Contributor: Jill Morehead

In Wajir West and Wajir South, many of the people make their living as pastoralists. This means that men and boys often travel with the animals to look for water and grazing land for the herd. Families usually buy on credit from the shops and when the price is good, they sell off animals from the herd to pay back the debt.

Community meetings in Wajir. Photo: Jill Morehead/Mercy Corps

However, because some areas haven’t seen rain in nearly four years, many animals have died or are weak and livestock prices are low. This has stretched the local credit system, making it difficult for some families to access food and water.

Cash grants to affected families

With unconditional cash grants from Mercy Corps, these families can purchase food and water, pay back some of their debt, buy critical medicine, pay school fees, etc. They are able to meet whatever their most pressing basic needs are at the time. Providing direct cash assistance to families puts dignity and the power of choice in their hands and provides immediate access to basic needs for each household.

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Women collecting water in West Wajir. Photo: Jill Morehead/Mercy Corps

"Look. Over there. See them?"

Yakoub pointed so that I wouldn’t miss them. We were driving past the first few of about a dozen giraffe we would see that day driving from Nairobi to the city of Wajir in northeastern Kenya. In spite of the seriousness of the situation we were there to address, I couldn’t suppress my smile and I turned to take pictures.

Over the next five hours, from Garissa to Wajir, I enjoyed my mini-safari and snapped pictures of dik dik, gazelles, giraffes, ostriches and a startled warthog. The farther we got from Garissa, the less green I was able to see. Within a couple hours I started to snap pictures of the dusty landscape and barren bushes.

Mercy Corps is providing hundreds of thousands of liters of water to villages in Wajir South and Wajir West in northeastern Kenya each week. I piled into the Mercy Corps vehicle with a few colleagues to visit these villages and do some monitoring of the situation in West Wajir.

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As we pulled out of the Benghazi port into the clear, blue waters of the Mediterranean, it seemed more like we were on Greek island cruise than an International Organization for Migration (IOM) boat headed for the city of Misrata, Libya. This would be Mercy Corps’ sixth trip to Misrata since April 17, 2011. I was a little nervous. Fadl Moukadem, who has been a near constant presence in Misrata since April, was excited to return to a place that had become a second home.

Misrata's Tripoli Street bears the scars of heavy fighting not long ago. Photo: Jill Morehead/Mercy Corps

I was seasick that entire first day. The next morning, I woke up grateful to not feel nauseous and went out on the deck of the ship to see what I could see. As I looked around, I noticed NATO warships dotting the horizon and their silhouettes immediately brought the game Battleship to mind. I knew we must be close to Misrata. On the other side of the boat, I could see the port of Misrata and was anxious to arrive.

After two days in Misrata and attending meetings until late in the evening, I continue to be in awe at the resilience, organization and dedication of the Libyan people. For several blocks, we drove down Tripoli Street — where major fighting took place — and though I had seen photos, they can’t begin to prepare you for the sight of all that destruction. The buildings stand, damaged but proud, a constant reminder that it was a war zone just a couple weeks ago.

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Mercy Corps' Jill Morehead (right) talks with a Libyan farmer about the challenges of raising chickens during the country's ongoing conflict and crisis. Dwindling chicken feed supplies are driving up prices, making life harder for farmers and consumers alike. Photo: Mercy Corps

Two weeks ago, we walked into the grocery store here in Benghazi, Libya to look for chicken.

There was a large pile of frozen chicken in the corner, and when we questioned the price, we were told it was 6 dinars (about US$5) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), up from 4.5 dinars (US3.77). Today, chicken is 8 dinars (US$6.71) per kilo, nearly double the price before the conflict.

High prices are taking their toll in a conflict-stricken country where unemployment was already hovering around 30 percent, making it harder for families to put food on the table. Ask anyone in the store or anyone on the street if there is a shortage of chicken and they will all tell you yes. “Our family eats chicken nearly everyday, but the rising prices are hard on other families," one person told me. "I know there are people who are struggling. The problem is that there isn’t any food for the chicks.”

I visited the largest chicken farm in the country and was told that, in November, there were 740 tons of frozen chicken in their storage. Now there are fewer than five. Stock and supplies are running out.

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As we handed him our passports, I was a little nervous. I spent the last two years in Iraq and Pakistan and was used to not necessarily being totally welcome as an American.

However, upon seeing the American passports, the young Libyan opposition member manning the border smiled and asked if we were journalists. When we responded that we were humanitarian workers, he filled out our paperwork on our behalf, gave us a Libya stamp in our passports and waved us through.

As the landscape turned from sandy and rocky to green fields and trees, I watched and wondered what awaited us in Benghazi, knowing Libya would be unlike any emergency response I had done before. We passed several checkpoints, each one staffed with opposition members smiling and waving us through upon hearing we were Americans. From the border at Salloum, Egypt most of the way to Benghazi, we were teased with glimpses of a very blue Mediterranean Sea, which made the trip feel more like a vacation than an emergency response to a conflict zone. Everything in the east was calm and sleepy towns welcomed us as we drove past men tending their flocks of sheep and goats in the countryside.

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