Bija Gutoff's blog

Our programs in Ethiopia address harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation. Photo: Berehanu Eshete/Mercy Corps

Discussions include community members, traditional institution leaders, and local government leaders — both men and women. Photo: Berehanu Eshete/Mercy Corps

In many places around the world, women have less visibility, power and status in their communities than do men — an imbalance that makes women more vulnerable to threats, coercion and abuse. Violence against women can be sexual, physical, emotional or economic. Because it arises from power differences based on gender, it's called gender-based violence, or GBV. (Men and boys can be victims of GBV too, but the vast majority of victims are women and girls.)

The risk of GBV increases during conflicts, emergencies and natural disasters — the very environments in which Mercy Corps works — because these crises cause social structures to break down, making women even more vulnerable. Mercy Corps takes very seriously its responsibility to mitigate the risks of GBV and protect people in the communities we serve.

As part of our agency-wide effort to ensure that all our programs carefully consider issues of power, vulnerability and GBV, we recently sent GBV specialist Kevin McNulty to observe our programs in the Horn of Africa.

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Ibrahim Sirat, field supervisor for Mercy Corps' drought response program in Wajir, NE Kenya. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

Yesterday I wrote to our supporters about my recent trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, where people are suffering the terrible effects of the worst drought in 60 years. Soon after the email went out, I got this message from Ibrahim Sirat, field manager of Mercy Corps' drought response in the Wajir area of NE Kenya. Ibrahim and I worked together during my visit. His message reminds me that a crisis like this is never simple. Rain alone does not solve all the problems; in fact, it creates new ones.

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We’re outside the Mercy Corps office in Gashamo, Ethiopia – a bone-crunching nine hour drive from Jijiga, the regional capital. It’s early in the morning, and the noisy generator is cranking out its last few minutes of power before we shut it down for the day. Here we only have the electricity we create with our own generator, and that only at night. There’s no cell service, no internet. The guys who work in our office here are at the front lines of Mercy Corps’ work to ease hunger and suffering in remote rural Ethiopia. They make do with very little in the way of comfort. The only critters that seem to thrive in this environment are the cockroaches: I’ve never seen bigger ones.

Our team is loading up the jeep with the weekly allotment of supplies for the mobile health clinic site we’ll be visiting today: antibiotics, analgesics, deworming medicine, vitamin A (a common deficiency), soap, mosquito nets for pregnant and lactating women, cough syrup, fortified cereal, Plumpy’nut, cooking oil.

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Mercy Corps cash for work project at Camp Idle (eed-lay), near Gashamo, we are paying workers to build water storage facility, will hold 200,000 liters to supply an entire village, build resilience to future droughts. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

On the road halfway between Gashamo and Jijiga, we spent the night with a local family. As we sat and talked on the front stoop, the evening was pleasant, the full moon bright. Then in a matter of an hour or so, I watched the clouds roll in and the stars wink out. By the time I bedded down, rain was drumming hard on the roof. It was a wonderful sound.

So does that mean the drought is over?

Not by a long shot.

I talked with several of my Mercy Corps teammates to get a clearer picture of the cycle here. “We are hearing about some scattered rain in parts of Ethiopia,” said Mohammed Sheikh Osman, the head of our Jijiga office. “So for the time being, we can stop trucking water to Gashamo, which has been a real hotspot of the drought. As of Tuesday in that area, people have adequate water to drink.”

But in three areas in the southern region of Oromia, where there is no rain yet, or where slight scattered rains are not sufficient, we are continuing to truck emergency water.

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When Istohil Sheik Ahmed Abdi brought her 9-month-old son Sahane to the Mercy Corps mobile clinic in her area, she hoped to learn why he was so weak. The baby cried constantly, was vomiting and refused to nurse. He had a high fever.

Istohil and her family live as pastoralists, relying on their animals for milk and income. The drought had killed all their livestock except one camel. They were so poor that Sahane had no clothes. He weighed less than seven pounds.

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Ali Mohamed, head of Mercy Corps sub-office in Gashamo (left), with Hali Yosuf, 27, and her six-month old, Samia Mohamud. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

There was already a crowd at the mobile health site when we arrived. The veranda was a colorful swirl of fabric. Most of the women had a bulge at their side, belly or back that turned out, when unwrapped, to be a baby.

I made my way through the crowd and began taking photos. I asked the moms what was wrong, what brought them to the clinic today. These normally shy people – many of the women and girls I’ve met on my trip through drought-stricken regions of Kenya and Ethiopia have refused to be photographed – quickly held up their babies for me. They wanted their children to be seen. They peeled back a t-shirt, lifted a pant leg, pointed to an eye. They pressed a finger to a foot to show the telltale imprint of edema, a symptom of severe malnutrition.

The Mercy Corps team – working in partnership with the Ethiopian government, and now transitioning the program to local hands – rotates among 12 sites every two weeks. Communities know where the team will be on a given day, so they can show up at the clinic near their home. Mercy Corps targets the communities where the need is greatest.

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I’m writing from under my mosquito net in Jijiga, Ethiopia. If you don’t know where that is, don’t feel bad. I didn’t either. I looked it up before I left home, of course, but Google maps only showed a big empty expanse that I suppose is meant to indicate sand. Anyway, Jijiga is in the eastern part of the country, very close to the border of Somalia. And there’s much more than sand here.

Today we visited Mercy Corps projects that are helping people who live around here get through the worst of the drought and build greater security, in the most basic sense of the word: food, water, shelter, hygiene. My traveling companions are my Mercy Corps teammates Ahmed Osman and Ali Ghaddi, and our driver, Hussein.

Our first stop is the small village of Tulli-Gullet, not far outside Jijiga – on a road built by a Mercy Corps cash-for-work project. Ahmed explained: “The communities here couldn’t get to market to buy or sell goods, because there was no road. So Mercy Corps provided wages for the local people to build this road.”

We were greeted by women ululating and waving branches over our heads — a sign of welcome and peace. We walked around with a group of village men, women and kids, who showed us their houses and the supplies Mercy Corps provided to 450 families here: heavy plastic tarps for their roofs, blankets, mosquito nets and jerry cans. These are the essential everyday goods that shelter people here from weather and malaria and allow them to bring water home from the well.

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Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

Here's an example of how prices have skyrocketed in Kenya because of the drought.

The conversion rate is simple: 100 Kenyan shilling equals a dollar.

I'm told milk powder is also much more expensive now — it's 30 KS for a tablespoon, the quantity someone in a village would buy. It's too costly to buy larger amounts.

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In the town of Lag Bogol and the surrounding villages of Leheley, Boji Yareh and Boji Eyrib, we meet dozens of pastoralist “dropouts” — herders who have no more herds, and therefore are forced to “dropout” of their ancient way of life. To a college kid, dropping out may signal a certain lack of stick-to-it-tive-ness. Don’t misunderstand the term — these people have nothing but determination. Widows, women left on their own, orphans, elderly and babies, they are the most vulnerable of all. And still they persist.

The stories they tell us are similar in all but the particulars:

Our animals died. We had to walk a long way to get here. We came looking for help because we had nothing. We give thanks for the help we are receiving from Mercy Corps. But even this is not enough. Food is very expensive, and the aid we are receiving is only half of what we need.

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Chief Saladi Ibrahim shakes my hand and manages a smile. As we sit down in the hut, he pauses to gather his thoughts. He is clearly troubled. He’s been chief for 17 years, and his village of Dela, like the rest of Wajir County, is in a terrible time.

Dela is receiving emergency distributions of cash and trucked-in water from Mercy Corps. Today we delivered cash assistance of $30 each to 110 of the most desperately needy families, as well as 3,000 liters of water – two days’ supply for 700 families. Lacking a well or borehole to access water deep underground, Dela depends on a community water pan – a large shallow reservoir – to collect rainwater. Today the pan sits dry and empty.

Truck that brought today's water to Dela. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

“We really appreciate to get the cash and the water,” says Ibrahim. “This is helping us survive in this drought time. If we did not get this help, our people would be having an even rougher time.”

Looking around Dela, it is hard to conceive what “rougher” even means. Does it get rougher than this? The people who gradually gather in and around the hut during our conversation are quiet and composed. But their expressions are strained with worry.

Men and women alike are dressed in loose drapes of thin cloth, their limbs lean and bony. Sitting with their knees pulled up, they remind me of the long-legged birds we saw today, the ones that seem to pleat like accordions. There is no padding of any kind here.

A skinny camel. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

“Our camels are so weak,” says Ibrahim, “we have to help them to stand up in the morning. We are sharing what food and water we have with our animals. But it is not enough for both humans and animals.”

“We used to use the animals to bring us water,” he explains. “When a donkey is strong, he can carry 40 liters of water. Now our donkeys are so weak, he cannot carry even one liter.”

“One of our women told me she took the rice she bought from the shop, and she boiled it, and when it was soft, she gave it to her donkey. There is no plant or grass here for the animals to eat. Everything in our life is our animals. So we are giving the donkeys and the goats some of the water you are bringing us. We are giving them some of our human food.”

Cow with boy just outside Dela. Photo: Bija Gutoff/Mercy Corps

Families are using their cash assistance to buy rice, oil, onions, salt, tea, milk powder and other necessities. Sometimes they have to spend their allotment to hire a driver to take a sick child or other family member to the clinic miles away.

Food is getting more expensive – and more people need help. “There are 10,000 people here,” says the chief. “And we have 110 families getting help. But there are 200 to 300 more families who need this help.”

I ask Chief Ibrahim what his people need most. He first takes time to acknowledge what they have already received. “We have been helped. You have helped us. For this water we have gotten, for the cash, we say thank you. Our community is saying thank you.”

He pauses again, then he says,, “We need more water. Especially for the animals. Our animals are dying. Our people need more help until the rainy time comes.”

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