A breastfeeding mother collapsed and died several kilometres from her home while searching for water for her eight starving children including a three-week-old baby.
Speaking to the media on Saturday, November 12, her in-law Elizabeth Yator explained that she had left the children under her care to fetch water from a borehole.
Yator revealed that the deceased’s husband had been away from the home in search of food after the porridge they had been surviving on ran out.
An image of a woman fetching water at a borehole.
Andy Wheatley
“She had run out of food and could not watch her children starving. So she left the baby under my area and left with other women only for her to be reported dead,” Yator stated.
Monica Rendile, who had accompanied the diseased to the well claimed she fell on her feet and efforts to resuscitate her proved futile as she remained unresponsive.
“We tried to give her water through her mouth, but after three jugs, nothing. Her body looked too frail for a mother who had recently given birth, I doubt she even had enough milk for her child,” Rendile recounted.
A neighbour disclosed that she barely had food over a long period of time and would only have a few teaspoons of leftover porridge after feeding her children.
Her husband disclosed that his family initially survived on cattle which he would sell to buy food supplies but lost it all in two separate banditry attacks in the area.
The death of the nursing mother is the second in as many weeks after an 80-year-old granny died of hunger on October 31.
Several people have lost their lives across the country in what has arguably been the worst drought that has hit Kenya. The government launched a nationwide food distribution programme to affected families.
On November 1, President William Rut announced that the government had set aside an extra Ksh2 billion for drought mitigation.
While some counties grapple with food shortages, others have been forced to dispose of crop produce over lack of market and poor road network to the farm.
A picture of emaciated cows due to ravaging drought in Kenya
