi Star / allAfrica.com, 3 March 2011
