Prepare for the Return! The desert locusts.

                                          PREPARE FOR THE RETURN!

"We need to prepare the people before the insects return," Msgr. Isaac Ibrahim Racho told Catholic News Service recently. The Msgr. is the vicar general of the Diocese of Marsabit in Kenya. But what insects was he speaking about? And why would they return?




He was referring to the desert locusts. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that "a new wave (of the insects) is imminent." This will happen because "there has been an increase in breeding of the insects in the Middle East and the movement of the winds across the Red Sea into East Africa." 

In the article titled "Predicted return of deadly locusts triggers fear in East Africa" Fredrick Nzwili wrote: "Experts say the rise of locusts in Africa and the Middle East is linked to rapidly warming waters of the Indian Ocean due to the Indian Ocean Dipole or Indian Nino. The phenomenon - amplified by global warming - has led to heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures, favourable conditions for breeding locusts."

Perpetua Kavinya who lives in Maseki, a remote village in Kitui county in Kenya, lost all her crops to the locusts. She has called for "quick action to stop any infestation."

"In May," Nzwili wrote in the article, "the World Food Program said 20 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti, and Eritrea were facing acute food shortage."

"The first wave landed in East Africa in December and early 2020 after flying over the Red Sea and they devoured farmlands and pasture in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in months," he added.

Locusts feed on foliage. Each insect weighs about 2 grams and eats about its own weight each day. Once the swarm of insects devours the vegetation in a region, it  moves to the next, "thus they can cover more than 90 miles in one day."


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