Five-week-old Kendi's silent fight for life

Mweni with her daughter Kendi at a health centre in Kenya.

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At a glance she appears peacefully asleep but on closer inspection, five-week old Kendi is slowly succumbing to skin infections, coughs and flu caused by acute malnutrition. 

The condition is fast affecting her sight and other senses – and rendering the 3 kilogram baby inert.

Mweni her easy-going 31 year-old mother who tells her tribulations with a smile, even in the face of adversity, was abandoned by her husband at the height of the current famine.  She has a premonition she will not survive the famine: "I can no longer feed or breast feed. Honestly, any time soon I will either die, lose my child or will have to resuscitate her."

"I am starving with my three children, two (3 and 5 years) of who are lucky to eat a meal a day at school," she says with gestures of resignation.

"At school they serve boiled maize which, even, my three-year-old son has to chew because there is no other food at home."

Mweni has depended on 40 Kenyan Shillings (around 44 US cents) earned daily from the sale of fire wood and charcoal - an income she has now lost because there are no more trees left in her village. But she is not the worst hit by the hunger disaster.

Head of the Kangonde Dispensary, Dr Gitonga says: "In the queue of 60 patients today, about 40 hold babies aged between three and eight weeks, all so small and light.  Some still have a little energy, to cough incessantly or cry weakly, while others are dead silent; all symptoms of severe malnutrition.

"One out of every six children is underweight and needs to be treated for eye and skin infections," Dr Gitonga says. "They are in different stages of severe malnutrition which is quickly robbing them of the development of their perception abilities, reflexes and other feelings and so they are too weak to cry, play or react to any stimuli. Some are referred to hospitals for intravenous feeding.

"But only a third of the children like Kendi are lucky to visit post natal clinics in the area with 50,000 inhabitants. The rest survive with no medical aid, with a number of them being taken to witch doctors because here it is common for malnutrition symptoms to be mistaken for witchcraft," says Dr. Gitonga.

In the current drought situation children that have no contact with the school system are exceptionally disadvantaged as their suffering often goes unnoticed. 

"They are the unseen sufferers carrying the heaviest burden of the drought," says Mutheu, a 42-year-old mother of six.

Other women listen quietly as she describes her ordeal and their expressions appear to confirm their experience is similar.

Plan is supplying water to Kangonde Dispensary; supporting school feeding during the current school holiday and has already supported the training of 29 Community Health Extension Workers and public health workers in the integrated management of malnutrition disorders.

Find out more about the East Africa Food Crisis.

Please make a donation today to help children and families facing starvation in East Africa.