New Wine, Old Wineskins

Part One

Monsters are more than just horrid looks and claws and teeth. Monsters are born of deeds done. Unforgivable ones.............................
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She stood dilapidated. Her skin was pale. She was living on borrowed time. Her lips were dry. Bones protruded out of her skinny body. I must admit, I've seen more meat on a vegan's shopping list. She was as thin as herself, nothing could come closer. Her feeble legs could not move a single step. She was dehydrated, she was almost running out of breathe, probably , only way she could run. But still she stood still. She would fight to the last gasp, she was anyway. Just a little soldier keeping up a strong front.

The ravaging drought had swept away all of Halima's livestock. She was left all alone, with her five children, three boys and two girls. She made a quick survey of her piece of land, all dry.  The crops had dried out. The little she had planted had been taken away from her. She looked up, the sun was shining, as if it won't set. The sky was blue. Not a single piece of cloud could be traced. She braced herself for more darker days, in the blue.

Halima still held on to the reality. She was holding on to a reality that didn't exist. She began to count her loses. Seventeen cows, six camels, three donkeys and a dozen sheep had all been taken down; taken down by a natural occurrence. She was mum. All her treasures gone. By what means would she survive another day? Not just her, her children too. Five children, and hunger was ready to strike upon them, it had already started. And Halima was whom they were counting on, their mother.

They say when the sun comes out, it is a sign of hope and courage that better things are coming, that the best is going to happen. But no! Not for Halima. The sun to her was a sign of destruction. A sign that the prolonging drought was getting more and more intense. A sign of death.
The whole village of Wandera was suffering the effects of this drought. Not once, not twice, but this was their new normal. And yet, no one was willing to help. They had been left to languish in poverty and die like flies. And yes, humans were dying like flies, but who cared. The people of Wandera's pleas landed on stone.

Halima grabbed her buckets ready for her long journey. Five kilometers away, to fetch water, by foot, and back. Well, yes that was the only water point in the whole village. And yes, the whole village would move by foot to gather at the water point to fetch the water, everyday, behold. Halima would arrive only to find long queues of people and animals yearning for this precious commodity. On other days, she would take herself with her two eldest children and fetch as much water as possible. However, this time round they were weak and hungry and in addition to that, she left them behind to take care of their younger siblings.

At the water point, Halima would face a hard time on the long quees and standing in the sun waiting for her turn to come. The water was fetched from a well so deep that it needed well marshalled men to fetch the water for the many women who stood waiting on the queues. In turn, they would pay an amount to the men since they themselves would not be able to draw the water for themselves. One would part with ten shillings for a bucket of water.