ALTERNATE REALITY ANOOP SINGH AND ANDREAS LINDBACK AND THEIR STINT AS PHOTOJOURNALISTS.

Anoop Singh and Andreas Lindback are two aspiring fashion photographers who traveled into the desert of northeast Kenya in September 2011. Over the course of ten days, they documented the response to the famine in the Horn of Africa and the aid processes in place to deal with it. Here, an excerpt from their experience.

What could have possessed two aspiring fashion photographers to drop everything for a month and drive to the Kenya-Somali border, to document the lives of the people there? It’s a question I still don’t have an answer to. It is one of the most spontaneous things I have done, more so for Andreas who flew in from Sweden to accompany me. As we headed out of Nairobi into the desert, we were filled with nervous excitement—compounded by the uncertainty of a non-responsive press liaison. We didn’t even know if we would have accomodation provided. The atmosphere in Garissa town was straight out of a film: a tiny hotel, jam-packed with Land Cruisers toting huge antennae, “no guns” decals and flying their respective flags. Sweaty, officious people, having seemingly important conversations over lunch, completed the illusion. It felt like an alternate reality.
Multiple phone calls later and with the dubious advice to “just show up—I’m sure we’ll find space for you,” Andreas and I hunkered down in Garissa for the night and headed into Dadaab town in the morning. After the horrific images we had seen on television we were shocked, not by the desperation of the situation but by the apparent lack of it—a testament to the efforts of the United Nations and associated agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). These camps are 21 years old, and some people have lived their entire lives here. They have thriving markets and micro-economies (refugees are not allowed to enter Kenya proper), and it becomes evident to us
as we speak to people that, far from being a last resort, the vast majority of inhabitants prefer to be in Dadaab than return to Somalia, regardless of whether the situation there improves.
It is on the outskirts of the camps that the theme of death and disease is more apparent. This is where the huge numbers of new arrivals—as many as 10,000 a week in July—flee famine and persecution, and wait to be processed. Driving into the outskirts of the IFO camp we come across a funeral by the roadside, a father burying his twelve-year-old child. All the unassuming mounds we had been seeing with dry thorn bush laid over them were graves. Ten minutes later we come across another burial. This time a baby that wouldn’t eat, discharged by the MSF doctors only a couple days earlier, her parents younger than ourselves.
While living conditions in the camp may be preferable to those in Somalia (the alternative being Al Shabaab-controlled towns just over the border), mortality rates are still high. The predominant cause is malnutrition, with rates increasing amongst new arrivals during their first three months in camp (pre-departure mortality rates from the camp are even higher). This reality hits home as we come across a girl, unable to eat and desperately malnourished despite being in the camp for some time now, and the news that her baby sister had passed away overnight.
Driving away on our last evening in Dadaab, dark rain clouds loom in the sky, a harbinger of hope consistent with the nature of the town’s inhabitants.