Rain brings hope to drought - plagued Lesotho

Rain in the past two weeks has brought some respite to Lesotho's farmers, who are struggling with one of the country's worst droughts in three decades. But with more than 400,000 people food insecure, some aid workers say it will take more than the rains to overcome the impact of the drought.

"We must do better than last harvest," said Setsoto Nyaku, a small-scale farmer. "Usually, this patch of land of mine yields 70 bags of maize; this year, we harvested only eleven bags. There has not been enough rain for the crops, but it is a start. We must plant now if we are to hope for early summer maize."

Four months to the day after the government declared a state of food crisis on 9 July, when the drought had largely destroyed the annual maize and sorghum harvests, Nyaku and his neighbours are plunging into a new season with greater optimism.

An aid worker ... is more cautious. "I think we will be here next year, distributing food aid; the drought will affect people until next year - too many people ate their planting seeds, and they are too poor to buy more."

In 2006, the UN's World Food Program fed between 60,000 and 70,000 people in Lesotho, and the numbers have grown with each rainless day; drought has brought production of maize, the staple food, down to less than half the previous year's crop.

Analysis awaits data collected in the 2006 national census, but preliminary results show a population of 1,872,000, with a life expectancy of 35.2 years illustrating the impact of AIDS in a country where nearly a quarter of all adults are HIV positive. According to UN agencies, more than a third of the nation struggle to get by on less than one US dollar a day, and 13 percent of the entire population is undernourished.

Irrigation may not be the immediate way to safeguard against erratic rains. A third of the nation's boreholes and wells have dried up, as have many small dams and reservoirs on which livestock and gardens depend.

When normal rainfall returns, water-harvesting schemes ...will act as protection against future droughts.

Abigale Modise, waiting for her share of food aid, remarked, "I accept this aid on behalf of myself and my grandchildren, who I now support because God has taken their parents. I yearn for my garden; nothing tastes sweeter than the maize I grow myself."

IRIN