The Muslim call to prayer and dust stirred up by rumbling food trucks both settle over Garissa in north-eastern Kenya, as hundreds of the city's long-settled Somali population flock to the main mosque. The holy month of Ramazan has begun, and there is much feasting after sundown on the first day of fasting.
A few hours from Garissa, along a road that trucks carrying food supplies thunder down, lies the massive Dadaab camp, packed beyond its capacity with refugees from Somalia fleeing the worst famine in six decades in the Horn of Africa. As the famine in two southern regions of Somalia spreads to other parts of the country, and as the situation worsens in Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea - with an estimated 12.4 million people affected by the severe drought - the arid city of Garissa and its province of the same name await help.
The drought has affected more than 3 million people in Kenya alone, according to the United Nations, and the government has sent trucks filled with tons of maize and rice to the parched areas of Turkana and Garissa. Nur Siyat, 21, a Kenyan of Somali origin, is torn between his concern for his relatives in the Somali capital Mogadishu and his family and friends spread across Garissa.
"My father came here 50 years ago. I am Kenyan and have never been to Somalia, but I will go there one day to see my uncles," Siyat says. The deteriorating situation in the interiors of Garissa province is not something the government is addressing, he says. "Everything is going to Dadaab," he says, of the camp that now houses more than 350,000 people, mainly from Somalia. "Dadaab will become another Somalia, but without fighting."
Abdi Abdullai from the area of Balambala in Garissa province, has come to the city to track down his local parliamentarian. Also of Somali origin, he migrated to Kenya in what he calls "peaceful times."
But Abdullai says that he has lost 300 goats in the last month alone, and has only 20 goats left and a family of 12 children to feed. When he attempted to move to the more fertile province of Meru, the tribes there wouldn't permit him to graze his livestock and forced him back to Garissa.
"There is no food. No water. My goats are dying every day. Should I become a refugee and move my family to Dadaab, in my own country?" he asks. The well-paved highway between Nairobi and Garissa has only the occasional bump and does little to prepare visitors for what lies ahead. Driving out from the Kenyan capital, the road cuts through kilometres of lush land and sprawling fields dotted with pineapple, coffee, plantain and maize.
As bulging buses wheeze to a stop at intersections to unload their passengers, vendors rush up selling plastic bags tightly packed with tomatoes, onions and cubes of assorted chopped fruit. About 100 kilometres outside Nairobi, in the town of Mattuu, there are fresh beans, cabbage, bananas and green papayas on sale in makeshift markets. But as the road races ahead to Garissa, the drying vegetation, brown and lifeless, the listless cows, sluggish water tankers and people prodding drying bore wells become all too apparent.
Khaled Asif emerges from the side of the highway almost like a mirage. He's been walking for three days with his friend, Jamal Mohammed, from their barren village of Hola. There's nothing for their camels to eat, and they are taking their animals to a market in Bagani to be sold. "I can get 100,000 shillings for each camel," he says, pointing toward the nine still-healthy animals he is nudging towards the market. "When I sell them I will be a rich man. But today I have nothing."
As the drought spreads, most of the traditional herders are unable to provide for their cows, goats and camels - and would rather sell them off before they get sicker or die. Asif says he would use the money to buy food and maybe build a house as his only security. He says he can't expect anything more from his animals, but refuses, despite the paucity of water, to leave his home and migrate.
On the highway to Garissa, time seems to be measured only in how many hours or days it takes to collect water. Mulet Beshar, 30, taps his Casio digital watch, whose display screen is blank. He says he left home in Sherra village at 5 am, or maybe before the sun rose, to collect water. He knows he will be home at 9 pm, long after sunset. For his efforts, he would get enough water for his wife and two children, and four other families, for two days - that's as much water as he could collect in seven soiled yellow jerrycans strapped to his donkey.
"After one day I will do this again. Maybe things are not so bad for us. The river (Tana) is full, but it's too far for me to walk." The next time, he will bring two donkeys, he says. Back in Garissa, Siyat braces for the worst: "Some uncles of mine have a business in Mogadishu. They are OK. But other relatives - their animals have died, their families have died. After that, what is left?"
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