My husband has a meeting in Arusha so I am hitching a lift. I was there six weeks ago and saw the effect the drought was having on the most vulnerable people, the women and children, and I want to see how it is now. Has the rain come? Or has the drought got worse?
Arusha is a five hour drive from Nairobi, when you include the border crossing and the current road works. We leave at 11.00 on a Sunday morning and make the border by 1.30pm. On the drive we watch out for cows, donkeys and goats, which regularly stray on to the road, and the children who tend them. There are few cows but many goats. This dry climate does not suit cattle which needs pasture for grazing, so we assume all the cattle are either up in Nairobi (many are) or have moved further down to Tanzania. Goats can survive better in this scrubby, dusty landscape, and will eat almost anything.
At the border we are lucky to miss the tourist buses which regularly ply this route, and are through quickly. Very soon we hit a temporary road and dust envelopes our car. Sometimes when we are following lorries, I can't see through the dust and worry about coming face to face with a large cow or worse still, a vehicle.
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| Women near Arusha prepare the parched soil for planting - in case it rains - Photo: Hilary Atkins |
Is the rain coming?
We stop for a sandwich lunch in the shade of a thorn tree, in between the old road and the new one and I examine the ground. The soil has turned to dust for lack of water, yet I notice the first shoot of a blade of grass and budding leaves on a thorn bush. Has there been rain recently, or is it just moisture in the air? It feels like a desert, but plants must be more sensitive than me to atmospheric changes.
The landscape becomes more desolate the closer we get to Arusha. I have driven this road many times and seen it in all seasons. I know it is often lush and green, but faced with this wasteland I find it difficult to remember the verdant fields and hills of the past.
Mount Meru is our landmark, towering over the surrounding hills and often covered in cloud. From this side it seems dry and dusty, but as we go round its different faces I notice that the air gets cooler, the land more cultivated and the mountain more green. There must be something about it that creates a wind shadow on one side and a rain shadow on the other. The SOS Children's Village is located at the base of the mountain and is always cooler than other parts of Arusha.
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| Beatrice Matotay, coordinator of the SOS family strengthening programme in Arusha, chats to local children - Photo: Hilary Atkins |
Meeting Sister Levina
Monday morning and I head for the SOS Children's Village Arusha where I meet Beatrice Matotay, the family strengthening programme (FSP) coordinator. She has agreed to take me into the community to see the worst effects of the drought. But first we have to pick up Sister Levina from the Medical Missionaries of Mary, because we are going outside the immediate village area. Sister Levina knows the outlying families well.
Sister Levina quietly suggests that we cannot visit these people without taking a gift and I silently curse as I remember the pile of pencils in my drawer at home, bought to give out to children that I meet. Beatrice proposes maize flour and we take several packets
We are introduced to Rachel
Our first stop is only eight km away but the drive takes at least 30 minutes uphill over bumpy, potholed tracks. We stop at a small community where children come rushing out to meet us. Everyone knows Sister Levina. She introduces us to three small children, one only a baby, then takes us to the furthermost dwelling which is apparently where they live with their single mother, Rachel*. Rachel's husband died several years ago - she doesn't seem sure when - and the baby, at least, has a different father. When the husband died, Sister Levina tells us, Rachel was left with nothing except a small piece of land where her home is. She could not provide for herself or her children so took up with another man who has since left her.
Rachel is poorly dressed, her skirt torn and dirty, but her children are much worse. They obviously only have one set of clothes which are filthy. I make a mental note to bring children's clothes next time I come. Of course, I don't want to create a dependency culture, but my compassion for the children outweighs any logic right now. This is a frequent dilemma when faced with such poverty.
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| Children from the community who are supported through the SOS family strengthening programme - Photo: Hilary Aktins |
What money can't buy
Through Sister Levina I ask Rachel how she gets food for her children. She says that she either begs from her neighbours or sometimes gets casual work to earn enough to buy maize flour. Apparently she did try to grow some vegetables but they all died in the drought. Her usual casual labour is picking coffee, but it's not the season. Even then, for a whole day's work about ten km walk away, Rachel gets less than one dollar.
I ask to see where the family sleeps. It is a tiny mud hut containing everything they own, which is very little. The bed has no mattress or blankets and all cooking is done inside the hut. Sister Levina asks to see the baby's clinic card showing her weight and when Rachel goes off to look for it the baby begins to cry. Then I realise that this child has something very precious that money can't buy - the love of its mother. SOS Children's Villages is right to try to keep families together, even under the most difficult circumstances.
Her most precious possessions I ask Rachel what possession she values most and she immediately answers, "Watoto wangu" (my children). And when I ask what else, she thinks for a while and gestures to her bed, where they all sleep together at night. As we speak I realise that Rachel's problem is not really the drought, but something worse - endemic poverty caused by a lack of education, ignorance, the situation of women in Tanzania, poor infrastructure and few, if any, social services. Primary education is free but parents must buy uniforms and books. Health care may be free for under-fives but the nearest hospital is many hours walk away. Sister Levina insists that Rachel's life will improve when she can grow her own food, but acknowledges that she needs help with income generation. I try to imagine life with three small children, no father, no income and no fallback, such as an extended family or welfare state. Unfortunately the distance from the SOS Social and Medical Centre puts this family out of reach of the SOS family strengthening programme. Beatrice indicates that they do not have enough resources for families who live so far away.
We leave Rachel with some precious maize flour but before we depart Sister Levina insists that we visit a sick woman in a neighbouring house. The woman, in her forties, is waiting for us, sitting on the edge of her bed. A few months ago she fell and broke her leg. She was taken to hospital where they put a metal pin in the fracture. Since then the woman's leg has swollen to elephant like proportions and the rest of her body is not far behind. No-one knows the cause, although it seems to me that it must be connected to her recent surgery.
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| Photo: Hilary Atkins |
Cheerful despite adversity
The woman, who is in pain, is accepting of her fate, whatever that may be, and is apparently always cheerful. For this reason she receives many visitors - a lesson for us all. Her house is spotless, kept clean by her grandchildren, because she cannot walk. All her energy goes into sitting on the side of the bed, ready for her visitors. As we wave goodbye I feel admiration for this stoical woman, cheerful in the face of such adversity, and anger at a medical system that allows this situation to happen. I can't be sure that her swollen body is related to the surgery but I wonder why the doctors have not explored this possibility - or perhaps the expense for her is too great?
We stop in to see some more families as we make our way back to the main road. I have been to one of the communities before but at first I don't recognise the area. Drought does that - it thins out a soft landscape and reveals harsh angles and lines once hidden by grass and bushes.
Good news at last
In this little community live two young boys, Jacob and Michael*. I met them in January this year when they were living alone in their small house. Their single mother had gone to Nairobi for a funeral at least six months previously and had not come back. No-one knew what had happened to her, and because she was HIV positive, people suspected the worst. The boys then were a sad little pair, fending for themselves with the help of neighbours until Beatrice included them in the FSP, which helps with medical and education costs, and provides supplementary food. The most touching aspect was the way they had not touched their mother's things - just left them as she left them, as if she would return any moment.
The boys' faith was repaid when their mother returned in the middle of the year, about twelve months after she left. Apparently she got sick and could not afford the return fare. How she eventually got it, I don't know. But it has transformed her sons' lives. The house is clean again and the boys are smartly dressed for school, content to have their mother back. Because of her HIV positive condition they are still part of the family strengthening programme. I am delighted for them - a happy ending, at least for now.
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| Despite what they have suffered in early childhood, the children at the SOS Children's Village in Arusha are lucky to have a new home - Photo: Seger Erken |
Taking comfort from Sister Levina
We move on to visit another small family - also a single mother with two boys and a girl. They live in a tiny one room mud house built for them by an NGO. Sister Levina worries that they all sleep together in this room - it is against the Masai culture for males and females to sleep in the same room, and as the boys get older the situation will get worse.
The children have just got back from school and Sister Levina wants to say hello. We all try to squeeze into the small inside space but there is so little room that I soon retreat to the outside. Then I realise that someone in the house is crying. I glance inside and notice Sister Levina holding tightly onto the children's hands. It is they who are crying and Sister Levina is comforting them. Apparently their mother is HIV positive and they often witness distressing scenes when she vomits as she struggles with her illness. They are worried about her and about the future. Sister Levina is strong, but even she has difficulty with this, realising that the children's fate is beyond her control. She lets go reluctantly, but will be back to comfort these children who may be witnessing the slow death of their mother. I am sure that Beatrice too, will not forget them.
Small children herding goats
It's time for me to get my lift back to Nairobi. The journey home is marked by the number of small children alone, herding the family goats, and I wonder about that great Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. Despite free primary education some children will never have the chance to go to school. These children still live the life of pastoralists, moving from one patch of grazing to the next, watching over the cattle and goats which are the family wealth. But this wealth is fragile, dependent upon the once predictable seasons which no-one can be sure of anymore. As we speed along the road I see one tiny little Masai girl, dressed for all the world just like her mother, except for the doll that she cradles in her right arm. Even when they are herding goats children will still be children.
Later that day, as I get into my comfortable bed with clean sheets and soft pillows, I think of Rachel and her three children huddled together on a bed without a mattress, in the only clothes they own; I think of the sick woman with the swollen body who is suffering because no-one will take responsibility; I think of Jacob and Michael who lost their mother, then found her again; I think of the children crying for their mother as they hold Sister Levina's hand; and I think of the thousands of children who will spend their childhood herding livestock and never go to school. I also think of the fantastic work that SOS Children's Villages is doing for children's rights and family strengthening and acknowledge that the need is as great as ever.
Finally, I think of my own children, and I remember the words of a once famous song from my long ago childhood: "There but for fortune go you and I, you and I…"
*Names changed for privacy reasons.
Hilary Atkins works for SOS Children's Villages in East Africa, based in Nairobi.