Aid Worker Diaries

An intense tropical cyclone named Giovanna made landfall on the east coast of Madagascar yesterday morning. “Assessments have yet to begin and we have very little data at the present time. But if we look at the strength of the storm and the fact that the area in which it hit is one of the most densely populated in Madagascar we expect around 100,000 people to be affected by wind damage and flooding”, says John Uniack Davis, Country Director of CARE Madagascar. The storm made landfall in the village of Andevoranto, a highly-populated area in the middle of the east coast and a four to five hour drive from the capital city of Antananarivo.

 “It’s quite unusual that a storm hits the capital city so close and hard. We were all hunkered down in our houses yesterday morning, waiting for it to pass”, Davis reports. “There is lots of debris in the streets. My 39-year-old guard told me that has never seen winds this strong in Antananarivo.”

CARE staff report that at least 60 percent of dwellings in the town of Vatomandry, where CARE has a large sub-office, have been partially damaged or completely destroyed. “But we expect that we will see large destruction in the surrounding area as well, particularly because dwellings in these areas are most often made of flimsy local materials, such as palm leaves and bamboo. Many remote areas are still cut off. CARE will begin an aerial assessment today so we can plan our emergency response accordingly”, says Davis. “CARE is one of the most established emergency actors in Madagascar, so we will act quickly to bring much needed emergency relief.”

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There is much talk these days of reaching the unreached. But as I drive with UNICEF colleagues through the remote Hodh Gharbi scrubland in Mauritania, in north-west Africa’s Sahel region, there is little sign of any outside effort making its way here where the whimpers and restlessness – the signs of hunger – haunt the mothers in one scattered home after another.   

Each year, the period between the rains and the new harvest brings a ‘lean season’ when mothers struggle to feed their children. But last year there was no rain. This year’s lean season has come three months early. Without rain, the pasture for livestock disappears; the goats produce less milk for the children and the few crops only half grow. Families compete with birds and locusts for what crops manage to survive. Family members, often men and older boys, are already leaving to search for better pastoral land or piecemeal work.  

UNICEF estimates that across the eight countries of the Sahel, more than a million children are at risk of severe malnutrition, which can quickly lead to death if left untreated. The hope of the government here and humanitarian agencies is to respond now and thus avoid the horrific pictures of mass starvation that could come if nothing is done. 

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I clearly remember July 2011 when the world started to focus its attention on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa. At that time, more than 4.5 million people in Ethiopia were in need of food assistance and water shortages were putting millions at risk of waterborne diseases.

I remember July 2011 because by then it had been almost a year since I released a drought alert for the Horn of Africa to our key partners. In August 2010, la Niña, a meteorological phenomenon that usually provokes dry weather conditions, was forecasted. As an Ethiopian who grew up in the north-eastern part of Ethiopia and who has been affected by drought, I knew the potential consequences of such a forecast.

In response to this, we at CARE immediately started to prepare ourselves to respond to the potential crisis. We launched our first relief interventions in February 2011 with activities to provide water to drought-affected communities in Borena, located in the southern part of Ethiopia. We also provided food assistance in East and West Hararghe in Oromia region and in Afar region in eastern Ethiopia. We later complemented our drought response with nutrition and livelihoods interventions in order to have an effective, comprehensive and integrated approach.      

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The evidence is on the ground. Dark patches of burnt ash and half burnt wooden stumps is all that is left in this village.

Apart from the people - there are thousands, many of them women and children, anxiously waiting in the hot sun for the relief food.

Violent conflicts between different ethnic communities in Likuangole and other villages in the Jonglei state of South Sudan, has left an unconfirmed number of people dead and about 120,000 internally displaced people in desperate need of life saving assistance. These numbers have been increasing rapidly with fresh reports of violence.

While the UN is still estimating the number of people dead, a wire agency quoted local authorities as saying the conflict has killed ‘as many as 2,000 people’.

This history of cattle raids and revenge attacks in the region goes back decades, and is now one of the greatest challenges to stability in the newly independent state. A legacy of mistrust with Khartoum and deepening disputes between two nations over oil revenues are adding to the current increased state of insecurity.

In Jonglei, what started as an inter-ethnic violence over cattle ownership - a source of livelihood and honour for locals - has now reached a flashpoint.

I met several survivors at a food distribution centre set up by Plan International in Likuangole. Mothers expressed fears about the escalation of violence and what might happen to them and their children.

“We lost everything”, said a mother. She looked exhausted and frightened. She had been hiding in the bushes with no food and water. When the mobs came marching to Likuangole on December 30, they spared nothing. All standing structures were reduced to ashes including the local primary school.

The UN estimates that over 33,000 people are displaced in just Likuangole alone. This number has been growing rapidly and local authorities say it is as high as 48,997.

Plan is currently distributing relief food to the conflict affected communities in Pibor - the only life-line for over 54,500 people. Joining hands with the World Food Programme, UN’s food assistance organisation, Plan is expected to reach out to over 70,000 in the coming months.This is a neglected disaster. It is not really in the news. Friends in US and Europe express surprise that they have not seen anything in the news. Want to look up Pibor on the map of South Sudan? Not easy! If you were to walk into a book store in London or New York, there is every chance that you won’t find a map of South Sudan.

Gaining access to the worst affected areas in Pibor is a big challenge. From Juba, the capital,  we took two helicopters and several hours (spread over two days) to reach Pibor. There are other challenges for delivering aid here. The average day temperature is soaring to 40 degrees Celsius. There is no running water, electricity is rationed - three hours a day using a generator, no internet and very poor mobile connectivity.

Safety first

In Gumuruk, I met 11-year-old Paul wearing a half-torn T shirt with Chelsea footballer Drogba’s photo on it. Paul and his friend Gabriel are both Drogba fans and want to become football players like him when they grow up. Their eyes light up when they speak about football and Drogba. 

But Gabriel told me he has stopped playing football - perhaps the only entertainment he and his friends had. They used to play football on the unlevelled, muddy air strip which is just 200 metres away from the village. These days, rumours are rife about retaliation and revenge. Gabriel and his friends do not want get caught up in clashes if the mob returns. Safety first, football can wait.
Violent conflicts take a heavy toll on children.

They get separated from their families, lose their education and childhood. Violence has a lasting traumatising effect on children as they suffer both as victims and as witnesses. In many violent conflicts, many children are recruited to militias and often become perpetuators of violence in future. Last week, Juba Monitor, a weekly newspaper in capital Juba carried photographs of children aged around 12 years, heavily armed.

Dealing with conflicts is time-consuming and involves money and people. While some agencies take up consequences of conflicts in their strategies and programmes, many shy away from working to address the causes and dynamics of the conflict.

But children are also a good place to start addressing conflicts and their fallout.
Here in Jonglei, they are desperately in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance like food, water and shelter. Secondly they need protection, support to continue education. Thirdly they need support to heal the emotional impacts of this violence. Most importantly, they need assurance that the violence will be stopped and peace returned.

The Republic of South Sudan is the youngest nation in the world. We have a collective responsibility to help ensure that its children grow up in peace and good health and education.

Putting children and peace at the centre is key to making that happen.

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The Gates’ Foundation conference earlier this week; has sparked an increase in the debate on how to tackle tropical disease with DFID announcing a five-fold increase in its aid for this area last week. Overall, the foundation pledged to give $785 million to support research and development efforts. This is a great step forward. However, investment in measures that stop people getting sick in the first place; is just as important. The Gates’ sanitation initiative: launched last July, offered $45 million for new sanitation technologies; is a drop in the ocean compared to the money discussed on Monday.

Most of these diseases are found in areas with poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene practices. Around half are directly related to unclean water and hygiene. These diseases deform, disable, blind and kill. Proper toilets, an adequate and uncontaminated water supply, and simple hand washing can help prevent them spreading and destroying communities

Working alongside other NGO’s, Tearfund helps to run one of the few health centres in Motot, South Sudan. It offers immunisation, but also explains how a change of hygiene habits can prevent diarrhoea and stop babies getting sick. Families learn that washing their hands with soap after going to the toilet, or before eating, prevents these diseases like bilharzia (which kills 200,000 in Africa each year) from spreading spreading. Latrines too, help to control the flies that carry Trachoma between children’s faces.

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By Lillian Omariba

Arothi returned from the bush on Friday. She, along with her six children, had been hiding there for almost two days.

Her husband was killed by the marauding cattle-rustlers – mostly armed youths from the Lou Nuer tribe.

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Promoting resilience is a growing area of interest in development. The UK Government’s Humanitarian Policy ‘Saving Lives, preventing suffering and building resilience’, puts resilience at the heart of their approach. Building on this, DFID have committed to embedding resilience-building in all of its country programmes by 2015 and integrating resilience into all of their work on climate change and conflict prevention.

Practical Action sees resilience as the ability of a system, community or society to resist, absorb, cope with and recover from shocks and stresses. A resilient community is one in which people can manage risk and recover from shocks such as floods, droughts and violent conflict. It also means people have the ability to adapt to long term trends such as climate change in a timely and efficient manner without undermining their wellbeing.

How to operationalise concepts of resilience is a challenge for many organisations. Practical Action has developed an approach called From Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R). This is a framework that analyses the causes of vulnerability and how disaster risk reduction, climate change impacts, governance and livelihoods interact and affect resilient outcomes.

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Millions of people continue to struggle in the aftermath of severe flooding in southern Pakistan, including many still recovering from the 2010 floods. Spearheaded by our relief expert Riaz Khalil, AmeriCares responded with two distributions of non-food items, benefiting 2,600 people, and 30 free medical camps, treating a total of 7,500 patients. On Christmas Day, 2011, a relief distribution took place in Thatta, a town located in the southwest portion of Pakistan in the Sindh province. Below, Riaz delivers an account of the great need he saw that day.

“Compared to the 2010 floods, I found this to be the most vulnerable population of displaced people by far.”

In Thatta, a town that was severely hit by the 2011 floods, the damage was worse that what I had seen after the 2010 floods. The waters took longer to recede and rebuilding efforts have been delayed. Many families live in huts and mud homes, and most were destroyed or washed away by floodwaters. Exacerbating the circumstances, many villages in the province are isolated and there has been very little aid response for survivors.

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I spend my time looking for ditches these days. Fresh out of hostile environment training for aid workers I know where to dive in to save my life if caught in a sudden exchange of fire.

This is just the start. I can Delta Kilo myself over the radio; tourniquet bleeding limbs; know how not to mess with landmines; evacuate within seconds; and have learnt that keeping my mouth shut is probably the best thing if I get abducted.

After dealing with pints of fake blood, silicone wounds and viscera, rounds of mock explosions and being gun-pointed with decommissioned AK-47s in the dark woods of Sussex - I have returned to my organisation Plan International's Headquarters a walking, talking disaster man.

The sounds of loud bangs, shock and awe scenarios, and the paranoia of anticipating the unknown had me and my fellow aid workers on an adrenaline rush which I can still feel in my veins. Hostile environments and conflicts, we all know for a fact, are rapidly reshaping the sphere of humanitarian aid work globally.

From supporting flood survivors in Pakistan to feeding starving population in strife-torn Jonglei state of South Sudan, from providing relief to typhoon affected people in the Philippines to helping Haitians rebuild their lives after 2010 quake - aid workers are reaching out to millions of people, every day. In the farthest corners of the world and among the most remote communities, they are dealing with more conflicts, disasters and emergencies than ever before.

Aid workers are now very much at the frontline of extreme humanitarian challenges facing the world as nations find their capacities and resources stretched to the limits and communities endure tests of survival, sustenance and reconstructing lives.

In the course of their duty, aid workers are increasingly working in environments that are isolated, difficult and hostile. They regularly face the threat of violence, targeted attacks and abductions. Between the years 2000 and 2010, 780 aid workers lost their lives in the line of duty. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in 2010 alone 242 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped as opposed to 91 in the year 2000.

With disasters and emergencies becoming a significant component of humanitarian work, aid workers cannot safely operate in environments they are not adequately trained for. They face both environmental and targeted risks to their life and safety.

Imagine walking into a minefield before realising you are in deep trouble and help is hours away. Picture yourself in the middle of a crowd that is fast turning into a mob. Visualise your colleague has been shot at by rebels and has a life-threatening bleeding wound. Think of a scenario where you have lost your way in the forest and the only way to find your camp is using the GPS.

Akin to a battlefront, these situations raise a demand on various physical and mental faculties for quick, and more importantly, right actions. Delays and mistakes can cost lives.

However, the comforting fact is that there are effective ways to deal with each of these situations. Through adequate information and training humanitarian agencies and aid workers can be better prepared for the widening challenges of their role. Survival is at the centre of humanitarian work and frontline aid workers must be trained in all its techniques as they strive to save and support others' lives.

As for me, I feel better prepared to deal with any eventualities during deployment or otherwise. Next time you hear me saying Delta Kilo, Message, Roger so far?, Over - you know what station I am on.

(Davinder Kumar is an award-winning development journalist and Press Officer for global child rights and community development organisation Plan International. He is also a Chevening Human Rights Scholar.) 

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By Atem Dut

This year, all schools in South Sudan are set to open by February 15, much earlier than the old Sudan’s calendar when schools would reopen in April after break.

Not many children used to attend school in Pibor County in the strife-torn state of Jonglei until the local Member of Parliament used her constituency development funds to construct a permanent primary school in Likuangole.

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By Atem Dut

“The food we received today is the only thing we have. Everything was looted by the attackers. Our cows were raided and our crops was burned down by them,” said Mary Nyagolol, resident of Likuangole displaced to Pibor town in Jonglei, South Sudan.

At least 17, 000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in two payams of Gumuruk and Likuangole of Pibor County have benefited in the first two weeks of food distribution conducted by child rights organisation Plan International in collaboration with the World Food Programme.

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Buying, selling, growing, buzzing; Haiti is bursting with life and every space is crowded.

The dusty landscape explodes with an electric mix of clothes; purple, pink, turquoise and yellow, all vibrant in the Caribbean sunshine.

This vibrancy is reflected in the passion Haitians have for their country and their optimism despite the harsh conditions they face.

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Besides Hispaniola itself- the second largest island in the Caribbean, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share one more thing in common - their seismic fault lines.

The two nations have a long history of earthquakes in addition to their vulnerability to hurricanes and cyclones.

As Haiti continues to make a slow recovery from the catastrophic earthquake that devastated the nation two years ago, its neighbour Dominican Republic is bracing itself to be better prepared for future disasters.

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By Mardy Halcon

She used to love playing in the rain, just like any other child. But now, the mere sound of raindrops makes her quiver.

Jarmiss fought a battle to survive on the night of December 16 as the flood caused by Typhoon Sendong (Washi) coursed its way through her village. The 13-year-old held on to the leaves of Nipa – a water palm that grows in abundance locally, to keep afloat and save herself from being swept away by floods.

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When disasters hit, they always hit the most vulnerable the hardest. So when tropical storm Washi (local name: Sendong) hit Mindanao and Negros Oriental, in the South of the Philippines in the weekend of the 16^th of December, the children in these areas suffered the most. And they still do.

Many children have lost their lives and many have lost their parents, siblings and extended families. They have lost their homes and have seen things that no child should have to see.

And if that was not enough, they have also lost one of the places where children should feel safe and nurtured: their schools.

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What does War Child actually do?

Whilst all this talk about mechanisms, protection, mental health makes a lot of sense, what do we actually do to remedy the problems? War Child has found that for the majority of conflict-affected children, there is a pedagogy which is less labour intensive or stigmatizing, than targeted mental health programmes. Our mantra is LIFE-SKILLS. Life-Skills is psychosocial work and activities and has its own methodology championed by UNICEF, the Child Protection sector and Mental Health experts as the means of increasing resilience, confidence and a more qualified and hopeful generation in societies blighted by conflict and poverty.

As many children tend to only display milder signs of trauma or mental instability in conflict situations, War Child’s primary aim is to deal with their difficulties and build their resilience. Working with small groups of children, War Child-trained teachers take life-skills classes in both emergency and post-emergency settings.

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Living with conflict

In periods of insecurity, normally protective systems such as the family, community and religious institutions and rule of law can breakdown or mutate. With this erosion, the problems of social injustice, inequality, and marginalisation can become even more pronounced, yet there are fewer functioning mechanisms to help address them.

The impact of this societal breakdown can be suspension of essentials such as education, fragmented families, lost societal knowledge, and because of all this, a further entrenchment of poverty.

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Conflict in the World

War Child UK (WCUK) operates in the worst conflict-affected places in the world.  The countries we work in are the infamous and the unjust. As well as operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have recently begun working in Central African Republic (CAR) which has 17 distinct armed groups (recognised as distinct from criminal groups) creating an insecure environment . CAR is in a “bad neighbourhood” surrounded by DRC and Uganda (where WCUK also works) as well as Chad, Sudan and South Sudan, the newest and one of the poorest nations on earth.  One of the reasons we started working in CAR is the link to, Congo and Uganda, where the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has been active.  There has been  an estimated 30,000 children abducted since their appearance in the 1990s.  

Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Uganda, have barely been out of international news for the continual conflict their citizens have had to live through.

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On Saturday morning (night-time in the Philippines) very heavy rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks and flood the area – killing hundreds and leaving thousands more stranded, without food or shelter, in the middle of the night.

Save the Children’s team on the ground launched into action immediately – assessing the damage on the most vulnerable children and their families.

Travelling along the highway you can see bodies lined up – waiting to be identified. Of the hundreds of dead, there are only a few injured. This is not unusual in a flood. Very few people caught up in the path of a flash flood will survive. Most of the dead were children, again not a surprise. Children are smaller, lighter and less likely to know where to go in an emergency. Those that survived will be cold, exhausted and terrified. Some will have been separated from their parents in the chaos.

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I was interested in reading, among the many comments that came out this week on the Durban COP, one which called COP17 the ‘Youth Summit’.

Eighteen year old Cat Hudson from Runcorn, England, was supported by Plan and the UK Youth Climate Coalition to take part in COP17. Why Cat wanted to go to Durban: “We as young people have a voice and must lobby our negotiators. We have to remind them that they are there representing us and our future. This is our life they are negotiating on, our future – climate change will impact us the most. Why shouldn’t we be there?”

Indeed it seems that young people like Cat were a driving force to pressure delegates to commit to the Durban Platform.

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 In Yemen, the focus on the political situation continues. But as food and fuel prices escalate, ordinary Yemenis are struggling to cope. Kelly Gilbride, Oxfam’s policy advisor in Yemen, spoke to some of the families who are facing rising levels of malnutrition and hunger, and turning to alternative livelihoods to survive.

Rahima hides her face with her scarf, while tears fall from her eyes.

“My husband left a long time ago to the sea. I haven’t heard from him, and the situation has become very hard.”

Desperate to feed her five kids, Rahima, sold her only goat and sent her son to work as a fisherman.

“I had no choice but to send my son to find food. He is just ten years old. I don’t know if he is alive, the last call from him was twenty days ago,” Rahima looks away, exhausted and regretting her decision of sending her child away.

Jobs and incomes have been hard hit by the crisis, making food difficult to afford. Hodeida, Rahima’s home, is among the five governorates with more than half a million food insecure people and the majority of the men have left for the sea. Many families have been torn apart – mothers have no choice but to send their husbands and sons to find work as fisherman on the perilous seas.

“I don’t have a farm to plant crops, and because of the fuel crisis people have stopped farming so I cannot work on their lands. A few months ago, my goat died whilst giving birth, and I couldn’t afford veterinary care. I was mourning, watching the dogs eating its dead body,” she says.

A recent Oxfam study in the western coastal governorate of Hodeida found families to be coping – but only just. Many families were facing unemployment or reduced working hours and lower pay. Nearly a fifth of those surveyed had put their children to work after withdrawing them from school. Other families were selling off valuable items in order to buy food. ‘’Families were close to breaking point’’ the study concludes.

“Food prices increased. My husband couldn’t find a job…the only option was the sea” explains Rahima.

It’s a familiar story. Anisa, 20, whose husband drowned at sea, is struggling to take care of her two daughters, one of whom is suffering from malnutrition.

“Amina is two years old, I have nothing to feed her but breastmilk,”" said Anisa, who herself seemed to be malnourished and living like many other women in the village – a basic hut with no power and sparse furniture.

“The only food available is bread and tea. If we get money we may buy tomatoes or potatoes to boil and eat with the bread,” explains Amina.

Oxfam is helping people like Amina and Rahima to access their basic needs by transferring cash to vulnerable families so they can buy food. But as political uncertainty drags on, donors need to step up their commitment. In a country, where 7.5 million people do not have enough to eat, the international community must act immediately to tackle the growing humanitarian crisis so that Amina, Rahima and others are able to feed their families and live in dignity.

Oxfam’s work in Yemen

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Kinan Suchaovanich, Communication Officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross, recounts how passion and compassion drives the global movement to ban landmines.

Meeting rooms and conference halls are not usually the places where emotions run free. Official etiquettes dictate that feelings must be reigned in whether for mannerism or other hidden agendas.

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 By Waithera Kuria

The long-awaited rains have finally come. The clouds that were taunting me the last time I was here look like they finally reached a consensus to pour.

Indeed it pours, to at least cover the scorching sun, to cool the baking earth, to temporarily calm a distressed mother nature who has for the last three years unleashed her wrath on the animals, plants and overpowered their custodian, man.

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Lucica Ditiu is Executive Secretary of Stop TB Partnership

On this World AIDS Day, when HIV programmes around the world are facing an era of significant financial constraint, it is a good moment to consider how to make the most of the resources we have for saving and improving the lives of people living with HIV. There is one highly cost-efficient intervention on which we are clearly failing to fully capitalize: preventing and treating tuberculosis (TB) – the number one killer of people living with HIV.

Important lessons can be learned from a small but growing number of HIV programmes that are demonstrating daily how simple it is to prevent TB deaths among people living with HIV and how little it costs. Take the Nyanga health clinic in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Livingstone, Zimbabwe

Victoria Falls takes you by surprise. You're wandering down a nondescript little path with scrappy trees blocking out the view ahead. And then there it is: space, plunging down hundreds of metres to a lake below and opposite, a sheer rock face with jets of water pouring over the edge.

It gets better as you go on. At the first glimpse of the view, we spent five minutes posing for photos (and if there's one thing a Caravanite can't resist, it's a good photo opportunity) before we realised there were even more spectacular vantage points ahead. We crossed a bridge ('don't look down, look forward,' was the guide's advice) and then carried on, keeping well clear of the sudden drop on one side of the path.

It was breathtaking stuff so it was hard to imagine that Victoria Falls are drying up. That at least is the belief held in the nearby town of Livingstone, related to us at a tree-planting ceremony in honour of our arrival. The volume of water tumbling over the side of the cliffs is diminishing and it is feared it could disappear altogether. Along with the snows of Kilimanjaro, could Victoria Falls become one of the highest profile victims of climate change in Africa?

It felt like a real privilege to see Victoria Falls as it is now and the view was enough to perk me up after a difficult day. The health problems I'd dreaded had finally happened and I had been feeling nauseous since the morning. The culprit may have been a fried caterpillar which I'd had at a buffet lunch the day before. Most of the African Caravanites steered well clear but in a foolish display of food bravado, I had one. Now I'm being punished!

Read more about the UN climate change negotiations on our campaigns blog.
 

Photo of the day

PHOTO: A Caravanite takes a moment to admire the view.

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

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A long wait at the Botswana border brings bad news for the Caravanites as the Rwandans and Burundians are refused a visa and forced to seek a new route to Durban. But, as ever, the Caravanite's spirits remain high. Listen to this podcast

Photo of the day

PHOTO: The Caravanites receive a rather noisy welcome in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Interview

With two days to go until we reach Durban, here are some reflections from Head of PACJA, Mithika Mwenda, on the journey so far and his hopes for Cop17.

Q: How did the idea of the Caravan come about?

A: In Africa, there is a need to demystify climate change so that people can see what the link is to their lives and what response they need to take. Now that Cop17 is coming to Africa, we wanted to think of a massive activity which would unite the people of Africa with the UN process. 

Q: How do you think the journey has gone so far?

A: This caravan has become the defining activity of Cop17. Everybody in Africa is looking upon it and we are happy with the reception we have had. This is not just an activity for civil society, it’s for all the people in Africa. 

Q. The Caravan focuses on Africa but how important do you think it is that people all over the world, join together in tackling climate change?

A: Climate Change is not going to be defeated by one individual, one country or one region so we want to underscore the importance of solidarity between rich and poor countries and the need to collaborate. Africans are suffering now because we are more vulnerable but people need to understand that together we are confronting a challenge that will swallow us all. 

Q: Have you got a message for Christian Aid supporters?

A: I would like to thank them for the support they have continued to give PACJA. They should also share in the successes that we are witnessing. But Cop17 won’t be the end of the struggle. It’s the beginning and I like to think that we will be able to continue this solidarity.

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Mbeya, Tanzania

Ally fills us in on the 15-hour journey between Dar and Mbeya, driving through a wildlife reserve and an unfortunate, but inevitable, bus break down. Listen to this podcast here.

Photo of the day

Burudians: seven days on the road and still smiling!

I've heard the phrase 'Mother Earth' before of course, but never so often as over the past few days. Then there's 'Mama Africa', another metaphor that portrays the land as a nurturing female force. Women are identified with the land in Africa because they both work it and share its life-giving qualities.

‘All the population must understand that we have to protect the environment to protect human life forever,’ says Nizigama Sylvane - a farmer and mother-of-six - who has been on the Caravan of Home since her home country of Burundi.

But the metaphor also reflects the way in which the fate of the land and the fate of women - particularly in Rwanda and Burundi where more than 90% of the population are farmers - are inseparable.

Nizigama comes from a community in central Burundi, whose maize harvests have recently repeatedly failed due to the variability of rains (not yet conclusively linked to human-induced climate change but certainly consistent with what climate change experts have predicted for the region). And there, as elsewhere, the burden falls heaviest on women.

‘Women are the first victims when there are food shortages,’ she explains. ‘When there is famine in the family the husband can leave - saying he will go to find work - but the woman must stay behind and cope with this misery.’

Rwandan Urayeneza Verene, a maize and haricot bean farmer, agrees.

‘And let's not forget that in Rwanda lots of women became widows in 1994 [during the genocide] and lots of orphans were created,’ she says. ‘And it fell to these women to look after them.’

Urayeneza and Nizigama have become friends during the Caravan, singing from a shared hymn book during long journeys (see video).

Their friendship is an example in miniature of the type of solidarity the Caravan aims to foster. But it is also a friendship based on a shared experience of hardship, an experience that women all over Africa can relate to.

Liongwe, Malawi

Over the past ten days, I’ve had a tough time explaining the British public’s attitude to climate change to the Caravanites. 

It’s been ok talking about the two ends of the spectrum. We’ve had a bit of a chuckle at the expense of the crazier fringes of the climate change sceptic movement.

And, I’ve recounted how many Christian Aid supporters are very active on the issue, and described how up to a thousand marched in Manchester in October to demand climate justice of our government.

But it’s the people in the middle - those who don’t doubt that climate change is happening but still view it as a distant and abstract concern – whose position my fellow travellers have difficulty understanding.

‘Well, they have other things on their minds at the moment,’ I say, which seems a little feeble when talking to a Kenyan farmer who has seen her harvests fail year after year.

We do, of course. I don’t want in any way to diminish how severe an effect the economic situation is having on many people’s lives. But reports over the last few days that climate change spending will plummet as austerity cuts take hold, is still a major blow.

Money from industrialised countries to help poor countries adapt to new conditions is a crucial part of climate justice. African countries, amongst others, need to adapt to weather conditions that have rendered traditional ways of farming close to useless. But more than this, if African countries are to pull themselves out of poverty and flourish, they need to find ways of developing without further polluting the atmosphere - read Christian Aid’s Low-carbon Africa report.

It's up to us to ensure that our politicians don’t view climate finance as an easy thing to dispense with as the cuts start to bite. 

Photo of the day

A Caravanite keeps us entertained during our long wait at the Malawi-Tanzania border.

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Nairobi, Kenya

'Hope' is written in huge letters on the side of our coach, but the word that has been used just as often - in speeches, chanted at rallies and in conversations all along the route - is justice.

The caravan may be a celebration of Africa's flourishing climate change movement. But it is also a show of strength; a sign that African activists know their rights and are ready to demand them. As one of the few people on board the bus from an industrialised country, the activists' speeches have made for uncomfortable listening at times.

I squirmed in my seat in Bujumbura, I squirmed on the terraces at Kampala rugby club, I am squirming now in a city centre hall in Nairobi and I expect to keep squirming all the way down to Durban.

The idea of climate justice - that the burden of responsibility for climate change lies with industrialised countries and so it is their duty to make amends - is expressed with such simplicity and clear moral logic, that it feels embarrassing that African activists have to ask for it at all.

And it is even more shaming when you hear about the impact that climate change is already having on Africans themselves, via the accounts of a Burundian farmer, a Ugandan activist, a Maasai musician.

The caravanites have made it very clear what they expect of industrialised countries at the Durban negotiations: commitments to ensure significant cuts in carbon emissions and funding to help developing countries adapt to a low carbon future.

But I wondered what they had to say to ordinary people and campaigners in industrialised countries, who would have been squirming, along with me, if they'd had the chance.

'We want them to lobby their politicians and say "See what our brothers and sisters from these countries in Africa are going through,''' Kenyan climate change activist Festus Mutavi told me.

'If I as an African campaigner try to stand all alone, my voice will not get through. Solidarity between people in industrialised countries and us is crucial.'

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

A mere 18 hours on the bus yesterday. Our rather bleary-eyed group of Caravanites assembled in the lobby of our Nairobi hotel at 4am. An even more bleary-eyed group got off the bus at 10pm on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. It was easy to be blasé about the distances we’d travel when I was sitting in London - less so yesterday morning, when I caught an unfortunate glimpse of a sign giving the distance to Dar.

Luckily, Africa was putting on a fine display for our entertainment. There was a disappointing no-show from Kilimanjaro – which was hiding behind a thick wall of cloud – but in the afternoon, we were treated to views of vivid green plains and my favourite kind of African weather: darkening skies, a slight chill and the electric tingle in the air that precedes a storm.

Scudding clouds, open road – at the risk of sounding like a middle-aged man, if I’d only had some Springsteen on my iPod; my happiness would have been complete.

But there was some fine singing (watch this short video) from Nizigama Sylvane and Urayeneza Verene, a Burundian and a Rwandan farmer respectively, who have become good friends during the journey.

As for meals, my number one fear on this trip is getting food poisoning and being forced to endure a journey like yesterday’s, a grimace on my face and queasiness in my stomach. So when we stopped at a dubious-looking foodside stall, I became the joke of the group by buying what I thought was the safest lunch option: three pieces of cake and two bananas. In the end I was shamed into having some fried chicken too. No adverse effects so far.

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Katuna, Uganda

Charles Gahire doesn’t look like the sort of man who often sports a matching T shirt and baseball cap. He wears his specs perched donnishly on his nose and is a distinguished naturalist and leader of the Rwandan caravan delegation. But today, like the rest of us, he is happily sporting a bright green cap - in the interests of raising climate change awareness. 

‘If you are not aware, anyone can step on you,’ he tells me. ‘Once you are aware you can demand your rights.’ 

He is a charming, incredibly knowledgeable if rather depressing bus companion, often leaning across to point out how climate change has affected the Ugandan countryside, flashing past the window outside. And though he prefers to speak in measured, scientific language, he’s not above issuing the occasional dire warning. ‘If we continue burning fossil fuels, it will bring us to the brink of extinction,’ he says. 

Rwanda and Uganda are among many of the countries on our route experiencing temperature rises due, in part, to climate change. In Rwanda, he explains, this is baking the marshland dry and causing insects and diseases which destroy staple crops to flourish.

Meanwhile, there is already anecdotal evidence from farmers of the kind of changing rainfall patterns that scientists have predicted will affect Africa in the future. When the rains do come they are sometimes too heavy or interspersed with periods of fierce sunshine, wrecking the harvest. 

But though he paints a bleak picture, Charles sees both the Caravan and the UN talks as a source of hope and he is hoping to make his mark at Durban. Africa’s farmers couldn’t hope for a more formidable champion.

Kampala, Uganda

Listen to Ally's podcast

The Concert for Climate Justice strikes a chord for the Caravan of Hope in Kampala, Uganda. Ally reflects on how African musicians inspire activists before the caravan moves on to Kenya. Listen to this podcast here.

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