Can you imagine your country experiencing three hurricanes in one year? This is exactly what happened last year to Haiti, a small island in the Caribbean. Many other neighbouring island states like Jamaica, the Bahamas, Grenada, and the Dominican Republic were also battered and all have seen a reversal in their growth and development as a result.

A young girl in Bainet standing where homes were washed away by Hurricane Dean in August 2007. [Photo credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith]

The main challenge they face, though, is finding a way to convince the world of the need act now - and getting the world to respond with the urgency that is required.

To the outside world, the Caribbean is a “heaven on earth” - white sand, sunshine, blue seas, corals, diving, music and cocktails. While this is true, what we often forget is that a significant percentage of the population earns less than $2 a day and is highly vulnerable due to their limited capacity to cope.

No 999 for poor people

Poor communities cannot simply dial 999 or 911 to call for help. They have to take action all by themselves, often with their bare hands and empty stomachs.

We all have vivid images of Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005. Hurricanes leave behind a plethora of devastation including lost family members, destroyed houses, washed away soil and hunger. For Haiti, it was even worse last year as the hurricanes struck after a prolonged drought, which had already left people with very little food.

I visited Cap Haitian where I saw several communities living within high tide zones. These communities live in very dangerous conditions. Even in low to medium-strength storms their houses can be destroyed. Jean-Pierre, who lives close to Cap Haitian, told me: “I lost most of my family in the 2008 cyclone in a major landslide. They were all sleeping and never ever woke up. Later the water and wind came and took everything I had.”

Haitians have historically faced the wrath of nature and have managed to survive. However, many admit that the frequency and intensity of the storms have increased in the past few years.

An Oxfam-supported training exercise on how to save lives in a flood [Photo credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith]

They have also developed a National Adaptation Programme of Action to identify the potential effects of climate change and what is needed to protect people.

Need for financial support

Countries like Haiti will need large amounts of financial support from the global community to adapt to climate change. Money, for instance, could help improve environment management by paying for construction of dikes and new seed varieties tolerant of drought.

Oxfam is calling on developed nations to cover the costs of adaptation for nations like Haiti and to help the developing world cut their own emissions. Countries like Haiti have not been responsible for climate change and need urgent support to cope.

A minimum of $150 billion per year is needed, along with support to help nations build capacity to cope with climate change and help getting low-carbon technologies from rich nations established in poorer ones as well. Rich countries also need to drastically cut their own emissions.

While the hurricane season, which runs from July to November, may have given Haiti and its neighbouring islands a break this year, there should be no break for world leaders as the countdown continues toward the UN negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

Citizens in rich countries need to do all that they can to ensure their leaders work harder, smarter and swifter to ensure a safe, fair, binding and ambitious climate deal in the Danish capital so that poor communities like those in Haiti begin to get the help they so desperately need.

Get involved: Climate change

Ugandan farmers and their sheep at sunrise [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

Around Kotido and Kaabong in Karomoja District, north-east Uganda, the wind makes it hard at times to hear what people are saying, but this isn’t a wind that brings rain like in many places. All it’s bringing at the moment is dust. It’s also not the time for rain but the forecasts have been saying there will be El Nino rains. But even these have not appeared - everyone asks where they are. It’s too late for the crops but they hope that these will mean there will be more pasture and water for the animals.

Maria Loma carrying firewood [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

[Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

There are now 180 trained animal health workers in the district but still that’s not enough. They only have time to make three visits to each kraal in a year.

“Previously we didn’t spray but now we know that spraying really reduces ticks. The CAHWs have also helped us and showed us how to administer drugs, and what drugs are needed to treat what disease or infection. The most important thing now”, says Numuya Lopia, “is to support them and develop their capacity to each and every community.”

It’s a memorable visit for more reasons than one… but perhaps the most surreal memory is of our driver, John Bosco - dressed traditionally, singing along to ‘Lucille’ by Kenny Rodgers. It’s a song that haunts me for the rest of the day. The chorus line of ‘four hungry children and a crop in the field’…I feel he should be grateful that he has a crop in the field.

Find out more: East Africa Food Crisis

We weren’t prepared for what was going to hit us.

In May, we had travelled to Bangadesh to make an interactive documentary - ‘Gabura’, where the audience could explore life on a small Bangladeshi island and witness the ravaging impacts of climate change there.

We were about half-way through the shoot and had filmed some strange and disturbing stories about what climate change was doing to the place and the people.

Locals were reporting an increase in tiger attacks, young girls were afflicted by mysterious rashes from the increasingly salty water. The shrimp business appeared to be the only thing thriving.

Black clouds gather in the sky before the rain [Photo credit: EPA/ABIR ABDULLAH]

As we drove into the tail end of the storm, trees were falling on the road and the rain was lashing away visibility.

Later, as the rain started to ease and the first bodies were pulled out of the water, we saw Gabura had become unrecognisable. It was hideously transformed.

We met a father searching for his baby girl, washed out of his lap during the cyclone. “I couldn’t hold her,” he told me, crying in despair. We saw first hand the terrible devastation the cyclone had wreaked.

A village festival, Satkhira, Bangladesh [Photo credit: EPA/ABIR ABDULLAH]

Television’s interest in such matters can be limited to say the least, and so all eyes turn to the web.

There is a sense of opportunity, not only about reaching new audiences, of distributing differently but about making a new type of documentary and telling stories in a different way.

The documentary “Gabura - Daily Life and Disaster” aims to do just that. Regardless, the experience of making Gabura will stay with me for a very long time.

Watch “Gabura - Daily Life and Disaster”

At the end of October in the United Nations after years of discussions and debates, the vast majority of governments – 153 in total - agreed a timetable to establish a “strong and robust” Arms Trade Treaty with the “highest common standards” to control international transfers of conventional arms. Ed Pomfret explains what this means for campaigners and people affected by armed violence.

Most of the world’s biggest arms traders - including the USA, UK, France and Germany - now back the UN process. Nineteen states abstained but are all expected to take part in the process. Zimbabwe was the only State to vote against it.

Much of the credit for this historic shift should go to the millions of people across the world who took part in the Control Arms campaign calling for a strong and robust Treaty to stop the deadly flow of weapons across borders. 

The agreement means that the Arms Trade Treaty will be negotiated in a series of UN meetings concluding at a UN Conference in 2012. The resolution also highlights the issue of international arms transfers contributing to armed conflict, displacement of people, human rights abuses, organised crime and terrorism, thereby undermining peace, safety, security and sustainable development.

These were all issues that campaigners had wanted to be included - now we go into the next two years needing to keep the pressure up to ensure we have a strong and robust treaty that can save lives.

We are concerned about the procedure planned for the final UN Conference that could give every State the right of veto over the Treaty. This rule change demanded by the USA means a small number of sceptical States must could be allowed to hijack the Treaty process when it is clear the world wants a strong treaty.

For too long, governments have let the flow of weapons get out of control causing pain, suffering and death in some of the world’s poorest regions. With hundreds of thousands of people dying a year from armed violence, weapons that fall into the hands of criminals and rights abusers destroy communities and livelihoods. This shift to starting serious work on developing a Treaty should help to stop this flood. 

You can find out much more about what happened at the negotiations and read some great blogs here: http://conflictvoice.org/archive/2009/10

Malawi’s rural poor don’t know much about the science of climate change but they know the effect it is having on their lives: a slow slide deeper into poverty, in an inexorable cycle of heat, hunger and HIV/Aids.

Across the country farmers tell tales of once fertile soil that now yields very little; of rains that either don’t come on time or that arrive as floods; and of rivers once rich in fish now too shallow and hot to provide this valuable source of protein.

In Balaka, in the south of this long slice of Africa, the elders notice the changes most. Manesi David doesn’t know how old she is but her hair is silver beneath her headscarf, her eyes are rheumy and grown men call her Gogo. “For the past six years I have noticed this change in the weather. I’m not sure what this climate change is but I know the rains have changed. Now hunger is something we have every year. We didn’t have big plots but the soil was good. In the past the sun was not so hot. Malaria is increasing and because the temperature is rising people get tired more easily. People are getting old very quickly nowadays because they are working so hard. But they have to force themselves to continue working because if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

David is part of a new irrigation project run by the Balaka Livelihood Security programme, which works with farmers to try to mitigate the effects of climate change. The programme digs wells and uses treadle pumps to irrigate the fields of its 78 members, each of whom has 0.1 of a hectare under cultivation. The group grows sweet potatoes, pumpkins and maize in the hope of fending off the ever-present threat of starvation. “These days we are experiencing a lot of problems because the rains are unpredictable,” says David.  “It is now like we are in a desert. It is all hunger.”

Burnett Chambulika, the headman of the village reads a newspaper whenever he can afford one and listens to the radio avidly. “Many factories overseas use coal and they have destroyed nature because they put fumes into the atmosphere. Now the seas that were covered in ice have ships moving through them. That shows how things have really changed. Most of our mountains no longer have trees on them because we have cut them down. But now things are spoilt and we have to live with it. We need to think deeper. Generations are still coming and what will they have? There won’t even be trees for firewood or for building houses.”

Most of the villagers attribute the change to a very evident problem closer to home: “I think the rainfall is becoming unpredictable because we have cut down trees to burn charcoal,” says Paulo Mkaka (68). Across Malawi, vast swathes have become a scarred wasteland of tree stumps felled for firewood, for making charcoal and firing of bricks for houses.

As the climate has changed and crops have failed, many people have been forced to turn to the forests for a source of income. Trucks with Tanzanian number plates load up piles of logs at the roadside, and villagers mutter angrily that these are to be shipped from Dar es Salaam to China.

“We get less crops which means we end up cutting more trees to sell because we can’t grow enough food to eat,” says Mkaka. A lack of alternative employment just adds to the problem, says Chambulika “Our children have no jobs. They go to school but they end up as charcoal burners.”

Tereza Makowa (45) is worried about the Shire River which is just 500m from her fields. “Our river was deep but now it is shallow. Before you would need a very long bamboo to paddle a canoe but now you can use a short paddle. We are afraid it may dry up altogether.” The changes in the river mean it is also more prone to flooding, dumping huge amounts of water from areas upstream, even when it hasn’t rained in Balaka. “In the past there were areas that got flooded once in ten years, and then it was an event, something people would talk about for a long time. Now it has flooded every year since 2002. The water is coming much higher and even the crocodiles come up into our croplands, so we cannot walk around freely.”

The last flood was in March this year, and spelled devastation for the farmers. “The rainy season was over and we had planted our seeds. One night it flooded without warning even though it hadn’t rained here. All our crops were washed away. I had planted maize, okra and peas but I was left with nothing at all. I had to buy more seeds from the market and I didn’t have money for that, so I had to go work in someone else’s fields. When the water receded I planted again but that crop didn’t do well, because then there was drought,” says Mary Zuze (54) “It is a disaster to lose a whole crop. Total disaster!”

Balaka is also on a major trucking route, and many women are driven by hunger to sell sex to the drivers who are en route to Beira or Zomba. “Poverty and HIV are the same thing, says Makowa. “Most women don’t have anything else to sell, so they sell sex. In our project we encourage each other to work hard and not take those shortcuts to get food and money, because we know they will lead us to death.”

“Women are the worst affected because we have the responsibility to take care of our children and husbands and make sure they have food. A man can take the money and go out and drink and eat wherever they like but a woman cannot do that. She must feed her children.”

“HIV prevalence in this area is 18 to 20 percent, compared to a national average of about 14 percent,” says Elastro Milimbo, manager of the Balaka Livelihood Security programme. His aim is not just to ensure people have enough food, but that they are not forced to engage in risky behaviour to survive.

As we leave Burnett Chambulika asks us to join the group in prayer. We have told him about the upcoming Copenhagen climate change negotiations and he feels divine intervention with world leaders is the only solution: “Dear Father, please help those people to have open hearts, so they can hear and understand what is happening to us. Please Daddy, tell them your children in Malawi are suffering and we need help. You know we cannot go on like this. Amen.”

Find out more: Oxfam and climate change

It’s my third week as an Oxfam engineer inside this makeshift city set deep in the mountains of Northern Yemen. This is the Al Mazarakh camp in Haradh – home to 950 families, or nearly 6,000 people, displaced by the ongoing fighting between Al Huthi rebels and government forces in the region. I have come to this place to provide urgently needed assistance for people who have been displaced by the conflict.

More displaced people are arriving everyday, barefoot and bewildered.

The scorching temperatures have ceased but the scars of this war continue to burn. Desperation and sorrow are etched into the faces of the hundreds of families that reside in the Al Mazarakh refugee camp. Yesterday, one man with five family members asked me: ”What am I supposed to do? I have no job and no income. I’ve lost everything.” It’s a familiar story for the hundreds of refugees, now internally displaced and living in limbo.  

The community digging a pit latrine

Distributing hygiene kits to families in the Haradh camp

Amid the sadness, I feel a sense of hope that our emergency relief work – improving health and sanitation – is making a difference. I remember my first days inside the camp and the choking smell that hung in the air from the lack of sanitation. Now the hygiene situation has improved and we’ve just finished the construction of 250 latrines inside the camp. The day we built our first latrine, one man told me “I’m so happy to have this. For almost a month and a half, my nine family members had no latrine and no privacy.”

As darkness falls, I feel relieved that we are making positive progress in addressing health risks in Al Mazarakh camp, and that our assistance is valued by both men and women inside the camp. Tomorrow I will begin my usual 14-hour shift and continue to help people cope with their loss – the first step on this difficult journey.

Find out more: Conflict in Yemen

In the mid nineties the media spotlight spent much of its time directed on the American hip-hop scene’s infamous east coast-west coast rivalry. A decade on, the intensity of this rivalry has dwindled into, at worse, a friendly competiveness. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for my nation’s musical hot-spots, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In these cities, the distain for one another’s respective musical backdrops is growing at a frightening rate. This has lead to growing numbers of impartial gig goers, like myself, wondering if anything could stop the heated rivalry that exists along Scotland’s central belt. Thankfully, waiting in the wings, was a possible white flag; Oxfam’s 2009 Oxjam music festival’s Takeover weekend.

The trouble started with the dates: while Glasgow were to have their big events on Saturday and Sunday, 24-25 October, Edinburgh’s team chose to hold their Takeover event on Friday 23rd. Was the unsynchronised schedule some sort of sign?

Neil and Scott [Photo credit: Joe Benmakhlouf]

The LaFontaines [Photo credit: Joe Benmakhlouf]

I immediately recalled the incident when US west coast star Tupac Shakur was first shot on a trip to an east coast recording studio in 1994… I felt Kerr’s tale was a warning. To take my mind off what might lie ahead, I went to find solace in the multiple venues of Glasgow’s flagship event. I was treated to a variety of exciting music showcasing the west coast’s finest talents. Like everyone in attendance, I was extremely impressed with what I saw and had a great night!

The next day, guiltily realising that I entirely forgotten about my hope of Oxjam healing Scotland’s music rift, I waited to see who the Glasgow regional team had secured for their Sunday secret gig in the Brunswick Hotel’s penthouse suite; it was Scott from Frightened Rabbit- again!

This was a sign of hope. After the man played another great set, it became clear to me that Oxjam had made the first steps in building bridges in the divide. Oxjam has showed that both cities share the same good taste in music. But much more importantly it highlighted another common ground; the desire to help fight against poverty and injustice.

Together the regions have a combined fundraising total of over £10,000. Oxjam has laid great foundations in Scotland this year. Maybe one day flagship events held over the Takeover Weekend will run simultaneously in each city with the same bill. Until then, we will just take it one band at a time.

Find out more: Oxjam

Last month, I went to Gaza to meet three women who were the first in the occupied territory to win compensation after being abruptly laid off five years ago by their Israeli employer. I was part of an Oxfam delegation which acted as an intermediary, delivering the money to Gaza. It was a heartbreaking experience that I will never forget.

Orub Al-Najjar Freih, Naameh Abu Maghasib and Fida Al-Najjar holding cheques from their former Israeli employer. [Photo credit: Mike Bailey]

“I made so little money that the abbaya [a loose black robe from head to toe] I wear today is the same I wore on my very first day of work years ago”, said Fida. “But I did not complain. At least I was able to buy food for my family at the time. Now on some days I don’t even have one shekel in my pocket”.

Some 25,000 Gazans like Fida used to work for Israeli employers. Today, none do. That means 25,000 people – and their dependents – have lost a valuable source of income. They began losing their jobs in 2000 because of the severe border closures introduced by Israel following the second Intifada. And then, in 2004, the Israeli army prevented workers from leaving Gaza and closed the Erez industrial zone.

Gazan workers were no longer able to reach their workplaces in Israel. Impossibly, their employers even seemed to blame them for not showing up to work. They refused to make any severance payments or provide compensation, even though Israeli Labor Law states that laid-off workers are entitled to one month of salary for each year of work upon termination of their contract. Most of these workers are now trapped in Gaza, unemployed and dependent on humanitarian aid.

“Some of the employees dismissed in 2004 had been working for over 30 or 40 years in Israel”, Karim Nachwan, Director of the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center (DWRC) branch in Gaza, told me. “Some had even paid for state pension schemes, but have been denied benefits.”

Two Oxfam partners, Sawt el-Amel (’Laborer’s voice’) – a Palestinian workers’ organisation registered in Israel – together with DWRC in Gaza are working to negotiate compensation and severance pay for Gazan workers in court or through direct negotiations with the employers.

The three women won the money in an out-of-court settlement. When I met them during a ceremony to mark the occasion, each one beamed with joy. They were so shocked to have finally received compensation that two of them actually collapsed in my arms and cried.

“I am overwhelmed by the good news”, Orub said. “My husband is jobless. This money means that for the first time in years, I will not have to go and beg money from my uncle. I’ll be able to buy new clothes, diapers and milk for my four children. I will take care of my family for one month with this money.”

I was happy for her. But when I asked Orub to show me the cheque, I could not believe how little she had received. It was the cost of a few good meals in a restaurant in London, Paris or New York.

“These women received much, much less than what they were legally entitled to,” Marie Badarne, Sawt el-Amel’s Development and International Relations Coordinator, told me. “But for women living in Gaza, a little is better than nothing. It is still a small success.”

Naameh was truly in a state of disbelief that she had received anything at all. “Here you must be grateful for every shekel you can earn”, she told me. “Even though it is not a lot of money, it is still enough for me because I had lost any hope of receiving compensation.”

Fida [Photo credit: Mike Bailey]

Fida softly explained to me that she has suffered from breast cancer from an early age. She has already had 7 surgeries in Gaza. At 29 years old, she said she was already full of scars and yet she was still sick.

“I am weak and I can’t afford proper treatment. I hope the NGOs who helped me get compensation from my employer can help me go out of Gaza for surgery in a better equipped hospital”, she explained.

Yussef and nine of his former colleagues [Photo credit: Mike Bailey]

Yussef is now a volunteer field worker for Sawt el-Amel in Gaza, and even though he’s been persistent in pushing his case, he now faces a Kafkaesque obstacle: the Israeli Court has summoned him to come in person to claim his rights.

“If I don’t appear in court after having been summoned twice, they will dismiss the case and I’ll lose my rights”, he told me. “They must know I can’t go to court anyway. I am trapped in Gaza since the Israeli blockade prevents Palestinians from leaving the Strip.”

Ten of his former colleagues might have to raise 1,500 NIS each (270 euros) in the next couple of weeks to pay for security deposits asked by the Israeli court where their cases are pending.  If they do not deposit the money, which is needed to compensate the factory owner in case they lose the case, their cases might be dismissed.

This is a surreal situation, which threatens to deprive Yussef and his former colleagues of their rights as workers, and of the compensation to which they should be entitled after years of hard work. There are many other cases to come: 850 Gazan workers who used to work for 60 Israeli companies have contacted Sawt el-Amel, which is currently investigating the cases. A year ago they were 300. Many others might follow.

Find out more: Oxfam in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel

With families still sheltering in temporary evacuation centres, concern about the long-term impact of Typhoon Ketsana on people’s livelihoods grows, Laura Eldon reports.

How do you cope when rising floodwater forces you to flee your home with only what you can carry? Well if you’re one of the any number of people I’ve spent time talking to these last few days, you pick yourself up and just keep on going.

It’s been quite a humbling experience meeting families who have been sheltering in temporary evacuation centres ever since the terrible floods caused by Typhoon Ketsana wiped away their homes. Everyone has a story to tell of rising water levels and lost belongings. But despite the cramped and difficult conditions they find themselves living in, people rarely volunteer complaints. Instead everywhere I walk I’m greeted with cries of “Thank you ma’am”, and seeing my staff jacket, “Thank you Oxfam!”

I met 43-year-old Lery waiting in line to take part in a distribution organised by Oxfam at an evacuation centre set up round a church in Laguna province. She tells me how swirling waters washed her house away when the typhoon came and how she and her family managed to escape with little more than the clothes on their back. Sheltering first in a nearby school, they were moved to St Peter and Paul Parish Church to make way for the pupils when lessons started back up.

Laura talks to Lery outside her temporary shelter at the evacuation centre in Lingga. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

“We’ve been living on handouts for the last month, ever since the typhoon came,” Lery tells me as her nephew plays in the corner, stacking the bars of soap she received earlier from the distribution of hygiene kits. “We can’t go home as our house was washed away. Even when the water recedes, our biggest problem will be finding the money to rebuild. It’s very difficult living here but what can we do? We’ve got no choice.”

Paulino and his daughter Grace outside the tent they're sheltering in. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

“I’m waiting for the water to recede and trying to save some money so that I can start a new catfish pond,” Paulino tells me. “It will take a long time, but I have no other choice – no money lender will lend me the kind of capital I need to start up again.”

In the meantime the family are depending upon small casual labour jobs to keep themselves afloat. Even then, things are difficult. Paulino’s daughter Grace used to work at the local market as a fish vendor, but has found jobs scarce since the typhoon hit. Fewer people have money to spend at the market, so there’s less work going around anymore.

Concerned about the long-term impact of the typhoon on people’s livelihoods, Oxfam is planning a series of cash grants to provide the capital for families to restart their businesses and purchase the materials and equipment they lost in the floods. We’re also distributing hygiene kits and building temporary latrines to help improve facilities for evacuees.

With floodwater levels remaining high, it looks unlikely that any of the 500 families staying at this centre will be able to return home anytime soon. Yet despite the challenges they face, everyone I meet here waves me off with a smile and a flurry of thanks and good wishes that will stay with me for a long time. We’ll be doing what we can over the coming months to help people begin the slow process of getting their lives back to normal.

Find out more: Oxfam’s response to Typhoon Ketsana in the Philippines

Philippines emergency response photostory

You can help: Donate now

“We’ve been training cows.” Having just got up in the middle of the night two nights running to catch planes, I think I’ve probably misheard that statement.  My colleague continues: “… perhaps you can see cows caring for camels.”  Or maybe this isn’t quite what it seems…

Eventually someone explains CAHWs, pronounced cows, stands for Community Animal Health Workers… the image I have dissolves immediately.

CAHW Abdi Awoinar treats a tick on a sheep. [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

“This is our third year of drought and the sheep and goats have rooted out all the grass… there is no seed.  So even if the rain comes we don’t expect a lot of grass. Any seed there is has been buried deep because of all the dust but mainly the animals have pulled out most of the roots. Before when it’s been bad we’ve relied on floods bringing seeds down from more fertile areas, but this year the drought has prevailed everywhere.”

This lack of pasture is Deke’s fear now. He adds that the goats have had such a struggle they’re also losing their teeth. Elsewhere we do meet one of the CAHWS, a group of people Oxfam has been training in animal health and welfare. 

Abdi Awoinar [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

I feel a degree of sympathy for a goat as he squeals during some sensitive treatment before being sprayed with something blue and then freed. A sheep is treated to a quick manicure before the herd is released. Weakened by lack of pasture and drought it is particularly important that the general health of the livestock is maintained as much as possible.

In pictures: Abdi’s animal health diary

Hawa Hassan with Ido Ibrahim in the background, both members of livestock marketing cooperatives. [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

There are six cooperatives in Harshin… they are quick to highlight they’re in a much better position than their sisters in other areas that Oxfam is not working in. All have other businesses that are benefiting from this programme and speak with a lot of pride when they talk about contributing to the building of a secondary school, which also means increased educational opportunities for their daughters.

We only have two nights in Harshin… and I’ve not yet mastered the art of eating spaghetti, with tuna sauce, by hand…

As we leave for Jijiga we get stuck behind trucks trapped in the mud. Even a little rain can bring other problems that need to be overcome…

Find out more: East Africa Food Crisis

My colleague Hue and I sat in the cabin of the truck, trying hard to keep still on the hard seats as the truck full of rice inched along the bumpy road. We were on the way to Dak Ro Ong village in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam to distribute rice to Typhoon-affected villagers there.

Dak Ro Ong and other villages of the Tu Mo Rong district were among the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Ketsana, which struck the Central Highlands Kon Tum region and 13 others in Vietnam on 29 September. Oxfam has been working in this district and Dak Glei, the two most affected districts of Kon Tum.

It was not for easy for the rice to make it this far. Since many roads in the district remained badly damaged, the delivery caused enormous amounts of extra work.

Dak Ro Ong village – evidence of landslides caused by typhoon Ketsana are still obvious. [Photo credit: Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen]

We made it to a community centre in Dak Ro Ong aching from the rough ride. While we grasped a hot bowl of noodle soup, a luxury for us all at this time, some male villagers helped to unload the rice to the storage room.

As villagers started to arrive, a table was set up next to the store room, which was now stacked up full with bags and bags of rice. The distribution began. Villagers were called one by one. Each showed their residency registration book for the team to double check the number of beneficiaries. Then they signed on two different forms for us to keep record. Some put their finger-prints in the form as they could not write.

Villagers carry away the rice on their backs. [Photo credit: Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen]

I tried to make conversation on their way out. Some were too shy to speak, while some only said a few words in their ethnic ‘Se Dang’ language.

Y Phi [Photo credit: Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen]

As the team helped the last group of villagers with their share, the truck returned with more goods – dried fish, fish sauce, blankets and mosquito nets, resting on top of tons and tons of rice for two communities beyond Dak Ro Rong. I felt relieved. The team’s hard work had paid off as villagers affected by the Typhoon were able to benefit from Oxfam support. 

Yen’s Oxfam in Typhoon-affected Vietnam photostory

Oxfam in Typhoon Ketsana-affected Vietnam

When Typhoon Ketsana hit the northern Philippines on 26 September it unleashed more rain in six hours than would normally fall in an entire month. In the same week that communities in Sumatra were left reeling from the devastating earthquake in Padang, and Ketsana continued its trail of destruction across parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, over four million Filipinos were dealing with the aftermath of severe flooding in and around the nation’s capital.

Oxfam staff assess the damage in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Arriving at the National High School in Angono a couple of hours south of Manila, the impact of the typhoon is immediately apparent. Home to close to 500 families whose houses were flooded or washed away, parts of the school grounds are still under several feet of water. Some evacuees are using improvised rafts to cross from one building to another, while others simply wade through the dirty floodwater.

Alicia Rubbio [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

“It’s really difficult staying here because we have to share this space with so many other people. We don’t have any privacy - my greatest wish is to be able to go home, but the floods destroyed everything.”

Despite their difficult circumstances, Alicia is typical of all the people I meet here - cheerfully doing their best to get in with their lives. One of several enterprising entrepreneurs at the school, she’s set up her own ’sari-sari’ (literally ‘variety’) shop selling small packets of noodles and various sweets and supplies to other evacuees. She uses her earnings to buy extra rations of food and water for her family.

As a community leader from her ‘baranggay’ or village, Alicia has also helped identify people most in need of support to take part in a distribution of hygiene kits that Oxfam has organised for today. Concerned about the lack of facilities and potential for disease to spread, we’ve come to distribute kits of items such as sleeping mats, soap and underwear, as well as jerry cans to collect and store water in. These are also accompanied by small cash grants of 1,000 pesos (US$20) to help families purchase supplies to replace the items they lost in the floods.

Staff from Oxfam and local partner Sikhay unload items for a distribution of hygiene kits, Angono. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

With predictions that floodwaters around Angono are unlikely to subside anytime soon, families like Alicia’s face an uncertain future. Oxfam will be doing its best to make sure that they receive as much support as possible in the coming months.

Oxfam’s response to the Philippines floods

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Nick Martlew, the author of a new Oxfam report, writes from Ethiopia about what can be done to change this cycle of hunger.

As we drove through eastern Ethiopia just a couple of days ago, my eyes were drawn for miles through dramatic valleys and up stony mountains. One of my colleagues had just arrived and her camera was snapping away happily from the backseat.

But in the foreground of her photos, right alongside the road, there is an image that would worry any farmer. The crops are tall, but many of the plants are drying up before they have produced the maize that is the staple food here.

This is the sign of very difficult months ahead for millions of Ethiopians.

We were travelling between the towns of Jijiga and Dire Dawa, but similar scenes are to be seen all over the country at the moment. For many Ethiopian farmers and herders, this is far from the first time they have faced drought.

I remember a woman I met when visiting an Oxfam project way up in the north, in Tigray. Heymanot is a farmer who has had to look after her family and fields on her own since her husband died.

“The past three years the rain has come late and stopped early. People’s problems accumulate, they pile up year after year,” she said.

The problems pile up. I have been living in Ethiopia less than a year but have watched with others as the rains have failed and the hunger has grown. I cannot imagine what it is like for farmers to see drought coming year in, year out, to see the cycle repeated and for the problems to get bigger each year.

When this happens, the stock response of the international community is to ship in emergency food aid. This saves the lives of people facing hunger now, but it does almost nothing to reduce the need for food aid next year. And it smacks of being taken by surprise.

But there is nothing surprising about drought in Ethiopia. It happens regularly, and with the climate changing, they are likely to happen even more in future. Abnormal events such as droughts are gradually becoming the norm here.

That is why we need a new approach to disasters, an approach laid out in Oxfam’s new report - “Band Aids and Beyond”. Ethiopians do not want to have to wait for food after a drought hits; they want help to prepare for drought in advance, to make sure that a dry season does not mean a disaster.

Take Heymanot’s village, Adiha. A few years ago, her community only had enough food for nine months a year. Oxfam intervened with our partner, a local organisation called REST. In exchange for food, the community worked to build a dam that now provides irrigation to the whole village.

Before, they did not have enough to feed themselves. Now, the villagers have enough - and enough extra to sell and pay for their children’s education and health care.

Preparing in advance rather than waiting for disaster - this is not a complicated idea, it is pure common sense. So why is it not common practice? Only a tiny fraction of the money that international donors spend on food aid is spent on these kinds of projects.

Not only is it common sense, but projects that build the bridge from humanitarian relief to development are also much better value. For every $1 of US food aid, it costs up to $2 to package it and ship it over to Ethiopia. And when it gets there it does little to help development or avert the next drought.

If the US and other governments are concerned about cost-effectiveness in this time of economic turmoil, then there are plenty of savings to be made here. Other countries can also improve the way they give aid to Ethiopia.

Donors such as the UK and the Netherlands too often see the problems in terms of a simple split: They see disasters, and they see long-term development. But what about the bit in between?

Tackling the risk of disasters, preparing communities to deal with drought and flood - this makes sense for finance ministers in rich countries, but most importantly it is what Ethiopians are after. It is more dignified and more sustainable.

As Tsegay, another farmer in Adiha, told me: “We get the sense that everyone wants to focus on giving out food - but it’s our development.”

The farmers who work hard to grow crops, only to see them wilt under the scorching sun, do not want handouts. They want a hand up.

Let us make their vision our own and put an end to the cycle of disastrous droughts.

Donate now to the East Africa food crisis response

My name is Birhan Woldu. In 2005 I came to realise that I had become the face of the Ethiopian famine, although as a young child in 1984-5 I knew or understood little about this disaster. I was featured in a Canadian TV documentary as the ‘face of hope for Africa’ who survived the famine and that TV interviewer Brian Stewart became a friend of my family. Twenty years later, in 2005, I was on stage with Madonna and Bob Geldof for the Live8 concert in London. I have now graduated with a diploma in agriculture and a degree in nursing.

All of this has been possible because, 25 years ago, my life was saved by Irish nursing sisters who gave me an injection, and food aid from organisations like Band Aid. So it may seem strange for me to say now that to get food aid from overseas is not the best way. As well as being demeaning to our dignity, my education has taught me that constantly shipping food from places like the USA is costly, uneconomic and can encourage dependency.

We are a big country and when there is famine in one part of the country there is plenty in another. So we need better infrastructure and communications to move food around to where it is needed. Above all we need education. We Ethiopians are an intelligent, tough, and hard-working people with a culture going back thousands of years and all of us want education. For example, my father is a farmer but he is not educated. With my diploma I have been able to show him better ways to farm more efficiently and get better yields.

But until these longer-term programmes take effect we cannot simply rely on imported food aid. We know our vulnerabilities. We are a proud people. Let us grow our own food and help manage our own systems so we are not hit so hard when the next drought or flood comes. We need to approach disasters in a different way, that is more dignified and more sustainable than imported food aid. We can do this by building on communities’ own approaches.

I finish with a quote from Bob Geldof from when I was on his 2005 Live8 show in Hyde Park, London: ‘Band Aid was supposed to be just that - a “band-aid”. And it is a disgrace 20 years later we should be here today, with half the youngsters in Africa still going to bed hungry.’ What happened in 1984-5 was bad, and while we should not dwell on the past we should learn from our mistakes to ensure a better future and a country free from famine, starvation and poverty.

Read the report

East Africa Food Crisis: Oxfam’s response

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The light is eerie. Dust hangs in the atmosphere hiding the sun, leaving a strange orange glow. This is one of the driest areas in the Somali region of Ethiopia. It’s also one of the main routes to Djibouti. We’re following endless trucks that throw up clouds of dust making it virtually impossible to pass. What can it be like living next to this road?

There’s a women standing at the top of a hole in the ground - bright yellow jerry cans and donkeys surround her. There are nine other women down the hole she tells us… forming a human chain to bring water up from the bottom of a cave. They don’t need ropes because, “God has provided a ladder” – a series of rock-formed steps. It can take nearly all day, every day to collect water and they’ve been relying on this water source for eight months this year.

Our driver goes down the hole. Back on terra firma he tells us it was like being in a grave. They don’t tell him until he’s up that there’s a snake down there with them. When they’ve finished another team of ten women take their place. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to do this. I wonder if they can imagine that back home I can easily get plenty of clean water, any time, any day… always just a few steps away. Is it unimaginable? Like going to the doctors, going to school and all those other things we take for granted.

The cave entrance, with the newly constructe rock dam wall in the background [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

The day is spent visiting various sites where Oxfam is working, or planning to work. The difference in people’s lives is obvious. At some places there is lack of water and pasture. Others have water but it’s open to the elements and often rubbish and animal droppings fall in, or, like the cave above, is difficult to reach.

Where there is a borehole, and protected waterpoints, life is, comparatively, healthier and easier. Sometimes, in this work, it’s easy to get a little cynical and disheartened. Are we really making a difference? But today it’s been pretty obvious that constructing boreholes, protecting wells, working with communities on water management (and the many other activities) definitely makes a difference. As someone said, “All life depends on water.” Now the challenge is to do more.

Leaving a village, where Oxfam has installed, amongst other things, a solar energy unit to pump water, I suddenly see a cheetah running alongside my side of the vehicle. He runs for a short while before turning in front of our vehicle and bounding off into the bush. He’s in peak condition - a rare, chance sighting of a thing of beauty. Everyone in the car is excited and some how uplifted.

In the far distance we can see a black rain cloud… hopefully not another rare, chance sighting… and hopefully coming this way.

Ethiopia drought: Photostory on how Oxfam is responding

Find out more: East Africa Food Crisis

You can help: Donate now

Read the report: ‘Band aids and beyond’

I’m standing in the Al Mazarakh camp in Haradh in northern Yemen. It is home to 950 families, or nearly 6,000 people, displaced by the ongoing fighting between Huthi groups and government forces in the region. I have come to this desperate place to provide urgently needed assistance for people who have been uprooted from their homes.

The air is thick with humidity and I can feel the desert sun burning down. It’s nearly 50 degrees. In this inhospitable landscape, there is barely anywhere to shelter and people are desperately seeking a cool place to escape the incessant heat. I ask myself, how are these people surviving?

In the arid plains in which the Al Mazarakh camp sits, Oxfam is working to provide sanitation facilities for families now living some 30 kilometres away from the closest water point. Meanwhile the temperatures continue to rise and families are preparing for another night on the earthen floor.

The conflict in northern Yemen has produced a stream of families fleeing their home villages in and around Sa’ada. In early September, the UN estimated that some 150,000 people were displaced in the region of northern Yemen. But there are thousands more trapped behind the frontlines whose fate is largely unknown.

Today I spoke with a 20-year-old man who is living outside of the camp with a host family. Following Yemeni traditions of hospitality, many families have generously opened up their doors to refugees flooding in from neighbouring cities. He told me that his family fled their home in August when the recent flare-up in fighting first ignited in the northern city of Sa’ada. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to return home. One day he hopes to study but for now he has no choice but to live with his seven family members in two overcrowded rooms.

Women in a make-shift tent in Al Mazarakh camp. [Photo credit: Caroline Berger]

I’m shocked and overwhelmed with sadness. Yesterday one 45-year-old man told me how he and his family were forced to flee their village after fighting erupted. They lost everything. Now all 12 of his family members are packed into one tiny room along with their four goats - his only source of livelihood. He has no choice but to live next to his animals - there is no shelter and his goats would die outside in the unforgiving heat.

Dependent on aid, he held his hands up to the sky, and asked me: “How can we live like this?”

Although I have come to help, I had no words to give him.

Oxfam in action: Conflict in Yemen

One of the things that has really struck me since I’ve been out in Padang is the importance of Oxfam’s work with local Indonesian organisations. When the earthquake struck here on 30 September, we were able to start distributions of tarpaulins the very next day thanks to the incredible dedication and organisation of our partner ‘Kabisat‘.

Rusli, Kabisat’s Logistics Manager [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Because of Padang’s prime location within Indonesia’s ‘ring of fire’, and the high risk of earthquakes and tsunamis, Oxfam and Kabisat had stored several contingency stocks in the event an emergency. Despite their office being damaged in the earthquake and being forced to relocate to their warehouse, the Kabisat staff gathered together the next day to co-ordinate distributions of the tarpaulins they had stored.

“We focused our initial response on the closest areas as communities further away were still completely cut off. On that first day we managed to distribute 150 tarpaulins to use as temporary shelters. So far we’ve distributed a total of 2,500 tarpaulins,” Rusli tells me.

Kabisat staff unload supplies at their warehouse. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Oxfam also has informal relationships with five other partners in the area who have been invaluable in helping us respond to this disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, Inel, a pregnant staff member of local organisation PKBI, was the only contact we had on the ground with a working mobile connection. Despite the incredibly difficult circumstances, she and her husband drove all the way to the Kabisat office, where we’d been unable to establish direct contact, to physically hand over her phone and ensure that we were able to liaise with them.

Hygiene kits ready to be distributed at the Kabisat warehouse. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

As I leave the Kabisat warehouse after talking to Rusli, several shipments of Oxfam buckets and hygiene kits begin to arrive from Oxford. Watching them get unloaded in preparation for the distributions we have planned later in the week, I know they’ll be in safe hands.

Find out more: East Asia Disasters Appeal

Browse Laura’s full Kabisat and Oxfam gallery

Arriving at STN 2 School in Sungai Limau there was a hum of excitement as children chatted to each other, waiting for the special activities planned to mark this year’s Global Handwashing Day to begin.

Lessons had started back up at the school the day before, and despite having to abandon some of the classrooms that were no longer safe to enter, teachers and students alike were delighted to be back. Many schools I visited in this area, a couple of hours drive north of Padang, were completely destroyed when the earthquake hit. It’s a sign of people’s determination to get on with their lives that those that have been worst affected have simply moved outside, holding lessons inside tents or in the open air.

A young girl vies to have a go playing a special public health version of 'Snakes and Ladders'. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Kicking the day off with series of speeches and sing-a-longs, attention soon moved across to the schoolyard as children enthusiastically gathered round three life-size games of snakes and ladders. Rolling giant dice and walking across the board, they were able to climb a ladder every time they landed on a square showing safe hygiene practices, and fell down a snake for every time they forgot to wash their hands or store their water properly. Each roll that resulted in a climb up the ladder brought about a wave of contagious applause.

Children line up to practise handwashing. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

As the games came to an end, children crowded round as staff demonstrated the best way to wash your hands using the buckets as props. Everyone queued up to have a turn, expertly lathering up the soap and thoroughly scrubbing between their fingers and up their arms.

Ten-year-old Muraini laughed as she and her friends showed me their newly clean hands after a visit to the tapstand. “I wash my hands everyday,” she said proudly. “We’re having lots of fun learning about handwashing and playing games. My house collapsed when the earthquake hit so now we’re staying in a tent. We started back at school yesterday and I’m really happy to be here and to see all my friends again.”

Ten-year-old Muraini shows off her goodie bag. [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Find out more: Sumatra earthquake

More on health promotion

View Laura’s Global Handwashing Day gallery

This is my first trip to Cambodia and I’m heading with our Media-Communications team to Kampong Thom province, one of the most affected areas from Typhoon Ketsana. Annual flooding is common in this low-lying floodplain of the Tonle Sap lake. But this year, Typhoon Ketsana made the situation much worse. An estimated 100,000 people have been affected by the annual flood and Typhoon Ketsana in Cambodia.

It takes our team about 3 and a half hours by car from Phnom Penh to Kampong Thom. We stop at our field office on the way to meet some staff and get a brief on the situation and the aid distribution. We borrow some boots and off we go.

On the way we stop to talk to a small community living by the road in temporary makeshift shelters. They move here every year during flood season. Normally they stay for a month, but this year, it has been three months and they cannot return yet.

Two villagers set up a fishing net in the flood waters. [Photo credit: Soleak Seang/Oxfam]

From this point we have to take a boat to the village. Only after we take off I realise that we are cruising ‘over’ rice paddies. It is so sad to know that the harvest season is only less than a month from now and that below the vast surface of water, tons of rice have been lost to the floods. Hectares of rice crops are submerged under water. How many families will go hungry this year?

After about 10 minutes on the boat, we stop at one community who have relocated to a higher ground. Their homes now look like boathouses that float on the water. But actually they are two-storey traditional houses that were built on stilts. That is how deep the flood is. They tell us that in the worst affected areas, the water is as deep as three metres.

Thach You’s family in front of their temporary shelter made of palm leaves and tree branches. [Photo credit: Soleak Seang/Oxfam]

Those who live in tropical countries will know that stagnant water is an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Our staff tell us that cases of malaria, rabies and diarrhoea are increasing. And our assessment teams tell us that the problems are getting worse as people do not have enough clean water to drink and no proper toilets. Two of Thach You’s children fell ill after months of flood but luckily it was not serious.

Despite difficulties to access many affected regions, Oxfam has reached about 75% of the intended 5,000 families in the three hardest-hit provinces: Kampong Thom, Stung Treng and Kratie with our relief items. Emergency supplies include plastic sheets, water filters, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, sarongs, kettles, water buckets and soap. Our public health promoters also have been giving training on how to use the water filters and other ways of keeping hygienic. But after three months of flooding, a new urgency has emerged - food security.

Every family now depends on food from the Cambodian Red Cross and the government. After three months of living with floods, everyone’s rice stock is running so low that people with many mouths to feed like Thach You have had to borrow rice from their neighbours.

Thach You and her family don’t own land. In better days, her husband goes fishing to feed the family but now that his foot has been injured in an accident, he has had to stop. For the last two weeks their meals have been reduced from three meals to just one a day. Even as we talk to Thach You, her children are eating cassava that she has borrowed from others – and this is all they have to eat today.

Today is World Food Day. In Cambodia, 40,000 hectares of crops have been destroyed and 15,000 households are in need of immediate food assistance.

Find out more: East Asia Disasters Appeal

You can help: Donate now

I’m visiting Turkana with Dida and David Napereng, two local Oxfam staff, to see some of the areas affected by East Africa’s worst food crisis in a decade. Turkana, one of Kenya’s largest and driest districts, has suffered increasingly frequent droughts, and people here are feeling the impact of a third successive year of poor rains.

Across Turkana vast water pans are dug into the earth to store rainwater when it comes. Most of these reservoirs we’ve passed have been dry, but at last this morning, as we head towards the Ethiopian border, we find one half full.

“It rained a bit in February, and there is still some water from then,” says Ajikon Lonok, as she fills up a few jerry cans for her husband and five children. “But if it doesn’t rain in the next two months, I think here will also dry up. Even now, the water is getting dirty - it has been standing here for seven months, and donkeys also drink here. Some of my children have started to get diarrhoea from drinking it. But it’s the only source we have and we are desperate.”

In the windswept village of Kokoro, a few kilometres from Ethiopia, water is no longer such a problem. Earlier this year, Oxfam installed a solar-powered water pump to maximise use of one of the few resources Turkana has in abundance - sunlight.

Francis Eregae, a member of the village water association, says the new pump provides clean water to over 10,000 people in the surrounding area. “Before, we just used to have some shallow wells, and one pump run by a generator. But the generator used a lot of diesel, which was very expensive for us to run. It also broke down a lot, and spare parts are not available anywhere near here - sometimes they would take a month to arrive. The solar pump is much more efficient, cheaper and it’s better for the environment.”

Pastoralists bring their animals to the waterpoint at Kaikor, Turkana. [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

Turkana is a remote and arid region and over time communities have developed ways of coping with periods of hunger. But the successive years of failed rains have undermined many of these traditional methods. Francis takes me to a cluster of trees on the edge of the village, which usually produce nutritious small berries for people to chew in times of drought. “But this year’s drought is different,” he says. “The trees have given up completely and there are not even any berries. I’ve never known this to happen before.”

In the village of Kanukurudio, the drought seems even more severe. Dida introduces me to a frail elderly woman named Muya, sat in the shade of a tree, too weak to move. Her arms and legs are barely more than bones. Dida worked with Muya in this village a few years ago and he’s shocked to see how ill this recently strong woman now looks. Her daughter and granddaughters who look after her are equally concerned about her deteriorating health.

Muya tells me she gets some relief food once a month, but that her body is too weak to digest maize any more. She gives the maize to the children in her family instead, while she survives on just a small cup of pulses and a few drops of vegetable oil a day. Her family try to help her, but she is getting visibly weaker by the day.

It’s the elderly in Kanukurudio who seem to be bearing the brunt of the crisis. “Some of my friends have died from starvation in the past two months,” an old man named Nadiko Lokamar whispers to me. He worries that the same fate could befall him and others. “We give priority for food to the young children, but there is not enough to go around and we elderly often have to go without.”

Part of the problem, say villagers here, is that the relief rations provided by the World Food Programme do not go to everyone. WFP says it is facing critical funding shortages and needs more money to expand and reach more people. But in the meantime, people go hungry. “In the Turkana culture, we share everything,” says Nadiko. “My wife is registered to receive food aid, but my brother and sister are not. But they are also hungry, so we share it with them. This means a month’s food ration actually only lasts two weeks.”

Like many people in Turkana, Nadiko’s livelihood is based around livestock, but the drought has wiped out most of his herd. Oxfam has been buying up some of the weakest goats and sheep here, ensuring people get a good price for animals that would otherwise be hard to sell and would soon die anyway. The animals are then slaughtered and the meat distributed to hungry families. We visit the distribution site - hundreds of women carve up meat on wooden tables as government health inspectors check the carcasses for disease. Old men sing as they wait to collect their meat - some say it’s the first they’ve eaten in weeks. It’s the closest thing to a bustling market I’ve seen on the trip so far. With food prices so high and livestock weak or dying, local markets see little activity.

Nadiko queues with some friends to receive his goat meat. Until recently, he says he owned nearly 40 sheep and goats. “Over 20 died of hunger, and I’ve now sold 10 more to Oxfam - otherwise they would all have died as well. This way I at least get some money for them. Now I have only four goats left, but they are already very weak. I really worry about the future.”

Find out more: East Africa Food Crisis

This blog was posted as part of Blog Action Day on climate change.

In Andhra Pradesh, everyone we met had lost faith in the weather. “It is,” said one woman, a groundnut farmer and a mother of five, “like a bad husband. You cannot understand his behaviour.” Across the state and much of India the July monsoon had gone missing: it finally turned up 45 days late, and inadequate. “Scanty rain,” we were told. “Maybe just five minutes one day. Raining on one field but not the next.” No one had much idea why this had happened, and not many have heard the term ‘climate change‘. What they do know is that it is getting hotter, and that you can’t rely on the rains any more.

Farmer Balakammaiah, 33, in Dharmapuram village in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, whose crops failed in the worst drought here in 20 years. [Photo credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith]

But no amount of rain could have helped Naryamaswamy Naik. “I don’t know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn’t say,” said his wife, Sugali Nagamma. “I’d tell him: don’t worry, we can sell the salt from our table. Everyone has debts.” Her voice was low, her head bowed, as her tiny grandson played at her feet. She looked much older than her 41 years. Nagamma took the portrait of her husband from the wall to show him off, good-looking with an Elvis quiff when they met a quarter of a century ago. In July, Mr Naik took a tin of pesticide from the cupboard, opened it and drank it.

“He’d been unhappy for a month, but that day he was in a heavy depression. I tried to take the tin away from him but I couldn’t. He died in front of us. The head of the family died in front of his wife and children - can you imagine?”

There has been an epidemic of suicides of farmers across India’s drought-stricken regions these past few months. The stories behind them are all tragically similar. Debt is the driving force. In the Naiks’s case, the poor returns from their rented 1.5 acres and the costs of schooling their five children had always meant finances were precarious. But it was the marriage of his oldest daughter that brought disaster to the family: the expense of the ceremony and her dowry putting his debts up to nearly 100,000 rupees (£1,300).

And then came the failure of the monsoon. Here in Andhra Pradesh, the farmers would expect to plant their staple crops of groundnut and sorghum in late June or early July, but no rain fell until 20 August. By then it was too late for groundnut, and the farmers of Kadiripalli village bought seeds of other crops, such as red gram and millet, to see if they would work. Though the smattering of rain has now turned the countryside green, the weak seedlings pushing through the red earth show that this effort won’t come to much. It is another bad year.

In the villages of Anantapur people talk a lot about suicide. It’s a sign, says Oxfam’s regional manager, Shaik Anwar, that all other coping mechanisms have failed. “They already have a huge amount of debt, and the delay of four or five weeks in the planting season just finishes people. A shortfall in rain is OK, people are used to drought, but this is different: farmers lost the seed and they lost the crop. Often the social pressures contribute to suicides: marrying a daughter is very tough. The culture is that they have to feed 50 or 100 families at the ceremony, even when they don’t have enough grain at home for themselves.”

In Sugali Nagamma’s hut, under the portrait of her dead husband, we saw a pile of full sacks of jawa - sorghum seed that she’d bought with the help of Hands, a local NGO supported by Oxfam India. It was a last attempt to get a food crop this season, but in the parched ground the sorghum could not germinate. With the wells dry, there was no way to water it. So Nagamma and her three younger children are all working as labourers - the children have dropped out of school. They get 30 rupees (about 40 pence) a day from farmers, or 100 rupees if they can get on to a government scheme designed to help the rural poor. There’s also government-subsidised rice, though Nagamma says it only lasts one week in the month.

But Nagamma’s main concern is not that she will feed herself - and she looks very thin - but that now her husband is gone, the debts will never be paid and she will not manage to marry her other three daughters. “When I think about these things I feel black,” she says. “It’s only the thought of my children being alone that stops me killing myself.”

Does she blame the weather? “This year is the very worst year since I was a child. This year the main crop, the groundnut, has failed. In the past we could go elsewhere to labour but not now, because the drought is everywhere. The clouds are not coming into our area to give us rain.”

So - is this climate change? Few people we met knew the meaning of the term - they thought we were talking about the need to protect and regrow the forests, something that the NGOs in the area educate the farmers about. But everyone had stories to tell of changes in the weather, of the unreliable seasons, of rain that came too late, or too strong, washing away carefully planted fields in a single downpour. The extreme heat of summer is another common complaint. Peter Balaram, project director of Apps, a network of environmental NGOs training and organising the farmers of Anantapur, says that summer temperatures can be 10°C hotter now than in the past. Since they can reach 45°C, this makes work outdoors near impossible.

Ramesh Naik, a 35-year-old red gram farmer, told us that he had sold his last goats to buy rice for his family - they were existing now on that and mashed herbs. “When I was a child everywhere there was water, and rains. I suppose those were the golden days - now we’re always looking to the sky, looking for the rain. It was eight or 10 years ago that things started changing. Every year since has become worse, and food problems have got worse. Before, if something was required people would share; now there’s no support, no sharing of grain or anything. People can’t afford to help any more. Everyone is in crisis.”

Get involved: Climate change

This blog was posted as part of Blog Action Day on climate change.

As the impending Copenhagen negotiations focus increasing attention on climate change, the race to discover new future-proof technologies is heating up. Artificial trees recently made the headlines. As did controversial plans to convert carbon into charcoal and then bury it.

But in the communities surrounding Trinidad in Bolivia, a slightly older, decidedly less hi-tech idea is getting noticed - and proving to be a serious weapon in the fight against climate change. When I spent some time in the region recently, I met people who are embracing methods of farming that were last used around 3,000 years ago.

The savannah landscape in this Amazonian region is peppered with small mounds and long, parallel ridges of raised land. Until recently, no-one really knew their origin. But scientists recently worked out that the ridges - or ‘camellones’ - formed the basis of an ancient system of food production. And this system is now being revived - with impressive results.

What are camellones?

A small boy runs between plantain growing at the borders of the camellones [Photo: Mark Chilvers]

The relationship between the land and the water rapidly increases the fertility of the soil - in stark contrast to the traditional local system, which involves farming a small area intensively for about four years until the land is infertile, then slashing and burning the area before searching for new land elsewhere.

You can get a sense of how effective the system is just by rubbing some of the soil found on the camellones between your fingers, and comparing it with the - much harder, much drier - soil found throughout the region. “People say the soil here is only good for building,” explained Oscar Saavedra, from Oxfam’s local partner organisation. “But you only need to look at the camellones soil to see that’s not true. And the big advantage is that the system causes the soil to improve year by year.”

Food during floods 

Because the land is raised, another major benefit is that crops and seeds are protected during floods. The area was hit by serious flooding in 2007 and 2008. It was so bad in 2008 that families here were forced from their homes for two or three months - some living in schools, others in a ‘protection zone’ organised by the local government.

Now, when the floods recede, some of the water remains in the camellone channels - meaning the floods actually help better quality crops to grow. They also guarantee a food supply, and help to reduce deforestation. And communities in the region are proud to be reviving the ideas of their ancestors.

Yenny Nosa Mapatato, 40, picking yukka from her camellone [Photo: Mark Chilvers]

The camellones project is still in its infancy - and it doesn’t solve the problem of water inundating people’s homes when floods happen. But it does mean communities can rely on a supply of food. That’s a major step forward, and one that could have potentially huge implications for communities around the world, as people face up to more intense and frequent flooding as the climate changes. 

Not bad, in other words, for an idea that’s been around for 30 centuries or so.

Find out more about Oxfam and climate change

This blog was posted as part of Blog Action Day on climate change.

I’m visiting Turkana with Dida and David Napereng, two local Oxfam staff, to see some of the areas affected by East Africa’s worst food crisis in a decade. Turkana, one of Kenya’s largest and driest districts, has suffered increasingly frequent droughts, and people here are feeling the impact of a third successive year of poor rains.

The impact of the drought seems to get worse with every mile we drive deeper into Turkana.

At the shallow well in the riverbed in Kaaleng [Photo credit: Alun McDonald]

Each morning Tegero and her family walk two hours each way to get to this meagre well. They collect 20 litres of water, which they haul back home in the blazing 40-degree Turkana heat, to sustain a family of seven. Just three litres per person has to last for drinking, washing, cooking, cleaning and keeping their animals alive. I think guiltily of all the water I use at home. Just my morning shower probably uses up more water than Tegero’s children get to use in a week.

“This water is not enough but it’s all we have,” Tegero tells me. “We’ve run out of food and I don’t know what to do. All we can do now is pray to God for the rains or help to come.” 

A few hours later, we were in sight of the Sudanese border, and joined by an armed escort - two local men with antique-looking G3 rifles. “It’s just to deter any bandits,” explains Dida. “With the drought making people desperate, security is getting worse.”

As the settlements get more remote, the number of guns increases. Men wander past, miles from anywhere, dressed in long dangly earrings, colourful sarong-style mini-skirts, and rifles slung across their shoulders.

In the village of Napak - a small gathering of huts strewn across a rocky hillside - security was the first thing on everyone’s mind.

Ereng Lominito and fellow herders in Napak [Photo credit: Alun McDonald]

Robert Asurut, the village’s assistant chief, says such clashes have intensified as the drought has got worse: “The last time it rained here was six months ago, but that was for less than one day and it was not enough to make the rivers flow. There is no grazing land for the animals, so we have to take them further away to find pasture and some of the areas we have to go to are very insecure. Most of our cattle are now 70kms away, in or near Sudan. The Toposa are like us - they are pastoralists who depend on their livestock - but they have more guns. In areas like this there are no roads and no phones, so we cannot communicate with them, and when we both need the same pasture it often results in violence. Our men, women, children - all are being killed.”

Lochaa Eregae in Napak [Photo credit: Alun McDonald]

While the men of the village go off with the cattle, the women and the elderly are left at home. Lochaa Eregae worries about the future of her community and her young sons “We don’t sleep at night, we are too worried. I am a widow - my husband was killed in this fighting - and there are lots more women like me. This is a poor place and there are no medical facilities here. If people are wounded, they die. We need a school and development here. I want my children to have a better life.” 

With night approaching, and the area particularly insecure after dark, we head back to the town of Kaikor to spend the night. On the way, we see a family on the side of the road, slaughtering one of its cows. “The animals are so weak,” the oldest men tells us. “We’ve walked 77 kms over the past three days and this cow just could not walk any further. It stopped here and wouldn’t move. The only option was to kill it here and try and sell the meat in Kaikor. Otherwise we lose everything.” 

More on this: East Africa Food Crisis

You can help: Donate now

As we travel north of Padang city, and closer to the epicentre of the earthquake, the destruction becomes more and more visible. Several of the roads we take have large cracks down the middle, requiring some careful navigation by our driver, along with plenty of help and direction from the locals. It’s a striking landscape that in happier times you’d wish to stop and take photos of. Today, the backdrop of tall palm trees is dotted with the rubble of damaged buildings.

A destroyed house on the way to Padangalai [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

90% of the buildings here were damaged when the earthquake hit, and despite having heard much about the scene on the ground, it’s still a difficult thing to take in. On one street we drive down, every single building has been reduced to some sort of rubble. Passing by a school, you can see posters on the wall of what used to be a classroom through the wreckage.

You get a sense of how remote the village is when you hear that emergency aid only started reaching Padangalai a few days ago. The people living here all had a similar tale to tell. 56-year-old Mursidah showed me the cuts and bruises on her leg she sustained escaping from her house.

Mursidah, 56, whose house was badly damaged in the earthquake [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

“I feel really traumatised and very scared,” she told me. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day.”

“We’ve received a few donations from different agencies, and yesterday we received a tarpaulin that we’ve used to set up a makeshift kitchen outside the house. Thanks to God I received some blankets from some people yesterday.”

Oxfam has been helping families like Mursidah’s have access to regular supplies of clean water. Not far from her house is a tapstand where we’ve been trucking in 9,000 litres every day.

“Before Oxfam brought water to the village, we were collecting rainwater for drinking, but it’s not very reliable. We go to the local spring to wash. It’s a 20-minute walk, and the landslides [caused by the earthquake] have made some of the water muddy.

“This new water tap has helped us more than enough,” she told me. “Having clean water nearby has made a big difference. We use the water for drinking and cooking. But there’s still lots of things that we’re without - we really need some gas for cooking and rice and food.”

Not far down the same street I met 30-year-old Samsuarni, rocking her child to sleep in the doorway of her temporary shelter. Her father was wandering through the wreckage of what remained of their home, searching for any belongings he could salvage.

“We were inside our house when the earthquake hit,” she told me. “My elderly father was upstairs on the second floor and fell when the building started shaking. We were scared out of our wits. People were running around and screaming.

“Now we’re staying in this shelter next to where our house used to be. There are eight of us from my family and we have five more people staying with us so there are 13 in this small space in total. It gets very hot and cramped. It’s difficult staying here.”

A woman collecting clean water from the tapstand, Padangalai [Photo credit: Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Find out more: East Asia Disasters Appeal

You can help: Donate now

Browse full Indonesia earthquake gallery

This week, or to be more specific this Thursday, it’s Blog
Action Day. The one day of the year when bloggers all over the world sign up to post about a particular subject. Whether you’ve got one reader (hi), or a million, we want everyone to get involved.

And it shouldn’t be too much of a chore as this year’s subject is one that usually features quite prominently on these pages. Yep, it’s climate change. The aim is to raise awareness of climate change and to trigger a global discussion about it - one that leads to action.

Have a look at this video for more info:

Over the last few months communities around the world have been holding climate hearings. These have given ordinary people the opportunity to share their stories about how the changing climate is altering their lives.

On Blog Action Day there will be a climate hearing direct from the European Parliament in Brussels. This hearing will bring together witnesses from India and Bangladesh, who are already feeling the effects of climate change, and EU decision makers; people who will represent us at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

They will hear about how climate change is effecting the poorest people around the world and that their decisions in Copenhagen will impact on people’s lives. So make sure that you follow it and get involved, with both the hearing and Blog Action Day.

So, we’ll blogging, tweeting and we’ll even have a live stream of the event. I’m really excited about this climate hearing and you can follow the live stream on www.climatehearing.org. We’ll even put audience questions straight to the participants.

Sign up for Blog Action Day website.

Follow the climate hearings on Twitter @climatehearing

So here is a quick summary from Sam Barratt, Head of the Media Unit for Oxfam GB in Oxford, on our news for this week, everything from climate change to Ricky Gervais, by way of the latest events in East Asia and our work to aid those affected by the recent disasters.   

We would like your feedback as well. What do you think we should be covering? Do you want any more information on the stories we talked about? What stories or events do you think we are missing out? Let us know by leaving a comment below and we’ll endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible!

Fifty-six-year-old grandmother Mursidah crawls out of the wreckage of her house to collect water from the taps Oxfam set up a few hours ago. “Thank God for this water,” she says. She had been walking about a mile to collect water from a muddy spring before aid reached here.

A week ago she was packing her bags looking forward to a visit to Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, then her house and her world collapsed. “When it started shaking I just ran out of the house without thinking,” she adds as she shows the bruising on her legs. She was lucky. Her house is now just a bashed about corrugated roof tilted at a hazardous angle. It offers some shade but that is about all.

This is the village of Padang Alai a two and a half hour drive from the city of Padang. It has seen better days. About 90% of the houses are destroyed. The school is a mass of bricks.

Without running water, and many having lost their homes, people are washing in the river. [Photo credit: Wawan]

Nine villages in this area were cut off for some time before the roads were cleared and two villages are still only accessible by foot. On the day the earthquake struck there were 200 people attending a wedding in one of the villages. The village is now a tomb.

This is the area where the earthquake did its worse. If the houses weren’t shaken to oblivion they were buried under tons of earth, boulders and trees as hills gave way.

Some of the damage is not immediately obvious. Late at night in a torrential downpour retired school mistresses Elok and Peteta invited us into the house they share. There is no electricity and only minimal light from flickering paraffin lamps.

Photo of a well full of mud and sand pushed in by the earthquake.

The scale of the earthquake’s damage is slowly being revealed as the more remote areas are reached. So far some 125,000 houses are destroyed, leaving around 500,000 people homeless, 55 health facilities are piles of rubble, nine bridges are down and 162 roads are in urgent need of repair.

In a display of humanitarian muscle the United States has sent in a ship equipped with helicopters to help with the logistical struggle to shift the huge amounts of aid required. The aid effort is gathering pace and much more visible as aid teams fan out to the villages of a wide-spread ground zero.

Aid was being delivered in the immediate aftermath of the quake. The first few days of a disaster are crucial. In that time it is nearly impossible to get supplies in. Tele-communications are down, airports closed, roadways blocked. The smart money is spent on having aid there ready to go before the humanitarian cavalry has time to arrive. But deciding where to place emergency aid stocks is tricky.

Indonesia is more than three thousand miles long from Aceh, the site of the 2004 tsunami devastation in the west to the border with Papua New Guinea in the east. An old popular song, Dari Sabang Sampai Merauke, celebrates the length of what the song calls homeland Indonesia . But this stretch of islands is also three thousand miles of potential seismic disasters. Where you place your needle of emergency stocks in this lengthy haystack is a question aid strategists grapple with.

Oxfam looked at possible earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, potential number of victims, what they would need in the first days and which local organisation could deliver the aid at a moments notice. One of the places it decided to place its immediate emergency stocks was Padang. Two local organisations sprang into action in the immediate aftermath. Some of their help can been seen as you travel from Padang on the road to the epicentre. Mile after mile you see the distinctive blue Oxfam tarpaulins stretched outside destroyed houses offering some shelter from the elements.

Meanwhile in its operational centre Oxfam has a team of more than 30 aid experts working hard to supply clean water and other essentials to those affected. Many of them are local veterans of something like 35 disasters that have hit Indonesia in recent years. It plans to help 150,000 people caught up in this disaster. The race is on. It needs your help.

Find out more: East Asia Disasters Appeal

You can help: Donate now

Getting aid into a disaster zone quickly is incredibly difficult. Even getting immediate information about what’s happening is a challenge. In the hours after this earthquake, phone lines were down, roads were cut off and even though Oxfam and others were working flat out to try to respond, we all struggled to work out what had happened, and what was needed.

But while all this chaos was happening, aid was already being distributed. Staff from local groups that Oxfam has been partnering with to prepare for disasters got straight to work. Because they were already based in the affected communities, they were able to start handing out 2,500 tarpaulins and other essential items that Oxfam had stored in the area - giving people immediate shelter and help until more supplies and assistance could arrive.

I’ve seen those tarpaulins stretched out in front of destroyed houses in village after village here. I can only imagine how it must have felt for the people our partners managed to help in the confusion and devastation of the first 24 hours after the earthquake.

Now that we’re able to get extra supplies and staff into Padang, (including an incredibly experienced emergency team who have now dealt with something like 35 disasters in Indonesia), we’re able to back up those first efforts and start to work with our local partners to rebuild people’s lives. But seeing those tarpaulins in front of people’s ruined houses has made me realise how was crucial it was that we had that local presence here that meant we could start work helping people almost immediately.

Of course, no system is perfect, and a big part of what we’ll now try and do here in Padang will be to work with the local government and other groups so that the area is better prepared for future disasters. After all, this is part of the “ring of fire” - an area infamous for its earthquakes. I’ve just heard that seismologists have said that this earthquake wasn’t the big one they were predicting for this area. With that in mind, preparing as best we can ahead of the next big one seems to make a lot of sense.

Why has an announcement from global energy giant, E-on, shelving plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent got the Oxfam office buzzing?

Until the last few years, climate change campaigning and saving the planet were generally seen as on

The Mili-band around Kingsnorth power station. Credit: Sarah Goldinger

But around the world, communities were telling us that the seasons were changing. Droughts were intensifying, floods were becoming more severe and farmers didn’t know when to plant their crops anymore. Climate change is affecting the poorest people on the planet.

The main focus of Oxfam’s campaign is to get an international agreement at the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen this December. When the UK government sits at the negotiating table, we want them to lead the way in getting an agreement that slashes carbon emissions and find resources that help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change. To do this they can’t commit Britain to a future where our energy needs are met by the unabated burning of fossil fuels.

And thousands of you agree. Which brings us to Kingsnorth. E-on were preparing to build a new monster of a coal-fired power station, the first to be built in the UK for 30 years. It would have emitted 6 million tonnes of CO2 annually - the equivalent of 25 developing countries’ combined emissions.

As part of the our Stop Climate Chaos coalition, over 5,000 emails from Oxfam supporters were fired off to E-on chief exec Paul Golby. You told him to commit E-on to seeking clean energy solutions for our energy needs.

Even more emails were sent to the Department for Energy. You told the government that we needed to go down a path towards a low carbon future. Thousands of you physically turned up to Kingsnorth in June, for the Mili-band.

Then last night, as I half-watched the TV, I heard the news that E-on had delayed the building of the new power station for 3 years - Wow! The delay, blamed on the economy and reduced demand in energy, amounts to pulling the plug on the controversial plans.

This campaign success is only a stepping-stone towards the green future that we need. But equally, it should not be underestimated.

Most importantly, the announcement represents a shift change in the debate. And it is because of your relentless pressure, your relentless passion, and your refusal to give up that this is happening.

There is still much to be done between now and the global climate talks happening in December. We need as many people as possible to turn up to The Wave protest in London on December 5th. This should encourage us to do everything we can, after all, we know that together we can make a difference.

But for now, let’s take a moment and toast a success. Then take a deep breath of the air that’s just got a bit cleaner and get ready for Copenhagen.

More ways to fight climate change.

More news about the plans to post-pone the power plant at Kingsnorth.

Watch our film from the Mili-band.

The departures lounge in Jakarta was a hive of activity this morning as I waited for my connecting flight to Padang. Half the room seemed to be filled with medical workers and rescue teams preparing to fly out and take part in the massive aid effort being launched to help people affected by last week’s deadly earthquake. This time last week I was in Oxford, working with colleagues in East Africa to publicise the developing food crisis in the region. Flying out to the earthquake-hit zone, I’m struck by a very different type of emergency.

A family whose house was destroyed live in a makeshift tent beside a road in Padang, 4 October. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Erik de Castro, courtesy www.alertnet.org]

Sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, Padang, and the surrounding areas are no strangers to natural disasters. Earthquakes have hit here before, but this one was especially devastating. Around 700 people lost their lives, with as many again still thought missing. Water and electricity supplies were badly damaged and there are real concerns about the potential spread of disease.

Driving down the city’s main street, we pass by several public buildings in ruins and many others sporting some dangerous looking cracks. Travelling over a bridge, we see hundreds of people clustered down by the river – using the water to wash, I’m told, as most houses are still without proper water supplies.

Oxfam had relief supplies stockpiled in the area before the earthquake hit, and was one of the first agencies to begin distributions of aid. Our staff are currently busy organising distributions of clean water, shelter and hygiene supplies to provide support to around 150,000 people.

Destroyed building [Photo credit: Laura Eldon]

Find out more: East Asia Disasters Appeal

You can help: Donate now