The wind blows relentlessly, it drives the sand into your eyes, the women have to hold on to their colorful robes with all their might.
But wind also means: no rain.
The storm will sweep away the dark clouds over the village of Kesi in northeast Kenya, once again.
It's been like this for three years, one rainy season after the other has been cancelled.
Rukia Hassan clutches a purple hilt like it's steadying her as everything around her crumbles.
The data of her eight children is noted in the notebook: height, weight, last vaccination.
Hassan stands with her three-year-old daughter Maka under the village's large acacia tree, one of the few remaining patches of green.
A team of doctors and nurses is visiting Kesi today, they have spread bast mats under the tree and are entering values in the purple notebooks.
Maka's stats don't look good at all.
The child clutches the mother's long dress tightly with one hand while the nurse places a tape measure around his small upper arm.
The band has three areas: green, yellow and red.
At Maka it closes at yellow, which means: malnourished, the doctors have to act.
The three-year-old gets a packet of peanut paste, which she immediately shares with the other children, even if their arms are a little bigger.
Rukia Hassan, her mother, sits down on a stairway in front of the village school, she needs to rest.
She hasn't eaten anything today, again.
In the evening her children cry, they have stomach ache because of the hunger.
This goes on all the time until they fall asleep from exhaustion - because there is no meal in sight.
“The pressure is unbearable.
I feel powerless because I can't take care of my children.
We only depend on donations,« says the mother of eight.
She herself has hardly any energy left, sometimes her family doesn't eat anything for two days.
At least at school, the children used to get a meal every now and then, but it has been closed for a long time because there is no more water.
You can't study in the heat without water.
In parts of Kenya, several crises are superimposed to form a toxic mix: Climate change means there is no rain, a devastating drought has decimated the herds of cattle and destroyed the harvests.
Normally, in such an emergency, Rukia Hassan and her husband would sell part of the livestock and use the proceeds to get enough food for the dry season at the market.
But the drought killed 30 of the 40 cows, the rest are in poor condition and worth little.
Hassan's husband has left with the remaining cattle in a desperate search for pasture.
Only women and children live in the village.
In previous periods of drought, at least one cow stayed with them to give milk regularly.
But in the meantime she would die immediately, climate change has made the area almost uninhabitable.
Another crisis is causing the traditional emergency solutions to fail: Since the corona pandemic, the prices of almost all consumer goods have been rising, and the war in Ukraine has caused the upward spiral to escalate.
A sack of cornmeal now costs twice as much.
A liter of cooking oil: almost six euros instead of the previous 1.60 euros.
The trip by motorcycle taxi to the nearest town: twelve instead of eight euros as before.
»Everything is extreme, nothing is normal anymore.
There's nothing left to hold on to,' says Hassan.
In the meantime, she no longer drives into town to buy anything there – the cost of the motorcycle alone would eat up the budget.
Not to mention food.
In East Africa, inflation is now just under eight percent,
The German aid organization Welthungerhilfe co-financed the mobile medical team in Kesi.
The helpers will be back in a few days, and then Rukia Hassan and several other drought victims will receive cash equivalent to about 40 euros per month.
The amount is precisely calculated, it must be enough for at least a proportion of cornmeal, vegetables and other staple foods for four weeks.
That's the theory.
"The war in Ukraine hit us hard," says Sarah Maiyo from Welthungerhilfe, who is responsible for the region around Kesi.
“Prices have doubled in some cases, but our budgets have not increased.” The practical consequence: there is no longer enough money to fight hunger.
100 kilometers from Kesi, Fatuma Godhana enters a small shop, it is the lifeline of Bububu village.
It's early afternoon, soon Godhana's seven children will be back from school, the mother has to prepare dinner.
She is holding 200 Kenyan shillings in her hand, the equivalent of 1.60 euros, which is all you can get today.
In a low voice, she asks the seller what they can get for it.
At the end she holds two small plastic bags with rice in her hand, a total of 1250 grams. Plus a tiny sip of cooking oil, filled into an old plastic bottle.
"I have to tilt the pot and fry the food on one side so that there is enough oil," she explains.
The 40-year-old is a farmer. Her life revolves around the Tana River, which flows not far from her house.
In the village of Bububu, they live from a special form of agriculture: the Tana River regularly bursts its banks and when it recedes, they plant bananas, mangoes and lentils on the damp soil for generations.
But because of the lack of rain, the river no longer bursts its banks, the ground is bone dry, their harvest has come in.
At the beginning of June, Godhana also received a cash payment from Welthungerhilfe, the equivalent of 40 euros.
The money was quickly used up.
Normally she needs two kilograms of cornmeal per meal for her family of eight to prepare a kind of polenta.
But at the moment she can only afford half.
"We eat to at least have something in our stomachs, not to get full," reports Godhana.
Your children have already lost weight.
Rice is now a little cheaper than cornmeal, but the two small bags will not be enough for the family.
The next cash payment from Welthungerhilfe is due soon, and Godhana already knows: "This time the money will run out even faster." Because the prices continue to rise every day.
Sarah Maiyo is standing next to her, taking notes.
Maybe they'll be able to increase cash payouts in the near future if lenders play along.
But many governments prefer to focus their aid on Ukraine, other crises are forgotten.
The struggle for distribution is getting tougher, and the dry season in Kenya has only just begun, and the number of starving people will rise significantly in the coming weeks.
Maiyo's team tries another tactic.
They provide fertilizer and other inputs to farmers who have access to irrigation.
According to logic, more locally produced food would lower prices in the long term.
But since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the price of fertilizer has also exploded, and Welthungerhilfe can only supply half of the farmers.
Less fertilizer means less yield.
And as a result, prices continue to rise.
The war in Ukraine is triggering a spiral of hunger in far-flung East Africa.
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