Yes­ter­day we learned that the rain came back to Kenya to quench the coun­try of it’s drought. The rains might be com­ing too fast and hard, as we now see warn­ings of flood­ing and mud­slides. Action Aid along with Kenya’s Emer­gency Sec­tor Response Plan say flood­ing could dis­place 100,000 people.

From this press release that we found at Reuters Alert net, we read more about the warning.

Thou­sands will be left home­less as floods in Kenya are pre­dicted to fol­low the country’s worst-ever drought.

The rains have failed in Kenya since 2007 result­ing in a pro­longed drought with over 10 mil­lion peo­ple in need of food aid, accord­ing to the UN.

The heavy rains in Kenya have started falling and are expected to lead to flood­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, trig­ger land­slides, and make access to some areas impos­si­ble. Accord­ing to sce­nar­ios devel­oped in Kenya’s Emer­gency Sec­tor Response Plan, devel­oped by the gov­ern­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UN and NGOs, the floods will dis­place 100,000 peo­ple and directly affect 1,000,000 people.

Urgent need

There will be urgent need of sup­plies such as food, shel­ter and clean water. Above nor­mal rains will bring a sharp increase in child dis­eases, in par­tic­u­lar res­pi­ra­tory infec­tions and diar­rhoea. Heavy rains could hurt pas­toral liveli­hoods, espe­cially through increased live­stock deaths caused by sud­den changes in tem­per­a­ture and graz­ing con­di­tions. Urban slum areas risk being affected by flash flooding.

As fur­ther heavy rains are expected, Action­Aid is also prepar­ing for more severe flood­ing across a wider area by pro­vid­ing human­i­tar­ian assis­tance to those dis­placed by the floods, as well as those peo­ple who have no access to safe water and san­i­ta­tion ser­vices because of the floods.

The effects of con­flicts, droughts and floods con­tinue to under­mine com­mu­ni­ties, weak­en­ing their abil­ity to cope, and putting lives and liveli­hoods at risk.

ActionAid’s response

Action­Aid Kenya Coun­try Direc­tor Jean Kamau said: “We used to have reg­u­lar droughts every 10 years or so. In the 1970s we started hav­ing droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s we were get­ting droughts every two or three years. Since 2000 we have had three major droughts and sev­eral dry spells. Now they are com­ing almost every year.”

She con­tin­ued, “Action­Aid is dis­trib­ut­ing food in two areas of Isi­olo and Mwingi in the Eastern Province under the World Food Pro­gramme, where 258,000 peo­ple receive food monthly.”

Action­Aid is also car­ry­ing out activ­i­ties in Seri­cho in the North East by pro­vid­ing water to 6,000 drought stricken peo­ple, buy­ing ani­mals and pro­vid­ing the meat as relief and pro­vid­ing sup­ple­men­tary food for 2,000 chil­dren in the worst affected areas in the Rift Val­ley and Coast.

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