Balaneeshta, a widow, stands in the doorway of her new home. With funding from Caritas partners, CRS constructed warm, insulated shelters that could stand up to the mountain region’s winter cold. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“I was milking a cow when I heard about the flood,” says Balaneeshta, an elderly widow living in mountainous northern Pakistan. “People from far away were whistling loudly to us and saying ‘run!’”

As the rains of summer 2010 poured down and the river near their homes surged higher, Balaneeshta and her neighbors ran up the mountains to safety. “Because of the mud, it was hard to climb,” she says. “Our feet sank deep. Trees and rocks were sliding down.” Nearby, her relative Nizamullah carried his disabled mother up the hill.

Balaneeshta, her neighbors, and her many children and grandchildren escaped. But the flood days were only the beginning of their problems. With homes completely washed away, villagers slept outside for days. They received tents, but not always enough of them.
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By Patrick Carney

My last hours in Kenya are coming to a close. I’ve just finished my work, and I think it was a great success. I was able to assist in getting two grant proposals written for Catholic Relief Services’ work during the East Africa Famine.

Although I am excited to come home, there will be things I miss about Kenya and our CRS offices in Nairobi. Take it from me, when you support CRS and our work around the world, know that the staffers in our international offices are great stewards. Our staff here is friendly, welcoming, thorough, very hard-working and passionate about what they do. I’ve been very impressed.
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By Patrick Carney

I traveled 7,500 miles to get here. Door to door, it took just over 24 hours. I am on a different continent and hemisphere, and I am below the equator. I couldn’t be much farther from home.

Yet, I feel like I am nowhere near the people suffering and dying from a historic drought and famine throughout parts of East Africa, and I am in Nairobi, only about 300 miles from the camps. That’s about the distance between my hometown, Philadelphia, and Boston. It’s a day trip in a car.

How can I be so close to the suffering, and feel so far away?

I get to sit in an office, go to a restaurant for lunch, drink bottled water, and take a taxi back to my modest hotel at the end of the day. Meanwhile, just a few hours northeast of here, people are sleeping in refugee camps fighting for their lives.
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By Patrick Carney

The week started like any other.

I came into the office around 8 a.m., checked my e-mail, and got ready for the week ahead.

Thirty minutes later, one of my supervisors came in, and my week changed immediately.

“How do you feel about going to East Africa?” he asked.
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Dear Friend,

As you know, East Africa is in the grip of a horrible drought. We have all seen images of the hungry and malnourished arriving in refugee camps, many after walking for weeks or months, surviving not only the bleak landscape but also bandits and even wild animals. The perseverance of these people, of mothers sacrificing to save their children, is a tribute to the human spirit.

This is personal for me. I worked in this region in similar crises going back to the 1970s. Just before becoming CRS’ president in 1993, I was in Kenya as we helped Somalis who suffered through a drought made worse by political conditions. And now here we are again.
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As the food crisis across the Horn of Africa is intensifying, Catholic Relief Services will help thousands of Somali refugees in northeast Kenya by providing critical services in the soon-to-be opened Kambioos extension to the Dadaab refugee camp.

CRS is making a five-year commitment to work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide 25,000 people with water and sanitation infrastructure in Kambioos, while also aiding the surrounding communities affected by the influx of refugees.

“The vast majority of refugees are suffering from malnutrition, poor sanitation facilities, and live in crowded conditions with a lack of appropriate shelter,” said PM Jose, CRS’ Kenya country representative. “Getting life-saving assistance to the new arrivals is critical, but as we help refugees, we must not forget the impact that these arrivals will have on the host communities surrounding the camps.”
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Excerpted from Busted Halo:

Fleeing war and famine, fighting off attacks from bandits and lions, thousands of refugees are flooding out of Somalia on foot each week. Busted Halo contributor Laura Sheahen, a communications officer with the humanitarian aid group Catholic Relief Services, looks back on her first days in some of the refugee camps that are receiving them. Let us remember our sisters and brothers in East Africa in our prayers.

Day one

Small plane to airstrip in Dadaab, a tiny, broken-down town in northeast Kenya. Blinding clouds of dust billow from the car in front of us as we make our way to our local partner’s compound. Dust instantly coats everything we carry. The same dust has swallowed up any hope of growing crops or raising livestock across the border in Somalia, where the drought and famine are worst.

Drive to the UN registration center, where hundreds of Somali refugees are bused in daily from several surrounding camps. At the center, they wait for hours to be processed in a big tent filled with screaming children and fingerprint scanners. The United Nations is trying, but can’t keep up with the influx.

We talk to Momina, a 22-year-old woman whose two children wear sack-like shirts and cling to her nervously. After their two dozen goats and cows died, they walked 20 days to get here.
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“Almost every refugee I spoke to had a horror story about the long walk from Somalia to Kenya. Armed bandits are a huge problem, and the vast majority of refugees I spoke to had been robbed at gunpoint. There has been an appalling number of rapes as well.

“Some of the refugees were robbed not just of the little food and clothing they carried, but the actual clothes they were wearing; they are walking naked. People fleeing the famine and war in Somalia are also fighting off lions and hyenas in the night.”

Excerpted from an AssociatedContent interview with CRS regional information officers Sara Fajardo and Laura Sheahen. Read the full interview here.