Of the cattle, the brightly dressed Maasai usually drive across the plains at the foot of Kilimanjaro Kilimanjaro is these days to see any more. The once-green landscape is brown and gray colors of death and misery "No drought was so bad as this," says the Massaihirte Mengeti Lomni ole. For three years It has been raining hard here, the last rainy season is quite unusual. Water is scarce, most wells have dried up. The thirst is the only thing for the people is still worse than hunger.
For more than twenty million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, the food supply is no longer guaranteed. With the rain stays in the harvest, prices rise accordingly. A package of corn meal, staple food of most Kenyans costs, currently 120 shillings (1,10 euro), almost a day's pay. The four pound range a family of four for a few days, assuming there is enough water to strain. Kenyan Agriculture Minister William Ruto charged at the earliest in a year with an expansion of the supply situation.
Actually, the state corn reserves to the market in times of need, partly as a relief, partly to push for the prize. But according to official figures lie in state corn silos only two and a half instead of normally eight million bags maize. A good part of the difference should have sold corrupt ministry officials and even the Agriculture Minister himself to millions of profits to foreign countries. Although the government has announced to send army and police into the country to distribute relief supplies. "But I wonder what you want to distribute," says Iris Krebber is by the German Agro Action in Kenya. "After my knowledge there is no lack of distributors but for distributing relief supplies. "
The prices on the markets are so high that residents of poor neighborhoods now eat pig food. "A bag with 90 pounds costs 1200 shillings," says Jane Wanjiru, a single mother of four children. "For a sack of flour I would have to pay more than three times, I can not afford it." Thus, if the 35-year-old with five friends to buy pig feed. ". A blind six families fed for more than a week," The preparation, says Wanjiru, is difficult: in order from the stinking plant and animal meal a kind of pancake to bake, it must release a handful of expensive wheat flour and a tablespoon of oil in the pan. The result looks more like a crumbly biscuit, but Wanjirus children to grip. They suffer from stomach pain, says her mother, and diarrhea. "But what else should I give them? Relief supplies we had already seen for a month any more. "
Massaihirten as Mengeti ole Lomni to be of how to decimate their only wealth, the cattle herds. Because it is dry everywhere in the country to turn more and more flocks back home, where they are slaughtered. The sale does not pay. For the skinny cows they have on the market just yet equivalent of ten euros - usually it is four times as much. Due to the slaughter, the Maasai, at least for the moment some meat. But how will he survive without cattle in the future, remains an insoluble riddle Lomni ole.
(Copyright Rhenish Mercury, 20/8/2009)
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