Every cloud, the adage goes, has a silver lining. PACIDA, with support from its partners, has given residents of this drought-affected village and indeed other villages in Marsabit County, a reason to smile and hope through its drought interventions. The organization’s interventions have been two-pronged. In the first phase, PACIDA focused on Emergency response providing immediate interventions such as Multipurpose cash transfers to venerable households, water trucking, nutritional supplement to malnourished children, expectant and breast-feeding mothers.
Residents of Demo village benefit from livestock restocking efforts spearheaded by PACIDA. Photo Kirere Magana/PACIDA
In its second-phase of interventions, PACIDA has been focusing on Recovery Response efforts. In recent weeks, the organisation has been undertaking livestock restocking efforts giving the drought-affected residents of the county goats to restock their herds which had been cleared by the adverse drought. This has bolstered their hope and indeed survival of the mainly pastoralist communities.
Photo Kirera Magana/ PACIDA
“I lost everything. My camels. My goats. My cows. Everything. The only sad reminder of the assets that I owned are the piles of bones that now litter our grazing lands. It is painful to remember this. But with these goats, PACIDA has wiped my tears and memories of the immeasurable loss. This is a new lease of life to me and my family,”
Umuro, a resident of Demo village.
In recent months, PACIDA has been working with its partners to scale livestock restocking in the drought-affected villages of Marsabit County.
“This drought has tested us to our limits. As mainly pastoralist communities, we have been stretched. But we are glad that our partners have deepened and scaled their trust and support in us. I don’t know what would have happened in this region had humanitarian organisation been unable to respond. We could be talking of potentially catastrophic developments,” says
Patrick Katelo, Executive Director of PACIDA.
According to Katelo, humanitarian actors can scale their impact through experience sharing and collaboration in resource mobilization. “We are better together,” he says. The drought period plus the response and the recovery response process has been a learning experience for most stakeholders.
“We have had back-to-back humanitarian challenges. From locust invasion to Covid-pandemic to now drought. It has been tough. We have many lessons that we can offer to humanitarian actors on emergency response and best-practices. The long-term effects of this drought will be felt for ages. The mental strain occasioned by loss of communities’ assets is unimaginable. We are still dealing with malnutrition challenges that we are working with our partners to address,” Katelo adds.
On behalf of the profoundly grateful residents of Marsabit County, PACIDA thanks its partners for supporting its humanitarian interventions.