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Food emergencies due to drought are not like tsunamis or earthquakes or wars. They develop silently and slowly, over vast regions. People in these arid places have developed coping mechanisms over generations. Though skillful at finding water and surviving on leaves and roots, the Turkana live precariously close to starvation. In the old days, children, pregnant women, and the elderly would weaken and slip away. Few in the outside world knew. Those who knew could offer little help.

Times have changed. We know. We have the resources to respond. In America, half a world away, we know. If you started now, you could be here in 24 hours, staring into the eyes of a desert child.

The Turkana do not like depending on food aid. It offends their sense of dignity, grounded in their ability to cope. Yet in this seemingly empty location—I see only handfuls of basket houses—World Vision has registered 955 people to receive food. Peterson Erus, World Vision's field coordinator, shows me the hut they built to hold the food when it comes monthly by truck. People assemble and respond when their names are called to receive a food basket, calculated to provide 70 percent of their food needs for the month.

It's a textbook case of emergency response, the modern world helping the pre-modern avert disaster. While not exactly clockwork, the process is a long way from the panicky, uncoordinated, too-little-too-late response that could happen if not for experienced nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations, and government agencies. They monitor potential disasters. They have carefully developed protocols for determining when a true food emergency has begun. They mobilize compassion in the developed world, communicating needs and channeling help. They know how to work with local communities to identify the people most in need of food aid. Their formulas determine how much food should be delivered, and how often, and what kinds. They complete systematic follow-up evaluations.

Organizations like World Vision have warehouses stocked with materials, ready to go. They know how to hire airplanes, boats, and trucks in any one of a hundred countries where you or I would spend the first month just learning what permits were needed. So NGOs, in cooperation with national governments (if there is one—a benefit that countries like Somalia cannot claim), the World Food Program of the United Nations, and donors around the world are feeding 6 million people in this one corner of Africa.

People in the Western world have shown time and again their compassion for the needy on the other side of the world. They are showing it now by feeding these people. However, our attention tends to be fitful. The May rains temporarily stopped animal deaths. That is a mixed blessing. Now there are no dramatic pictures to show the desperate need. And without pictures of desperation, the outside world gets distracted. In Turkana, people in need are supposed to get a monthly distribution of corn meal, beans, and vegetable oil. Last month, only corn came down the column.

I visit a World Vision farming project where people are learning to irrigate on the verge of the Turkwel. The project is going well; hundreds of families feed themselves. But teaching nomads to farm is difficult, and the opportunities are limited—only one river in a vast territory. The Turkana need to learn other skills, develop new means of providing for themselves, and adjust their way of life to new conditions. The government has neglected this area: It has few schools, few roads, and terrible problems with bandits. Change is difficult for this fiercely traditional people.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5