Famine: First-Hand Account from a Handicap International Expatriate

“Around 1,300 Somali refugees are arriving, totally exhausted, at the Dadaab camp every day. They have often travelled 300 to 400 km in the heat. Many children with disabilities are carried in wheelbarrows.” Bernard Franck, a physiotherapist working for Handicap International, is seeing needs grow daily on the border between Kenya and Somalia.
For several days, aid agencies present in the Horn of Africa have been sounding the alarm; a famine - the worst since 1991 - is wreaking havoc in the region. Somalia is the most severely affected, but the famine is also being felt in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan and Uganda.
Handicap International has been working in the camps that surround the small village of Dadaab in Kenya since 1997. The organisation provides direct assistance to people with disabilities and raises awareness among other agencies to ensure access to basic services (water, sanitation, etc.). For many years, Somalis have been seeking refuge here, fleeing a country abandoned to chaos. Bernard Franck has been working as rehabilitation technical coordinator for the Kenya/Somaliland programme since August 2009. He also provides occasional rehabilitation support in Ethiopia and South Sudan. He recently returned to Europe for a few days before going back to Kenya at the end of August. He describes the situation facing the Handicap International teams on the ground.

“During the eight months since October 2010, we have noted an influx of refugees fleeing the conflict in Somalia and coming to live in the camps. Since June the number has peaked significantly with around 1,300 refugees arriving every day. There are currently 380,000 people living in Dadaab – including 20,000 people with disabilities of all kinds - and it is expected to accommodate 500,000 people by the end of the year. But the current camps are already inundated. New arrivals must settle outside the camps, without any sanitation facilities. They build shelters in the shade of a few trees using branches and plastic sheeting.
They arrive completely exhausted, starving and dehydrated. I remember one mother who had walked for some ten days with her fifteen-year-old son, afflicted with cerebral palsy, in a wheelbarrow. She had travelled 300 to 400 km in the heat, pushing the wheelbarrow through the sand. Many people with disabilities arrive like this, carried on backs or in wheelbarrows. When people arrive, they collapse and wait, motionless, sitting on cardboard boxes. But there are also those who die on the way from fatigue, hunger, thirst. Among them are many children.

Handicap International is obviously not the only NGO working in the area, but our concern is focused on the most vulnerable such as the elderly, adults and children who are on their own and people with disabilities. We ensure, in particular, that there is no discrimination when basic needs are being distributed. The organisation is currently conducting an assessment to see if, in addition to what we are already doing, any other type of support is necessary in Dadaab and in a transit camp on the Somali border with a capacity to accommodate 10,000 people.
The situation requires urgent responses!
Due to the increase in the number of refugees in recent months, we had started recruiting new people to meet their increasing needs. Now, we not only need to further expand the size of our teams, but also our resources and available funds to provide all the assistance necessary, as we fear that the influx of refugees will continue.”