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Victims of bandit attacks, floods ravished by hunger

Cheptoiyo Lodowian, 22, breastfeeds her child at Domo in Tiaty, Baringo county, on May 31, 2020.

Cheptoiyo Lodowian is a 22-year-old Pokot mother of four in the remote village of Domo in Tiaty, Baringo county.

The last food she and her children ate was the previous evening’s meal. It was ugali and boiled sukuma wiki.

Lodowian has no idea where this day’s meal will come from.

The day is Sunday, the time 2pm.

A group of journalists and World Vision-Kenya workers on a fact-finding mission have just come across Lodowian washing clothes and giving her children a bath at a shallow water pan in Tirioko ward.

Her children run around naked and she herself is half-dressed. They have no change of clothes just those on their backs, which they wash, dry and put on again.

“Our last meal is the supper we took last night of ugali and a boiled bundle of sukuma wiki,” she tells us.

Not only do they have to worry about lack of food but their safety as well.

There is an ongoing security operation in Tiaty subcounty to flash out bandits who have been terrorising neighboring communities.

Baringo has suffered frequent bandit attacks since January that have claimed the lives of 10 people. Livestock has been stolen and hundreds of residents displaced along the borders of Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet and Turkana counties.

During the interview Lodowian sits down and tries to breastfeed her one-year-old child. Not a drop of milk comes out of her breast and the child begins to cry.

At the water pan her three-year old daughter Jesang Lorus washes her head and hands, and drinks the dirty water. The risk of contracting a waterborne disease is an ever-present reality.

Lodowian tells us the children took fresh cow milk in the morning and haven’t had anything to eat.

“This has been our life since January. We haven’t received any relief food from government agencies, donors or well-wishers for the last three years,” she says.

The lack of food exposes her children to malnutrition conditions such as kwashiorkor, marasmus and anaemia. But what is a poor young woman with no source of livelihood living in a godforsaken corner of this country to do?

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