Eweet and family. Photograph: David Bull
Imagine walking through the dusty semi-desert of northern Kenya, where the temperature is in the upper 30s day after day, writes David Bull, executive director of Unicef UK.
Your community has lost all the cattle, goats and donkeys that provided the only livelihood in this parched landscape, where even the usual meagre rains have been largely absent for the last two years or more.
Now imagine you are in the final month of pregnancy, with two small children in tow, and you are only 22 years old. And finally, imagine that that walk lasts 20 days.
I don't have to work so hard now to imagine it, because it is the story of Eweet, a young Turkana mother I have just met. She arrived at the end of her epic journey and gave birth to her baby daughter, Akai, who is now three months old.
She and her three children, and their grandmother, Eyepan, were among 30 families that made this trek, arriving finally at the makeshift village of Kaichakar, on the outskirts of Loki, the base for the huge, 15-year aid operation supplying southern Sudan, just a few miles away across the border.
But for Eweet, the walking is not over: every day she must walk for an hour to fetch 20 litres of water for her family. She has to queue in the searing heat for four hours, pump the water by hand and then make the return journey carrying her heavy load. The she must risk her life by going into the bandit-infested woodland, where she collects wood she will later sell in Loki town for about 25 pence, five of which are spent on the day's water; the remaining 20 pence must provide for all the other needs of the household.
This is a land in which a third of children under five are suffering from malnutrition, and fewer than 20% of girls go to school yet schools are closing owing to lack of water. Some 73,000 children and 7,200 pregnant and lactating women are in immediate need of emergency supplementary and therapeutic feeding, yet 50,000 are not being reached because of lack of funds.
Tomorrow I will visit a hospital that has to cope with the resulting emergencies, where babies are dying by the day.
But there is hope: a new UN appeal will be launched in early April, and the crisis, now affecting five countries, is beginning to attract sporadic media attention. It is not new, however. The warnings have been made with increasing urgency for the last two years.
This time, I hope we can find the funds necessary to help people like Eweet and Akai, who have already lost their livestock and their way of life. Unicef is planning to drill five new boreholes in this area using solar-powered pumps, one of them in Eweet's village. Each well will provide between 10,000 and 15,000 litres of fresh water a day, without the trek and without the hand-pumping at the end of it. Each costs about £10,000, though, and so far we have the money for only two of the five.
The difference these wells would make requires a further effort of imagination. Imagine Eweet were saved all this walking for water, that Akai (and many like her) as she grows up will be able to spend her days at school instead of fetching water, and that a new future could begin to open up for this proud community.
Imagine that.
Donations to Unicef's East Africa children's crisis appeal can be made by calling 08457 312 312 or by going to the Unicef site.
