You would have to see it to believe it. Or rather, you would be
forgiven for believing what you see, not knowing what truly lay
on the horizon. Driving through northern Kenya's drought-
affected famine district as the midday sun lifts temperatures to
over 40 degrees centigrade, pools of water shimmer in the
distance, laying between dessicated trees and shrubs, with the
mountains of Turkana peering through the haze. But these aren't
pools. There is no water here. By a cruel irony, this parched
land taunts its thirsty and hungry people with distant images
mirages of glistening oases in the distance. There hasn't been
rainfall since 2004, according to Akwari Nubukwi, an elder in
the village of Kanigipur in the southern Turkana district. "We
use the water from the riverbed, where we dig to find it. But it
is just a little water, and even the goats and dogs drink from
it", he told me. Simon Roughneen is working for the Dublin-based
international humanitarian organisation Goal in northern Kenya
and southern Ethiopia