• One journalist's take on a neglected African tragedy

    NBC News producer Baruch Ben-Chorin just returned from Turkana, a remote region in northwestern Kenya badly hit by the drought that is afflicting parts of East Africa.  While the international community has focused largely on suffering in Somalia, relief workers say close to 40 percent of Turkana's population is suffering from hunger and malnutrition. 

    While concentrating on his main task of producing, Ben-Chorin took pictures for himself and his friends and family.

    Editor's note: These images were altered by a software application that uses filters to mimic the effects of shooting with an antique plastic film camera, even though they were taken with a modern digital phone camera.

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    A hut in the village of Kalapata, Turkana region, Kenya. Most of the people in Turkana live in small villages like Kalapata, depending on their herds for their livelihood. But the drought has killed most of their animals, and left them with nothing. Their traditional way of life may not survive.

     

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    A boy, foreground, receives food for the first time in two weeks at a Red Cross feeding point at a school. His father died in the famine in Loitanit, North Turkana. The drought over the last five years has devastated this region. In some parts the the region close to 40 percent of the people are malnourished.

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    A child collects maize grains from the ground.

     Ben-Chorin wrote the following upon his return from the region:

    I've used my iPhone to take pictures while on assignment or on the road for a while, and discovered the Hipstamatic application while playing around with it.  I find the low-tech, old-fashioned look appealing, and there is always a sense of mystery in the resulting picture.  This technique adds an interesting dimension that allows me to focus beyond the immediate, which a regular camera doesn’t.

    These photographs were taken during a three-day trip to the remote Turkana region, which has been badly affected by the long drought in the Horn of Africa. Because it is so remote, and to some extent ignored by the Kenyan government, there is little reporting about widespread hunger and malnutrition in Turkana. But it is bad, very bad. We visited a number of communities and witnessed these proud and beautiful people who have maintained their traditional way of life for thousands of years struggle to survive.

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    Turkana women waiting for food distribution in the village of Kalapata. Five people have died of hunger in this village alone over the last few months.

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    Turkana women. The people of Turkana are beautiful, proud and gracious, living a traditional life that dates back thousand of years.

    Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News

    Not far from the worst famine stricken areas, the USAID-sponsored Morulem project offers a sign of hope. The simple irrigation project has created vast green fields of maize and sorghum that feeds 3,000 households in the Lokori area. People here have a surplus of food that they can store or sell.

     

    Watch an NBC News report from Turkana:

    Rohit Kachroo reports from Turkana, in north-western Kenya, where famine is spreading deeper into the country causing many Kenyans to turn their attention away from the crisis in Somalia and work towards relieving the hunger within its own borders.

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    Doctors at the Dadaab Refugee Camp in refugee camp in northern Kenya along the Somali border are being forced to make heartbreaking decisions daily. The hospital at the camps has become a triage center for victims of the drought and famine in Somalia that have walked for days and weeks to seek help. 

    Dr. Gedi Mohamed, with Doctors without Borders tell's NBC’s Rohit Kachroo about the challenges of treating so many patients. The "people we’re seeing now are the most desperate," said Mohamed.

     Famine in Somalia: How to help 

  • Africa drought rips families apart, brings strangers together

    Millions of people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan are being affected by severe drought conditions. One desperate woman, looking for help, walked for an entire month with her five children to try to reach a refugee camp. ITV's Rohit Kachroo reports from the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya.

    By Rohit Kachroo, NBC News

    DADAAB, Kenya - With a population of almost 400,000, the Dadaab Refugee Camp in north-east Kenya is beginning to resemble a city. Like in any fast-growing metropolis, the morning rush here can be a miserable time; the infrastructure creaks louder than at any other part of the day. This must be the most desperate rush-hour of any city in the world.

    At around 8 a.m., a huge crowd of new residents begin to stream through the gates of the reception center. Most have been forced here by the worst drought to affect East Africa for 60 years – described by the United Nations as a "humanitarian emergency."

    World Food Program officials estimate that 10 million people already need humanitarian aid, The Associated Press reported Sunday. The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that more than 2 million children are malnourished and in need of lifesaving action.

    Many of the new arrivals are families who have walked from Somalia for days or even weeks in search of food and water.

    Amongst the line of refugees, many terrible stories are shared about the children who have died along the way. But some prefer to keep their stories to themselves.

    The United Nations says malnutrition among child refugees fleeing the drought in Somalia has reached alarming rates. Drought and famine are affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports.

    I spot a 52-year-old woman perched in the shade, sitting on her own and staring at the sky. She seems terrified, so I ask her whether she needs any help. She pauses and then explodes with an outburst of emotion and regret, telling me how she began her 200-mile journey with her 12-year-old boy – mother and son together. Then, stroking her throat and clutching her stomach, she reveals that he died along the way; his hunger and thirst had grown as they walked; his life was apparently claimed by the devastating drought. She returns to silence and, as we leave her, she seems to become engrossed in her thoughts once again.

    Hunger and exhaustion
    Nearby, amid a swirling dust storm, three young mothers run for cover under a shelter, each clutching their baby; we run with them. The blowing sand picks up and the mothers huddle together to shield the other children from the conditions as much as they do their own. They appear to be the best of friends – but it turns out that they met along the way from Somalia to Kenya and formed an immediate bond built upon their shared circumstances. Their closeness demonstrates that the drought which has ripped families apart has also forced some people together.

    Elsewhere in the camp, we find a mother cramming her children into a makeshift tent. She has six boys and girls with her, but I soon learn that they are not all her own. She welcomed the eldest child into her family during their month-long walk from the northern tip of rural Somalia. The boy's real mother died after collapsing from hunger and exhaustion on the penultimate day of their voyage; the two families had befriended each other as they made similar trips south towards the refugee camp. Yet the youngster's new mother seems to treat him no differently to any of the other children.

    To welcome an orphan into your family without reluctance might seem like an incredible thing to do when your own family continues to endure so much; but this sort of charity is not unique amongst the new refugees, who are arriving into Dadaab at the rate of up to 1,500 a day. In incredibly trying circumstances, there have been great acts of kindness. But with predictions that the drought will develop into a full-scale famine, there might be need for much more generosity.

  • Worst drought in 60 years: 12 million Africans face 'fight for survival'

     

    The United Nations says malnutrition among child refugees fleeing the drought in Somalia has reached alarming rates. Drought and famine are affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports.

     

    By Rohit Kachroo, NBC News

    WAJIR, Kenya - At first glance, the massive drought which has swept across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia appears to be a crisis caused entirely by nature.

    As we traveled north through Kenya into one of the worst-hit areas, the lush green of the Nairobi suburbs disappeared into gray sand and dry earth. In three hours, I counted the carcasses of 27 cattle by the roadside, and one giraffe - apparently killed because the land could not sustain them. The striking images of the landscape seem to represent a deceptively simple assessment of the drought: the dirty work of Mother Nature.

    Rohit Kachroo / NBC News

    The carcass of a giraffe on a roadside north of Nairobi, Kenya.

    "The only reason for all the suffering in this region is the lack of rain," one desperate doctor told me as he lifted up yet another severely malnourished baby so that he could be weighed. The doctor is wrong.

    Witness the outbreak of famine or drought and you'll usually see that there has been an outbreak of war nearby. In this case, the lawlessless of war-torn Somalia is driving people into neighboring Kenya. In Ethiopia, high inflation and fast-rising food prices have also forced people out. Many of those refugees have been competing with the recently killed animals that we saw on our journey for water and food. Consider that and the deadly cocktail behind this current crisis doesn't look so basic. Human hands are all over this.

    Kenya's refugee camps are packed. Dadaab, the biggest refugee camp in the world, was originally built for 90,000 people but now has 380,000 refugees, UNICEF officials told Reuters this week. About 10,000 more stream in each week.

    Bloodshed and turmoil
    Many of the children arriving are stick-thin and desperately hungry, fleeing the impact of dry weather. But there are adults who appear to be well-nourished. Many are escaping their homeland because life in a stinking, over-run camp is better than the bloodshed and turmoil back home.

    It all suggests that the solution might not be as simple as some donor appeals might imply. Aid agencies asking for tens of millions of dollars in donations will be able to do great work easing the anguish of many people.

    Jane Cocking, Oxfam's humanitarian director, told The Associated Press that 12 million people face "a fight for survival". Oxfam hopes to raise $80 million, its largest ever appeal for Africa.

    The U.N. has said the Horn of Africa is experiencing one of the worst droughts since the early 1950s.

    But aid groups won't be able solve the crisis on their own. They can't end war. They can't cut food prices.

    Cynics will say that it is a reason for the world not to get too involved. Many people have suggested the same thing to me. "This happens every year," they moan; on that point they're correct. Some parts of the region are so familiar with drought that they are synonymous with it. These are re-occuring crises which cannot be solved by even the greatest donor appeals.

    Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images

    Sarura, left, her husband Ali, right and their six children look bewildered as they arrive at the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya on Monday. Ali and his family had just finished an eight-day-journey to the camp from their home in Somalia. A complex of three settlements, Dadaab is the world's largest refugee camp.

    But although the cause of the crisis is complex, the consequence is simple - painfully simple. This year's drought and "pre-famine" do appear to be particularly bad. The United Nations believes that it might lead to a "human tragedy of unimaginable proportions" - a grave warning indeed. Charities say that the world must act now to avoid a catastrophe.

    But after this crisis, there may be many more - a tragedy in itself - because this is a combination of drought, refugee crisis and food crisis which has been made by men as well as nature. However, aid workers say that is no reason to look away. 

    The devastating drought in the Horn of Africa has sent hundreds of thousands of people from Somali seeking shelter in overwhelmed refugee camps in Kenya. ITN's Rohit Kachroo reports.