HADUMO ILIMO nodded towards the desiccated landscape beyond the collection of tiny wattle and thatch huts that make up her village.
“The graves are there,” said the doughty mother of 11 children. “We have had so many new graves this year.”
The people of Kargi, an extended village of more than 1,700 households on the rim of the Chalbi desert in northern Kenya, say that as many as 40 locals have died due to hunger-related causes in the past six months. A majority of those were children who, weakened by lack of food, succumbed to diarrhoea or malaria.
Under the shade of an acacia, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson listened to stories of quiet desperation as scores of villagers explained how years of drought have pushed them to the edge.
The crowd consisted mostly of women, children and the elderly – Kargi’s menfolk are usually away driving livestock across long distances in search of whatever dwindling pasture they can find.
The village is just one of thousands across the Horn of Africa now stalked by hunger. The United Nations has warned that the lives of millions are in peril as the worst drought in decades combines, to deadly effect, with the impact of rising food prices and conflict in Somalia.
Here in Kenya’s northern belt, some of the most stricken are pastoralist farmers such as the people of Kargi, who are discovering that a way of life unchanged for centuries is now threatened by forces beyond their control.
On her way to the village, Mrs Robinson heard from Jarso Ada, a wizened herder in his 60s now forced to walk for several days across parched earth to bring his goats to water.
“We have never experienced anything like this before,” he said. “The effects of the drought have been devastating.”
Back in Kargi, Hadumo gestured at the faces, many of them listless, around her. “Just look at the people,” she said. “Many have been fainting because they don’t have enough to eat.”
She pointed out a mother holding a baby whose shrunken body made him appear much younger than his nine months. “We are barely surviving on whatever food aid we get.”
Mrs Robinson said her three- day trip to the Horn of Africa, during which she will visit Dadaab, a teeming refugee camp on Kenya’s border with Somalia which is home to some 400,000 Somalis escaping starvation, would allow her to witness the “grim reality” of the crisis engulfing the region. “This is an extraordinarily serious crisis and it is much worse than people realise,” she said.
In Kargi, the mood was lightened somewhat when a knot of schoolgirls, giggling in their emerald green uniforms, approached. Mrs Robinson, who takes a keen interest in development issues related to women, showed obvious delight in hearing about their progress. She stressed the importance of education before telling the girls about her career. “As a woman,” she said, “I became the big chief of my country.”