Finally in April, after five long, devastating seasons without rain, water fell from the skies onto the dusty, baked earth of northern Kenya. Anyone breathing a sigh of relief, ready to turn away from the drought and food crisis in East Africa, should not be so hasty. The word to keep at the front of our minds is ‘recovery’.
Marsabit is a semi-arid location some 500km north of the capital Nairobi. The local Catholic diocese spans almost 80,000 square kilometres without a single river passing through. There are 14 different communities, each with its own language, and 80% of its people rely on livestock for income. Most of their animals are dead. The crops are dead. The rain is welcome, yes, but the recovery will be long, and the need is great.
The Catholic Church in Marsabit is a young, growing Church. It has, for decades, worked at the heart of the community to provide education and projects for the wellbeing of the people – inside and outside the walls of the Church.
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki, Bishop of Marsabit, and Isacko Jirma, Director of Caritas Marsabit have spent the past weeks in Europe explaining the existential challenges they face in northern Kenya as they look to lead the recovery effort.
“We are in discussion with our partners for resources to carry out restocking for the families that lost all they had in the drought,” says Isacko. “We have over 300,000 people that are food insecure now. These people, their children, some of them have dropped out of school. They need to go back to school.”
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki is ready to lead the rebuilding process:
“We’ll try our best to raise up the people, again, up to their feet. First of all, even as they wait for any seeds that they may plant in their farms to grow, to mature, to become food, they will still need more support for the next three or four months.
“Secondly, they do not know any form of agriculture apart from shepherding or livestock. They will need to be assisted, to have some animals as part of restocking, so they can start rearing them and, God willing, they will reproduce and they will have more. But right now, the recovery process is to help to save lives, as we were doing before, as we wait for friends to contribute to help us for this recovery process. Right now, we do not have so much and that’s why we came out to share this situation with our Caritas members and other churches, so that they can help us so we can help those most in need.”
CAFOD, the official Catholic aid agency for England and Wales, and part of Caritas Internationalis, has been working hard to help communities in East Africa recover from the worst drought in 40 years. The charity has partnered with the Diocese of Marsabit for over three decades.
Bishop Peter is grateful for CAFOD’s support and is urging Catholics in England and Wales to support the people of Marsabit – particularly the youth.
“The youth who have been shepherding their livestock, they have nothing to do. It’s very easy for them to erupt a conflict between themselves because they want to survive. We would like to appeal to Catholics in England and Wales, and other people of goodwill, to help us support these young people. First of all to retrain them, to give them a skill that they will use in their lives because right now they don’t have cows.”
He is also keen for the young people to acquire the skills they need to secure long-term employment in their own country rather than look to migrate for a better life elsewhere:
“They are willing, they have gone to school and if there are training centres they can go to, to be empowered, to build capacity, to learn new skills, they will have an alternative. Instead of taking a spear or a gun to go and steal, they will have employment by their own skill and labour. Also, in order to stop them from migrating from there, where life is hard and difficult, in order to come to look for work in Europe. We do not want that to happen because we shall lose out. We need them [in northern Kenya] to capacity build in order to help – to upgrade their standard and that of their society. That’s our appeal. We ask Catholics to support us in order to help this needy generation.”
You can listen to our podcast interview with Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki, Bishop of Marsabit, and Isacko Jirma, Director of Caritas Marsabit:
Host: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to our Catholic News podcast. And today, I’m going to take you into Kenya and actually the north of that country, because I’m joined by Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki and Isacko Jirma. Bishop Peter is obviously the bishop of the diocese, the Diocese of Marsabit in the north. And Isacko is the director of Caritas Marsabit. So the first big question is to talk about those five seasons of failed rains. Tell me about the impact of those five failed seasons on the people.
Isacko Jirma: Yes, the five failed rainy seasons in Kenya, and particularly northern Kenya, the impact and the effect is on the people’s livelihoods. People in Marsabit, 81% of the population depend on livestock entirely, and the drought that was occasioned by the failure of five consecutive rainy season killed many livestock. Over 80% of livestock in Marsabit County died, and therefore over 300,000 people have lost their livelihoods and are currently food insecure. They have nothing to wake up to, to feed their families, apart from food aid or any support from either humanitarian organisation, the Church, or the government.
Host: Bishop Peter, I know you’ve had rains recently and, thanks be to God, that’s a great source of encouragement. But it did strike me when you were talking to us before this podcast about the need to focus on recovery, because it’s easy to say, “oh, great, now the rains have come,” but actually, as you say, the crops are dead and many livestock have died. So it’s not as simple as turning on a switch, is it? There’s a big recovery effort needed. So tell us a bit about how you’re going to recover.
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki: We’ll try our best to be able to raise up the people, again, up to their feet. First of all, even as they wait for any seeds that they may plant in their farms to grow, to mature, to become food, they will still need more support for the next three or four months.
Secondly, they do not know any form of agriculture apart from shepherding or livestock. They will need to be assisted, to have some animals as part of restocking, so they can start rearing them and, God willing, they will reproduce and they will have more. But right now, the recovery process is to help to save lives, as we were doing before, as we wait for friends to contribute to help us for this recovery process, as well as restocking.
Right now, we do not have so much and that’s why we came out to share this situation with our Caritas members and other churches, so that they can help us so we can help those most in need.
Host: To stay with you for one more question, Bishop Peter, I was very struck by what you said about a parish visit you made 175 kilometres further away, right into the arid, remote area of your diocese. I want to get to that human dimension again. Tell me how the people received you, obviously, after all those challenges of not having water for days.
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki: It was on Christmas Day last year and I went to assist the pastor of those people because he’s alone with nine communities in his churches. So I thought I was going to give a hand because the week before I had sent food that we had received from our Caritas fraternity in Kenya. I divided it for all the parishes. As I arrived there, they were very hopeful that the bishop’s coming and is bringing something more. But for me, I had already given a week before what I had and they told me they had received it. But because of the demand on the ground, they couldn’t keep so much.
When they came closer to me they said, “Bishop, you have come with empty hands”. It touched me and I felt like a mother when she has nothing to give to a child. I felt challenged that I was not able to do a miracle like Jesus did, when he was told, “oh, there is a boy here with five loaves.” That’s what people are telling me. I felt challenged. They said, “God will help us.”
Thank God, even until now, no human person has died because God has been with us. We may not see what he gives us, but he provides in many ways. Even now, we are praying to the same God to touch those who are hearing us. They share the little they can for His greater glory and the joy of His children – ours and many others in the world.
Host: How incredible in such desperate circumstances. But Isacko, pick up on that and tell us about how, as the social action arm of the Church, how are you helping that recovery? Particularly perhaps with your international partners like Cafod here in England and Wales…
Isacko Jirma: We are in discussion with some of our partners for resources to carry out restocking for the families that lost all they had in the drought. We have over 300,000 people that are food insecure now. These people, their children, some of them have dropped out of school. They need to go back to school. Their fees have to be paid in the boarding schools. Where the nomadic pastoralist children go to, they need food there. They dropped out of school because of lack of food. The pastoralists, who only know how to heard need to be introduced to restocking. A pastoralist who does not own one cow, one camel, does not even fit within the social structure of the community. Let alone the food security issue. The dignity of a pastoralist to live among his group without one animal is such a big issue. So what we do at Caritas is to work on proposals, to design projects that will help restocking, to help get resources to buy livestock. For example, one family will get a few animals and then over a season, they will pass a number on, after reproduction, to other families so that it will be regenerated.
Then we have a lot of youths that are unemployed. The herders that used to herd their livestock, now they are just idle. And because of the conflicts in northern Kenya, in Marsabit, it’s a potential risk. We want to engage them, we want to introduce them to some life skills training through vocational training institutions. We want to train women to acquire basic business skills such that they do saving and learning activities so that their livelihood option is diversified so they don’t only depend on one livelihood source, which is pastoralism, that when drought comes up, they are finished and the families are made destitute. If you have one more skill, or one alternative source of livelihood, then you become more resilient.
These are the projects but unfortunately, we have not received a lot from international donor agencies, but thanks to the Caritas partners, we were able to save lives. Cafod has supported us so much. For over one year they have been feeding people and some of our other Caritas organisations. But now recovery is a big investment. It requires more support. We are making this appeal so that the lives of these people will be rebuilt again after what was destroyed.
Host: I think it’s important to say, Bishop Peter, that the Church in Marsabit, in the north of Kenya, doesn’t just support the Catholics of the area, does it? I know you have good interreligious cooperation with groups – Muslims, for instance, may well send their children to Catholic schools. So you do look beyond your own walls, don’t you?
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki: Yes. From the beginning, from the outset, the Church has never been discriminatory. It was assisting everyone, regardless of their religion. Even now we continue in the same way. Even Caritas, though being very Catholic, the policy is that they don’t look at the religion. Every person in the emergency area is liable to get that support because that’s the justice, natural justice, that fits all. A hungry person, Catholic, Protestant or Muslim, is the same. That is our policy. We don’t discriminate whether in education, in our hospitals or the rest. All of them are happy to go to Catholic schools. For that I’m happy, because we don’t discriminate.
Host: It’s great to hear the creative work, the planning for the future. But I do want to finish by looking at Catholics in England, Wales, our Catholics in our communities here, and what they perhaps can do to help. Clearly there’s a need for prayer, but there’s a need for material support as well, through Caritas, through Cafod. So what can they do? We did talk about being responsible with regard to climate change and the actions of those of us over here and the impact it has in the north of Kenya specifically as well. So what are the things that people can do? Isacko, I’ll start with you…
Isacko Jirma: Climate change effect is no longer a narrative that you discuss, but is a reality we are facing. We are face to face with the effects of climate change. But unfortunately, the people who are bearing the brunt of climate change are people who have no idea of what is happening in the environment, in the atmosphere. What they know is herding their livestock, watering them, milking them, slaughter, selling them, to get some income to meet their needs.
But what is happening on the other side of the world is causing more harm to the people who are less informed, less destructive in terms of the environment. So our appeal is the agenda of climate change, to reduce destruction to the environment, actually going by Laudato Si’ the Pope’s message that Mother Earth needs to be taken care of for everybody. We share only one Earth, no matter what you know, or where you live – it is one Earth. Those who are causing harm to the environment, for the sake of people who are not in the know and who are bearing the brunt, need to look at conserving the environment.
Whatever narrative is out there, they should support climate change adaptation, climate change funding, climate change strategies. These things need to devolve – to go down through the Church structures to support people on the ground. There is no network. The flow of information from where these things are discussed and designed, and where it’s supposed to be implemented, there is a big gap. This gap needs to be reduced.
Host: The final word goes to you, Bishop Peter, what would your message be to Catholics in England and Wales listening to this?
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki: Apart from being grateful for what they have done for us in the past, we would urge them to support us even now – especially in overcoming this challenge, the consequences of the drought. As we mentioned before, the youth who have been shepherding their livestock, they have nothing to do. It’s very easy for them to erupt a conflict between themselves because they want to survive. We would like to appeal to Catholics in England and Wales, and other people of goodwill, to help us support these young people. First of all to retrain them, to give them a skill that they will use in their lives because right now they don’t have cows.
What are they doing? They are willing, they have gone to school and if there are training centres they can go to, to be empowered, to build capacity, to learn new skills, they will have an alternative. Instead of taking a spear or a gun to go and steal, they will have employment by their own skill and labour. Also, in order to stop them from migrating from there, where life is hard and difficult, in order to come to look for work in Europe. We do not want that to happen because we shall lose out. We need them [in northern Kenya] to capacity build in order to help – to upgrade their standard and that of their society. That’s our appeal. We ask Catholics to support us in order to help this needy generation.
Host: And those of us that find ourselves looking at our prayer intentions, on our knees, what would be a good prayer intention for Marsabit?
Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki: The prayer? Well, that the Loving God may open doors, that He will bring us His blessings because we are still the same children he created in His image and likeness. So that all of us can raise our prayer and gratitude to Him for having received the blessings we require.
Host: The best thing for me to say is “amen”. Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki from the Diocese of Marsabit and Isacko Jirma, who’s the Director of Caritas Marsabit, thank you both very much indeed.
