You can help save lives in the Horn of Africa. It was the hole in the ground that got me. It was as deep as it was wide. It was carved, bit by bit, into brick red earth by men wielding shovels and farming tools. The hole didn't have to be too big — just 4' x 4'. It was for a child.
His name was Ibrahim, and he was 3 years old. Ibrahim had come from Somalia with his family seeking shelter, food, water, and medicine. They had arrived days before at Dadaab in eastern Kenya — the world's largest refugee camp. Ibrahim died at a clinic just as Dadaab was registering its 400,000th refugee — most from Somalia — 70 percent of the new arrivals due to drought.
We met Ibrahim's aunt on the windy plains of the camp and she told us about Ibrahim. "He couldn't survive the journey," she said.
I have covered drought and hunger in Kenya for five years now. In October 2008, I lived with a family in Turkana, Kenya, today one of the worst-hit areas in the Horn of Africa. But even then it was bad. The land was barren. Livestock, worth their weight in gold to pastoralist families, had died. I ate what the family ate for five days — relief supplies that amounted to about a cup of food per day. I wanted to see what hunger felt like.
Ibrahim's aunt, Isnino, sits with her baby at Dadaab camp in Kenya. She says her food is finished and that she will have to beg from relatives. "I am worried about the future for myself and my family," she shares.
Workers prepare the grave for 3-year-old Ibrahim, who died from hunger. He is the third child they are burying today.
Not having enough food sapped me of strength and curiosity. I could do little more than sit in the family's hut all day, shielding my skin from the scorching sun. With my energy sapped, I saw hunger in a new way — as a killer of the things inside a person, the will that enables one to persevere.
I am back in the Horn of Africa three years later to cover a drought that seems to have no end.
I returned to Turkana last week, where World Vision is feeding malnourished children nutritious Plumpy'nut™ and providing food and water for their families. The situation is worse than before. I tried to make eye contact with some of the 500 mothers waiting for food in scant shade. But the light had gone out of their eyes. They had no interest in interacting. The drought had finally taken its toll on their steely spirits.
The Turkana mothers' apathy was distressing, but it was the hole in the ground at Dadaab refugee camp that did me in.
Traveling from the camp to a room where I slept in a bed instead of under a tent made of sticks, I thought about that hole and the child, Ibrahim, who would be tenderly placed inside. The brick-red dirt would be replaced. His grave would be topped with thorn bushes to keep the wild animals from desecrating his body. Ibrahim's child-sized mound of earth would join the fresh graves of two other children buried that day in the makeshift cemetery.
Rumbling over the rutted roads, staring out the window at dry land littered with cattle carcasses, I thought about that hole.
And how its size so perfectly matched the empty space inside me.
In Him,
Kari Costanza
World Vision
Kari Costanza, World Vision International's global editor, has touched countless hearts with stories from her trips to Africa. As this recent crisis accelerated, Kari, an award-winning journalist, went to the Horn of Africa once again to witness the suffering of children and parents and the hope that World Vision offers. You can help provide life-saving food and other essentials to starving children in the Horn of Africa. 
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