Although the rains are not very reliable, the area is fertile with several irrigation schemes for the populace to supplement their meager harvests.

Aid agencies have been warning since early this year a famine was looming in the region because of last year's drought and meager harvest.

In a bitter reprise of the famine of 1984-85, millions face starvation as stores from a meager harvest are exhausted.

But this time her efforts have produced a meager harvest.

The area is fertile with several irrigation schemes for the populace to supplement their meager harvests.

Their supplies scarce, their harvest meager, and their spirit broken, they abandoned the fort in 1858.

As a result, the neighboring villages had a meager harvest, while the village of Komemiyut, who sowed from the old store, had a bumper crop.

Each day's meager harvest is fermented separately and set aside until the harvest is finally over.

Prior to that, the settlement had been among the poorest heathland villages, since the barren, largely infertile sandy soil yielded only meager harvests.

Four million more people are expected to need emergency aid in the next few months as this season's meager harvest runs out, the United Nations says.