On the African continent, large numbers of children are forced to drop out of school because the lack of rain makes it difficult for them to make the long journey from their homes to school. Others die of malnutrition and others suffer the tragedy of water shortages and the distances to fetch water.
The relentless drought ravaging several countries in mid-Africa has among its victims the most vulnerable segment of humanity, the children, whose lives and futures are melting away under the merciless sun.
El Niño is causing a brutal drought that is drying up crops, most of them subsistence crops, in southern Africa.
Among the most dramatic, and graphic, cases of the magnitude of the problem is that of Burundi, a landlocked East African state in the Great Lakes region.
Weeks ago, overwhelmed by the severity of the crisis caused by low rainfall and lacking the resources to cope with it, the Burundian government declared a national state of emergency and appealed to the world for humanitarian aid to avert a famine.
The drama is often repeated, as in the case of Malawi, located in the southeast of the continent, where cycles of drought and floods alternate, as in a diabolical dance whose apotheosis is the destruction of the country.
In Zimbabwe, further south, the situation is equally tragic as tea crops, one of the main sources of hard currency income, die every day due to lack of rainfall and a shortage of irrigation systems, which are expensive and difficult to install. The drought also destroyed many of the tiny farms that provide a livelihood for thousands of families in a country where around 60 per cent of the 15 million people live in rural areas where agriculture is the main source of food and income.
In this scenario, children are the victims, as a large number of them have to drop out of school because they cannot afford to pay for school fees, uniforms and some food to enable them to spend long days in school and then make the sometimes long journey home.
Estimates by specialised UN agencies put the number of Zimbabwean children at immediate risk of malnutrition to a degree that will affect their growth and intellectual development at 580,000.
However, the lack of rain puts some two million children at risk of dropping out of school, forces a growing number to miss school days and has forced 45,000 out of the education system.
And within the generality, the case of female minors obliged to leave school for reasons as foreign in other latitudes as taking care of their younger siblings while both parents go out in search of a job to cover the day’s essential expenses.
Or for reasons as incomprehensible in other latitudes as the scarcity of water for washing clothes during their menstrual cycles.
By the paradoxes of climate change, while this bleak picture marks the daily life in southern nations, in parts of the eastern mainland, massive downpours that lasted for weeks washed away dozens of lives, houses, crops and roads with their tumultuous waters.
These were unprecedented weeks of a drama that tends to repeat itself more and more frequently to find the same fertile ground: poverty, underdevelopment, scarcity of material and human resources to cope with climatic adversities. PL
(Translated by Cristina Popa – Email: gcpopa83@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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