With you behind them, our Emergency Response Teams have been rushing out of their normal, daily lives, onto supply planes and into some of the world’s conflict zones to help people survive and reach safety.

Geoff Wordley is making a supreme effort to help Somali refugees pouring over the border into Kenya.

In a recent issue of With You, we reported that Geoff Wordley had taken part as a facilitator in the Workshop for Emergency Management, training Emergency Response Teams. He's now in the middle of an emergency in Kenya, based in the small town of Dadaab where UNHCR runs three refugee camps, home to 150,000 people. With the latest crises in Somalia more refugees have been arriving. Here is what Geoff has to say about it:

I arrived in September when the situation in Somalia suddenly worsened and many more people poured across the border. In October more than 1,000 people were arriving every day and an Emergency Response Team of four people was called in to assist. The Team consisted of UNHCR staff from Burundi, Macedonia, Tanzania and Switzerland. Since then more staff on emergency missions have arrived as the twin dramas of the influx from Somalia and extensive flooding in two of the camps unfolded.

At the border, we're registering people and, with our partners, providing food and water and vaccinating children against measles and polio, before organizing transport to the camps. Some camps are home to refugees from the original influxes from Somalia some 15 years ago.

Many people are fleeing areas in Somalia where the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) has taken power and introduced strict Islamic laws – People who made a living selling CDs or music have had their businesses closed down. All sorts of things have been banned; even men and women speaking to each other in public.

Many Somalis are arriving on foot, but there are urban refugees who have been paying trucks to transport them. There are groups arriving very tired; they've obviously walked many miles. In this part of the world it's so hot, 35-40 degrees, that they all carry jerry cans and buckets. The majority arrive with very little; some might have a sheet, or those with transport, a mattress. Most of the children don't have shoes, not many adults either, or if they do they are just plastic flip-flops.

The reception centre at Liboi, we've set up is about 2500 square metres surrounded by a wood fence to keep out hyenas and lions. Currently there are three shelters for about 300 people under tin roofs, latrines and a water supply. People have also erected small shelters made of plastic sheeting around the centre.

We need to move people out of Liboi as quickly as possible, but have had to stop moving them on to the camps because the rainy season produced major flooding in two – Ifo and Dagahaley camps. This caused the collapse of the latrines, polluting the flood water. Thousands of refugees have fled to higher ground around the camps and over 4,000 have left Ifo, the worst affected, and set up shelters in Hagadera some 20 kms away.

Everyone on the Emergency Response Team has been involved in reaching the camps and in organizing help. This includes helping refugees to re-establish themselves on higher ground and distributing plastic sheeting for shelters. But the situation is difficult with the only road to the remainder of Kenya completely washed away over a 30 km stretch exposing thick, sticky mud in which many trucks are now stranded. Dadaab and the camps are effectively cut off from the outside world except for a small airstrip, which the UN Refugee Agency constructed several years ago.

Visit www.unhcr.ca/ert to help Geoff and his colleagues with a monthly donation.

Photo Captions:
TOP: UNHCR Emergency Supply Officer, Maurice Bisau, helps load airdropped items onto Red Cross trucks. © UNHCR/B.Bannon
ABOVE: A UNHCR Somali staff member distributes blankets, cooking utensils and tents to displaced people in Somalia. An air shipment of Italian aid landed in Somalia on Wednesday. © UNHCR/S.Abdulle