!["Somali]("http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01942/gates_1942359c.jpg")
!["Somali]("http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01942/Dadaab_1942360c.jpg")
It is more like a city than a refugee camp. It sprawls for 30 miles, and its population could soon be a staggering half a million. This is Dadaab, Africa's fastest-growing population centre - and all for the wrong reasons.
Drought and famine throughout the Horn of Africa is driving hungry and exhausted people from hundreds of miles around to this arid corner of northern Kenya, in the hope of finding food, medicines and water.
For the last week I have been reporting on these disturbing scenes - a crisis which has now led to international agencies declaring an emergency and appealing for funds.
There are not nearly enough tents for all who arrive. Emaciated refugees construct makeshift shelters out of branches and scraps of plastic. All around them, vicious winds whip up choking clouds of red dust. On the parched earth where it has barely rained for two years, the carcasses of dead animals lie everywhere: dried-out pastures have become the graveyards of this drought.
Livestock are everything to people in this part of Africa – their investments, savings and income all in one. When the animals start to die, so too do the humans.