Roger Burks's blog

I've said many times, both out loud and written down, that I feel like I've had one of the best jobs in the world. But on each trip I've taken to some of the world's toughest, most isolated and fascinating places, there's always a really hard part: leaving.

Photo: Jacob Colie/Mercy Corps

While I'm always anxious to get back to my wife and son, often after a day or more in transit, it's difficult to leave most of the countries I visit. I think one big reason is the seeming finality of it all: even though I've had the incredibly good fortune to visit a place like Mongolia or Kosovo, what's the chance I'll be returning? What I take with me in my suitcases and memory are what I'll keep from that place for the remainder of my life.

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I just got off a Horn of Africa emergency response team phone conference involving dozens of colleagues in at least five different countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, the United Kingdom and the United States. We have these calls every few days to update each other and coordinate our efforts on what is one of the biggest crises to which we've ever responded.

There are over 1.46 million displaced people living in camps in Somalia and one third of them (about 500,000 people) are in camps in Mogadishu. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

The scale of the Horn of Africa crisis is staggering: the drought-stricken region is nearly half the size of the United States. Across this vast area, at least 12.4 million people are struggling to find enough food and water to survive, thousands of them walking for weeks to reach places where they hope to find some measure of relief.

One of those places is Mogadishu, Somalia's capital — which is, by its mere connotation, an unlikely locale to seek assistance. But 3.7 million people, about 40 percent of Somalia's total population, is at risk for starvation. That's why an estimated 100,000 people have fled to Mogadishu over the last several weeks.

Our team on the ground in Somalia is seeing the effects of that mass displacement. Today, they visited a camp where at least 120,000 people are staying in whatever shelter they can find. Our water and sanitation expert said there are only five or six latrines in the entire camp — at best, that's one latrine for every 20,000 people.

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Fodder and water distribution in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Photo: Kaja Wislinska/Mercy Corps

Our emergency response efforts in Ethiopia's Oromia and Somali Regions — two of the areas hit hardest by the region's worst drought in 60 years — continue to expand. We're now reaching 647,005 people, about 22,000 more than reported in our last update from Ethiopia.

Here are some specific details of our lifesaving response in some of the country's driest and poorest places:

• In Gashamo District, we've delivered a total of 1.74 million liters of clean water to sustain more than 55,500 people
• We've purchased, transported and installed 20 10,000-liter water tanks at schools throughout Gashamo District
• We've helped build 14 wells and provided five water pumps to drought-stricken villages

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Mercy Corps has been delivering clean, fresh water to families — many of whom are displaced — for more than a month in drought-stricken northeastern Kenya. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

Over the last week, our emergency response team in northeastern Kenya has reached more than 9,700 more people with clean water. The total population to which we're delivering and ensuring water has risen to 197,749.

Our staff is deployed throughout the hardest-hit parts of Kenya's drought-parched Wajir County, and our efforts are reaching more people every day. But there are dozens of other villages — and tens of thousands more people, many of them displaced — who need our help to survive this crisis.

In addition to trucking fresh water to places that have no natural supply or infrastructure, our team is also helping communities restore broken systems and build more capacity. This week, we're working to design a long-term pump house, storage tanks and piping in one of the area's biggest and poorest towns. We're also planning for the construction of water distribution lines and troughs in another large village. We're coordinating all of these activities with local government officials and other humanitarian organizations to ensure that immediate needs are met and long-term challenges are addressed.

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On this World Humanitarian Day, I'm thinking about what humanitarian aid workers are — and what they are not.

Specifically, right now I'm thinking about a recent video from the Horn of Africa. NBC's Ann Curry was in Mogadishu with a humanitarian aid worker from the World Food Programme. "How do you come out of that, come out of looking at that, without just wanting to cry?" she asked.

"I don't — I don't," the aid worker replied.

That's an often-untold story about this line of work: the personal costs. There are rewards and inspirations to be sure. But for every minute of handing over food, water or other supplies to a family, there are many hours of hard work, tough negotiations, grueling travels and horrific dangers. There is little, if any, time for rest — and even those hours are spent immersed in conflict, poverty, disaster and famine.

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Yesterday my colleague Cassandra Nelson, on the ground in Somalia, sent in several photographs of what she was seeing in Mogadishu, the country's crisis-ravaged capital to which our emergency response team has deployed. Each picture struck me harder than anything has in a long, long time — but the one I'm posting here honestly had me sitting in my chair, quietly sobbing over the unimaginable situation it portrayed.

A young mother cradles her severely malnourished child at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

A young mother sits in a hospital, cradling her excruciatingly fragile-looking baby. It's hard to say how old the little child is. It's plain to see that the baby is critically malnourished and on the brink.

But it's the look on the young mother's face that breaks my heart — because it is such a strong and yet, at the same time, imploring expression. There seems both resolution and deep uncertainty. I wonder where she came from and how she got here. If she has, or had, other children. What I wonder most of all, though, is what happens after the moment within this photograph.

So many photographs I've seen during the ongoing Horn of Africa crisis have made me consider and empathize with the plight of parents in places like Somalia. It makes me think of holding my own son when he was a newborn. At that moment — whether you're a father or a mother — you're immediately and irrevocably imbued with a sense to protect that little life at all costs. Preserve the promise of those little hands and bright eyes. You know that you will fight and do anything you can for your baby.

Parents in Somalia and across the Horn of Africa are in the fight of their lives; they're literally fighting for life. At least 30,000 children have died in Somalia's famine in just the last three months, and all indications are the worst is yet to come. From pictures like these, it might look hopeless, but we can't give up. This woman certainly isn't giving up.

You can see in this young mother's eyes that she's still fighting, despite her own thirst, hunger and fatigue. She's determined to save her baby — and we can help her. We must.

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Women in Wajir West filling containers with clean water from Mercy Corps. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps' emergency response team in northeastern Kenya is providing fresh, clean water to more than 186,000 people in 33 drought-stricken villages and towns.

Over the last week, we've doubled the number of places in Kenya's Wajir County we're reaching with lifesaving relief. But there are thousands of families displaced across Wajir, desperate for water and other assistance. You can help us reach them.

In order to ease Wajir's worsening water crisis, we're trucking in drinking water, providing free fuel for borehole generators and supplying towns with new water storage tanks. Over the last several days, we've installed six 10,000-liter tanks to store the water we're delivering to villages that haven't had reliable water for weeks.

Mercy Corps water storage tank in place in Wajir South. Photo: Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

We're also beginning to provide water for families' remaining livestock herds, which are the main source of livelihood and income in this part of Kenya. Throughout the region, families have already lost most of their livestock to the worsening drought.

Our team is working hard to assess and begin other relief programs, such as food aid to families struggling through the crisis. But with hungry, thirsty populations on the move in search of help — and families crowding into already-poor towns and villages that are already struggling to meet their own needs — the situation grows more desolate by the day.

Please give a donation to help us expand our efforts, find and reach more families trying to survive East Africa's worst crisis in decades. Thank you for your support, and we'll continue to report on our progress.

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A woman and her daughter in a northeast Kenyan village get clean, fresh water — likely their first in days — from supplies trucked in by Mercy Corps' emergency response team. Photo: Mercy Corps

Over the last few days, the Mercy Corps team has more than tripled the number of northeast Kenyan villages in which we're delivering clean water to families. We're now providing lifesaving relief to 16 towns throughout drought-parched Wajir County, reaching more than 119,000 people.

Our current emergency response in this part of Kenya is focusing on increasing access to affordable water in two ways:

1. Trucking fresh water into villages that have no access to a reliable water source, and
2. Subsidizing the fuel costs for pumping in villages with boreholes to increase the available water supply.

We're working in towns of all sizes, from larger towns (Bilcilbuulbul, with 28,078 people) to tiny villages (Qara and Weylahir, with 300 people each). Our team is still assessing needs across the area, and we'll continue expanding our work to save lives.

You can help us keep finding and helping crisis-stricken families survive with a donation to our Horn of Africa response fund. Thank you for your support.

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Mercy Corps' emergency team is delivering water to drought-stricken villages in Kenya's Wajir County. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

Yesterday our team trucked dozens of barrels of clean, fresh water to five drought-parched villages in Kenya's Wajir County. They also provided water storage tanks to each community that will hold thousands of liters — enough to quench the thirst of villagers for the next 30 days. As we ensure villages have enough immediate water supply to survive the stifling drought, we're also developing more sustainable water solutions to help guarantee their long-term water needs are met.

Our emergency response team has been working long, hot hours and traveling incredibly long distances to arrange and deliver relief to families caught up in East Africa's ongoing food and water crisis. Several staff members embarked on a nine-hour trip that took them to a village where families hadn't had sufficient water for three days.

Tomorrow, August 1, marks the start of Ramadan throughout the Islamic world, which includes most of the areas of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia affected by the crisis. Throughout the month, families reflect on their faith by fasting during the daylight hours —not eating or drinking at all. In typical years, each family breaks the fast at sundown with a celebratory shared meal called Iftar.

But this year, millions of families won't have food when night comes. Their hunger will continue. Our team is working hard to arrange food deliveries to some of Kenya's poorest and most remote villages.

Many of our emergency response staff will be marking Ramadan as well — including team leader Abdikadir Mohamud. When I asked him how the fast would affect him and his team's daily efforts, here's what he told me:

"It will be more tiring. We will have a lower energy level because of the fast. We'll start earlier each day, because the heat will catch up and get us later on," he said. "But nothing will change in terms of how we're working...we have to keep moving — we have to respond."

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Our emergency response teams across the Horn of Africa — in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya — are working hard, long hours every day to assess needs and speed relief to hungry and struggling families. Often, our staff is traveling in remote areas, out of the range of any communications at all.

But occasionally we're able to reach them by phone to get a quick update about what they're doing and seeing. Here are some rapid thoughts from our team leader in northeastern Kenya.

• Lots of movement on the Somalia border. We see women and children. The men have left.
• Food is available in the markets, but families have no money to purchase it.
• There's concentration of settlements for drought-displaced families along the road.
• Water storage is broken or poorly managed.
• Malnutrition rates are skyrocketing.
• In two weeks, we may be seeing a lot of people dying.
• Many people have lost at least half their livestock.
• We are headed to a town south of here where people have reportedly not had water for three days.
• People are moving so fast that the problem is that, by the time we mobilize assistance, they may have moved.
• Ramadan is coming in just a few days, and the needs will be high.
• Food issues are most critical with the most vulnerable populations: women, children and the elderly.

The situation on the ground is dire. You can hear the exhaustion and urgency in the voices of our emergency team members. They need your help — anything you can give will help us do more.

We'll stay on the lines and bring you more updates as we receive them.

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