(ETH) – The ongoing locust swarms that are gripping multiple countries are so terrifying and intense that locals in Kenya are now reporting that the children in the local school were seen shouting with fear, and the animals were even witnessed panicking. The report indicated that the sheer size of the swarm was so massive that it alone caused great fear among locals.
“It was like an umbrella had covered the sky,” said Joseph Katone Leparole, who has lived in the hamlet, Wamba, for most of his 68 years. He went on to testify that when the locusts descended upon the community the locals quickly gathered to try to scare them off, using one arm to beat them with sticks or bang on metal pots, and the other to cover their faces and eyes! “The cows and camels couldn’t see where they were going,” Mr. Leparole said. “It really disturbed us.”
Laparole said that there had been no warning that the locusts were on their way and everyone was caught off guard. DNYUZ, is reporting that Kenya is battling its worst desert locust outbreak in 70 years, and the infestation has spread through much of the eastern part of the continent and the Horn of Africa, destroying croplands in Somalia and Ethiopia and sweeping into South Sudan, Djibouti, Uganda and Tanzania.
To give you a perspective of how intense this plague is, Locust can travel over 80 miles a day and their swarms can reportedly number as many as 80 million locust adults in each square kilometer, and eat the same amount of food daily as about 35,000 people!
