ORLANDO, FLORIDA – An unidentified man was severely injured when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver early this morning.
The crash occurred about 3:20 a.m. on U.S. 441, south of Oak Ridge Road. Sgt. Kim Miller of the Florida Highway Patrol said that Haile Workie, 34, of Orlando was driving a taxi cab north when he struck a pedestrian who was crossing the road. Workie fled the scene, but he and his car were later located.
The pedestrian was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where he is in critical condition.
Charges against Workie, an immigrant from Ethiopia, are pending.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is currently witnessing a deteriorating humanitarian situation around the town of Wardher, in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Internally displaced people (IDPs) are gathering in the thousands on the town’s outskirts, purportedly in search of food and water. An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people are currently living in squalid conditions; under makeshift shelters, with limited access to water, no sanitation, and the carcasses of dead animals around them.
In response, MSF is providing medical care to both IDPs and town inhabitants from our easily accessible clinic, located in Wardher town. These services are extended to the wider communities within the Wardher and Danood districts through mobile clinics. Activities include a nutritional program to treat malnourished children under five years, incorporating ambulatory therapeutic feeding and inpatient care for complicated severe cases. MSF is further working closely with all relevant actors, including other nongovernmental organizations and government bodies, to assess the situation in order to respond to the growing needs of people in the area. Preparations are under way for improving access to drinking water and sanitation, along with vaccinations against measles and raising health awareness through community health workers recruited from within the camps.
Many of the IDPs, traditionally nomadic people, are saying that in the areas they usually inhabit there is currently not enough food or water to survive. Further, many report the death of large numbers of livestock, on which they depend for food and livelihood. This year’s drought seems to have pushed these already vulnerable people, suffering from protracted conflict and minimal resources, even further into despair.
MSF in the Somali Region
MSF provides primary healthcare in two locations in the Somali Region of Ethiopia: Degahbur and Wardher town. In recent months, the team in Degahbur have admitted an increasing number of children under five into their program—although recently the number has stabilized. The situation there is of concern, but is not comparable to what we now see in Wardher. Working in just two locations in Ogaden, it is impossible for MSF to comment on the nutritional situation regionally. We continue to run emergency nutritional interventions and ongoing healthcare projects throughout the south and north of the country.
Simple to cook and tasty dish for vegans and lent observers.
SERVES 4 (change servings and units)
Change to: Servings US Metric Close
Ingredients
* 1 cup lentils (split)
* 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil or vegetable oil
* 1 onion (thinly chopped)
* 5 1/2 cups water
* 1/4 teaspoon turmeric or curry
* 1/2 teaspoon fresh garlic or 1 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/4 teaspoon ginger powder or 1 teaspoon fresh ginger root juice
* 1/4 teaspoon white pepper powder
* 1 hot green pepper (seeded, sliced)
* salt and black pepper
Directions
1. Bring to boil 4 cups of water in a medium pot. Rinse the lentils with fresh water and add to it to the boiling water. Cook it for 5 minutes.
2. Remove the foam with spoon and discard. Lightly drain the extra water in a container or a cup.
3. Meanwhile sauté the onion with ½ cup of water and oil for 5 minutes or until tender.
4. To the cooked onion, add ½ cup of water, garlic, ginger, white pepper, curry or turmeric. Stir for 5 minutes;.
5. Combine the lentils and the sauce. Mix well. If more water needed, use the water which is set aside. Cook the Stew for 15 minutes or until it simmers.
6. Add salt, hot green pepper and mix it well. Remove from heat. Serve it warm or cold.
7. Some of the spices could be found in Ethiopian or Indian shops/groceries.
Ager [left], 15 years old, inside her hut with her mother, Alem Tesfu and her father Mashresha Bericun in Kosoamba, Ethiopia [Photo: JOSE CENDON]
Until two years ago, before the rains failed and the price of maize tripled, Alem Tesfu dreamt that her daughter Ager would one day finish her education at the village school and start work as a nurse.
KOSO AMBA, ETHIOPIA – “We used to pray to God that Ager would study hard and make something of herself so she could serve her community,” Mrs Tesfu said. “Now our animals are all dead and we eat only one meal a day. We just pray that we will not starve.”
Ager now spends her days foraging for edible weeds, while her schoolbooks hang in a plastic bag in the family’s thatched hut, a reminder of her ambitions.
This year, slums and villages across Africa have similar stories to tell of dreams ruined by hunger. With global food and fuel prices surging, children have been taken out of school and put to work by desperate parents. The future of one of the continent’s great development success stories – education – is in doubt.
Nowhere have the effects been crueller than in Ethiopia, coming at the same time as the return of the droughts that caused the notorious famine of 1984.
With healthy economic growth, more than nine out of 10 children of primary school age in education, and massive improvement in infrastructure, until two years ago Ethiopia had been an example for the rest of Africa. Lauded by Britain, the country at last had a future that looked bright.
Now, though, price rises of 250-300 per cent have threatened to wreck many of its hard-won achievements.
The cost that hunger has already exacted in Mrs Tesfu’s district of Kosoamba in the Ethiopian highlands was spelt out bleakly by the local school director, Chane Hailu. An idealistic teacher, he gave up city life to teach here, hoping to bring the benefits of education to one of Ethiopia’s most backward corners. Now he finds once-full classrooms are half-empty.
“We are trying to educate a new generation of Ethiopians, to drag these communities out of their poverty and to teach farmers how to make a decent living,” he said.
“If the children are too weak or too poor to come to school, we are losing all that. If that happens this generation will not be the one that changes Ethiopia for the better.”
So far mass starvation has been held at bay in Ethiopia’s highlands, although the government admits that 4.6 million are at risk of famine countrywide. Aid agencies believe the number is closer to 10 million, and fear the famine could soon become much worse. That fear eats away at the residents of Kosoamba, where they dread what could happen if, next February, the rains fail for the third year.
On a day of bright sunshine and scudding clouds last week, the grasslands around the village looked remarkably like the North Yorkshire moors, with dry stone walls, skylarks and bleating lambs.
But until recent years local villages, with round thatched huts and ragged men clad in patched clothes, were places of medieval poverty. Farmers toiled with crude wooden ploughs, watching the heavens and praying for rain.
New clinics and schools that have arrived in the past 15 years have transformed life, cutting mortality rates and educating the children of illiterate farmers for the first time.
Hunger threatens to undo all that, with youngsters now out foraging and working in the fields. In the past few months several dozen have died of dysentery.
The price rises, on top of drought, are having a dire effect on education across Ethiopia and forcing cruel choices on families, according to Matt Hobson, a food expert from Save the Children UK who is based in Addis Ababa.
“These rises are a massive hit for families and something has to give,” he said “It is usually schooling or health care.”
Officials in the village estimated that about 100 of the district’s 700 children show signs of serious malnourishment, a prelude, if the famine worsens, of death.
One 11-year-old, Tesmegen Worku, had pale blotches on his face, a sign of malnutrition which the villagers call “itch”.
The boy used to go to school, but now he herds skinny cows and sheep for one of the wealthier villagers in return for a daily bowl of maize porridge. He said that he felt hungry nearly all the time, and disliked the long, boring hours with the animals.
The job is dangerous because of hyenas, which have killed many animals that are too weak to escape.
The biggest fear of the child herdsmen is that one day they will themselves be eaten if they are too weak to fight off the predators. Local elders, hunched into a circle and draped in blankets, endlessly discuss the vagaries of
Ethiopia’s food market with the expertise and anxiety of Wall Street traders.
Cruelly for them, although food prices have rocketed, nobody wants to buy their scrawny livestock, most of which is too weak to survive the long journey to a city market anyway.
The village’s altitude at nearly 10,000ft is so high that the only crop they can grow is barley, which is dependent on winter rains called the belg which have failed for two years running.
Ironically, the summer rains were good this year, so the village is green and pleasant, but it is too late in the season for barley to ripen.
Next year they will be in real trouble. Nearly all the village’s seed has been eaten, and many rely on government handouts and help from a Save the Children development project.
One of the better-off villagers, Besfat Bisat, headman of the hamlet of Ataguay, had to take four of his teenage sons out of school and send them to a nearby town to work as day labourers on a new road.
With a shudder, he remembers 1984. For the first few months of the famine he
carried his neighbours’ bodies to the little church graveyard near the village, then as his own strength waned he buried them where they fell. Finally, when the survivors had no energy left, the dead were simply left.
“In 1984 those who had cash could buy food, but now it is simply too expensive,” he said.
“What is keeping us alive now is that our government is trying to help us, but we worry about what will happen if the support comes too late.
“If the spring rains come the next harvest will be in August, but only God knows if we can wait that long. If there is no rain next spring, our fates will be clear. We will die.”
By Debbie DeVoe
CRS Regional Information Officer, East Africa
www.crs.org
TIGRAY, Ethiopia – As we crest the mountain top, a sweeping view of emerald fields, soaring mesas and scattered farms spreads in front of us. I’ve been told to expect scenery like Arizona, but it’s still hard for me to believe this is Ethiopia. It’s even more difficult to believe that the farmers in the distance are facing a critical food shortage.
As we wind down the hill though, we get a closer look at the fields and what Ethiopians call “green hunger.” Corn stalks are one half the height they should be, and under the green tops are drooping brown leaves. Rip open an ear, and the inside rows of anemic kernels grin up like ghastly smiles of broken teeth spaced much too far apart.
A little further, we pass a field of wheat that looks like an abandoned meadow of prairie grass. “Complete crop failure,” Alem Brhane says, shaking his head in dismay. A program coordinator with the Adigrat Catholic Secretariat for development projects supported by Catholic Relief Services, Brhane knows that these spindly sprouts mean the farmer will harvest absolutely nothing — not even feed for his livestock.
A Growing Crisis
Drought in Ethiopia comes every few years. But in early 2008, a poor rainy season took many farmers by surprise, occurring in pockets where families are usually able to grow enough food. By May, thousands of children were showing signs of malnutrition as farming families were left with little or nothing to eat.
Resulting delays in planting long-cycle crops coupled with continued poor rains are now exacerbating the situation. Millions more farmers are facing potential crop failures during the upcoming October and November harvest — drastically reducing expected food stores for the coming year.
“The food shortage in Ethiopia could get much worse,” explains Lane Bunkers, CRS’ country representative in Ethiopia. “Already, the government of Ethiopia and aid agencies have exhausted local supplies feeding those most in need. More food is needed as soon as possible to distribute to growing numbers of people facing empty cupboards and — more concerning — empty grain stores.”
In early September, CRS signed a $53.4 million agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide almost 3 million drought-affected Ethiopians with 75,140 metric tons of food — enough to fill an entire oceanic freighter. As CRS did in other critical emergencies, the agency will again lead the relief activities of six Joint Emergency Operational Plan consortium partners.
Shipments of sorghum, wheat, legumes, corn-soy blend and vegetable oil are already on their way, expected to begin arriving in late October. The consortium will transport and distribute the U.S.-donated food to people identified as being most in need.
CRS has also received three emergency grants totaling over $1.75 million from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This funding has supported distributions of seeds in August and September to 16,000 farmers in need and will fund in coming months the rehabilitation, development and expansion of water sources in severely affected communities.
Defying Drought
Not all communities in drought-affected regions are facing hunger, however. Some have received precious bursts of rain that have kept their crops alive. Others have undertaken development projects to break out of the cycle of drought and despair.
“Though my rain-fed field crops will suffer, compared to others I won’t be as affected as much by the drought because of this irrigation,” says Leteyohanes Yohanes, a farmer in the village of Kokeb-Tsibah. For the past two years, Leteyohanes and her neighbors have been growing vegetables on small plots of land irrigated by a water system constructed with CRS’ support. Her family now supplements their standard fare of barley, peas and beans with vegetables from their garden. She is also able to buy additional food and care for her parents using the income she earns selling any excess vegetables.
Teklu Madgu — a spry 67-year-old father of eight — practically jumps up and down when he explains the benefits irrigation has brought to his life. Running to show off his large garden, he explains how he now harvests vegetables three times a year. This last harvest alone despite the drought, Teklu earned about $155 selling tomatoes, green peppers, garlic, onions, beans, oranges and more — in a country where the average annual income is estimated to be less than $125 per person. He used his most recent earnings to buy corn for his family to eat and to put down a down payment on a beehive to earn additional income.
In another village nearby, Yihdega Tesfay may be mute, but the smile that spreads across her face says it all. As she shows me her large hand-dug well and irrigated garden plot, Brhane explains that she cares for her three children alone. Due to the high premium she earns selling vegetables instead of more common grains, Yihdega can now afford to send her children to school. When she calls her eldest son over, her pride is palpable.
Helping Farmers Help Themselves
The government of Ethiopia and aid agencies must take every measure to help those facing hunger. As CRS waits for additional food shipments to arrive, the agency is working with USAID to move 1,500 metric tons of corn-soy blend from Djibouti for distribution in September to the elderly and to pregnant and nursing mothers in the most drought-affected regions.
CRS previously provided $125,000 of private funds to the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat and $150,000 to the Missionaries of Charity to support emergency feedings and other services wherever needs are greatest.
But tomorrow can’t be ignored.
“Communities where we have implemented long-term agricultural and irrigation projects over the years are withstanding the drought significantly better than their neighbors,” CRS’ Bunkers notes. “We will continue to do everything we can to provide emergency relief, and we also urge donors to fund long-term development projects to prevent future crises.”
(REUTERS) – Kenya is seeking investors and technical knowledge to build a small nuclear plant to meet growing electricity needs, says energy minister Mr Kiraitu Murungi.
The country with the region’s biggest economy can generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity compared with peak time demand of 1,050. That capacity includes emergency supplies from independent power producers.
“We are thinking of a small plant to generate about 1,000 megawatts initially. From very rough castings, initially it will cost us about US$1 billion,” Kiraitu Murungi told reporters on Monday.
The energy minister said the country could become a major electricity exporter to the region if the plans succeed.
“Use of nuclear power for civil and peaceful uses is now accepted globally. So we in Kenya should not be afraid when the word nuclear is mentioned,” Murungi said.
He said the country wants to add a million new connections to its electricity grid over the next five years — doubling the electricity consumer base.
The government is holding a national energy conference next month to discuss ways to boost cost-effective energy supply.
Infrastructure
Apart from South Africa Nigeria is the other country with plans to plans to build nuclear power plants to meet a major part of the West African country’s electricity demand by 2015.
Two years ago the country set a target for to generate 40 000 megawatts of electricity within the next decade, with a significant part coming from nuclear energy, Nigeria runs two nuclear research centres, one in the northern town of Zaria and another outside the capital, Abuja, set up under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear regulatory body.
It currently has no nuclear power plant. Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil and gas producer and the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter, but remains a low electricity generator and consumer.
The country runs on less than half of national capacity of 6 000 megawatts of electricity, with power cuts frequent and the electricity infrastructure run down by years of corruption and mismanagement.
Programme
Justifying their quest for nuclear power a government official said the country could not rely on its natural gas, coal and hydroelectric resources alone to meet its energy requirements.
Nigeria had then confirmed that it had no ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and would comply with all international requirements for safe use of nuclear energy.
However this did not stop the G8 from questioning the country’s intentions. In June, the world’s most powerful nations, the G8, expressed fears over Nigeria’s quest to acquire nuclear technology.
The were reported to be uncomfortable with Nigeria’s programme citing safety and security concerns despite the country’s position that the nuclear power is purely meant for electricity supply.
Confirming the G8 concerns to Africa News, the Director General of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Agency Shamsedeen Eleba, said most of these countries are cynical about the level of safety and some even had questioned the country’s level of responsibility because it is something that just one little mistake and every body is affected.
