केन्यामा खडेरीका कारण नौ लाख भन्दा बढी बालबालिका कुपोषित

Turkana, in northern Kenya, has been hit by a massive drought for over a year, triggered and worsened by the effects of El Nino. Under a program called Kenya Resilient Arid Lands Partnership for Integrated Development (Kenya-RAPID), funded by USAID and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), CRS is the lead NGO in Isiolo and Turkana Counties working working with Catholic Church dioceses to support the County governments as they develop their capacities to sustainably tap and exploit precious water reserves in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, or ASALs. Substantial water supplies lie below ground, so using them responsibly and maintaining them at the County level (as part of Kenya’s devolution under the new Constitution of 2010) is key to the economic development of these traditionally marginalized lands. In the ASALs, crop farming is possible only along riverbeds and/or with irrigation, so livestock is a mainstay of the economy. Ensuring access to water for livestock and people is a major pillar of the program. Akai Akiru, 40, was walking across these dusty plains a few hours outside of the capital of Turkana County, Lodwar. She was going to fetch water, she said, somewhere beyond the distant horizon. It takes her three hours to walk there, and three hours to get back, carrying the full 20-liter (5-gallon) jug on her head. That, she said, sums up her entire day. She is too tired to do anything else. She, her husband and three children survive on each day’s water she brings and wild doum palm fruit, she said. But not one doum palm tree is in sight.