Lake Stevens woman coordinates humanitarian aid for African drought victims

Published 12:01 am Thursday, September 15, 2011

A ruthless drought in east Africa has killed thousands of people and forced thousands more out of their homes.

A Lake Stevens native is on the front lines of the global effort to help them.

Tracy Stover, 38, works as an emergency coordinator for the international humanitarian organization World Concern. She has left on a six-month trip to Dadaab, Kenya, to supervise a team of people providing food, water and medicine to people in Kenya and the neighboring Somalia.

Dadaab currently houses one of the world’s largest refugee camps. With the drought beating down on the region, the already struggling Kenyan villages have to play host to Somali refugees fleeing even more struggling villages. Stover’s job involves supporting those communities.

The area plagued by the drought is known as the Horn of Africa and includes the countries of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea.

“This is the worst drought in this region in 60 years, and the longest,” Stover said in a phone interview. “In some places in Somalia, it’s been three years since there’s been a significant rain.”

Her team works within communities, outside the traditional refugee camps, which are supported by the United Nations.

The Lake Stevens High School graduate fell in love with Africa when she first visited in 1998. That summer she and a friend were interns at a conflict resolution center in Cape Town, South Africa.

“It was still a very rich place where people were still celebrating freedom,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

She loved the simple living and the sense of community.

She studied psychology and sociology at the University of Washington and later earned a degree in international development at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in Oxford, England.

She has since worked all over Africa and visited other parts of the world.

“I’m a bit of a nomad,” she said.

In Dadaab, Stover’s typical day might involve meeting with the elders of a village to learn what kind of help they need.

She went across the border to Somalia last week to set up a medical clinic and distribute special cash-value vouchers. These vouchers allow people to “buy” food and other supplies from merchants at the local market.

“This is great because, along with providing the extremely vulnerable with the things they need, it also strengthens the local market,” Stover said.

Her camp is set up in a former guesthouse. There is no electricity in town, but a generator powers up the camp.

Phone calls and visits from people looking for help come daily. Dadaab is not a tourist destination, and locals know that the few white people they see in the city are there to help, she said.

The local culture is highly traditional, and Stover and others need to make sure they are respectful. For example, she wears a long skirt and a long-sleeve shirt, as custom for women.

Being respected by the locals also increases security for people working with humanitarian organizations.

“If I treat someone with respect, I can walk a little bit farther,” Stover said.

Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452; kyefimova@heraldnet.com.

How to help

A number of nongovernmental, humanitarian organizations are working to help people in the Horn of Africa. The following Western Washington-based nonprofits are involved:

World Concern: http://worldconcern.org or 866-530-5433

World Vision: http://worldvision.org or 888-562-4453

National organizations working in the Horn of Africa include:

American Red Cross: http://redcross.org or 800-773-2767

International Rescue Committee: www.rescue.org or 855-973-7283

For a list of other organizations, go to http://tinyurl.com/DroughtCrisis.

To learn about the United States government response to the crisis, go to www.usaid.gov/hornofafrica.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect phone number for World Concern. The number above is now correct.