"Well Beyond Rain Failure"

As I photographed the opening prayer of a concert this afternoon, I heard the most amazing sound – RAIN! I don’t know how you would have reacted, but to be at a Concert for Famine and to hear what – based on increasing clouds in recent days and intense heat that broke this morning – is the first rain of the much prayed for rainy season left me with chills and it was not from the cooler air! BUT don’t stop praying, Kenya needs a really good rainy season which should last for weeks. Pray also for the full end to famine. An article in yesterday’s Saturday Nation* reported: “Most of the 10 million Kenyans threatened with starvation are not … in the drought-stricken rural areas. They are … in the country’s urban centres ... 4.1 million people in Nairobi and Mombasa slums are threatened with starvation.”

The writer was quoting facts from “The Kenya Food Security Update”**, an report compiled by USAID, UN World Food Programme, and others, which “lays bare the reasons for Kenya’s hunger – and they go well beyond rain failures … Those affected by the extended drought are only 2.5 million – and they have among their number some 850,000 school-age children.”* Wait a minute! ONLY 2.5 million! How often do we allow ourselves to look beyond problems by adding little words like this ONLY? The number of 2.5 million may be ONLY one fourth of the total of “those threatened with starvation” in Kenya, yet they are 2.5 million people who need food and water. They likely also lack proper medical care and quality education for their children. Most importantly, many of them live in the pastoral (northern Kenya where raising animals is the major livelihood) which means their people groups lack a knowledge of our Saviour’s love and salvation.

Another group that are currently facing starvation in Kenya is “1.9 million people … affected by HIV and Aids” – this number includes those infected and their spouses/children/parents/etc, who have lost a breadwinner. The writer also cites from the report that those starving include “150,000 people displaced after the elections who are in transit camps … the resettlement effort has only benefitted …16 percent of the revised total of 663,000 displaced people”.

Part of me wishes I had missed the bad news in these reports, but if I want to truly pray for the people of Kenya, I must know the facts. I also wish that Kenya was the only place suffering in the world, yet it is not. If you are also a prayer warrior for another country, google that country’s name followed by Food Security Update. These reports are not intended as prayer guides, but there is much in these reports that needs prayer. If your time in limited, choose and pray for one of the mentioned groups of people – those in slums or those in the countryside, those affected by HIV/Aids, those who are displaced, the children among these groups, the people groups unreached by our Saviour’s Good News, etc. Being a child of our Father requires that we do something and WE CAN PRAY! Bert Yates
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* Special Report/Mokokha’s Memos/“Hunger’s in the slums and not the dry areas” (Saturday Nation,” 3/28/09, p.16) – http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/553674/-/44obs7/-/index.html
** “The Kenya Food Security Update” – www.kenyafoodsecurity.org/mod.php?topic=38