The children can’t believe their luck: storms and showers have turned their dirt football pitch into a lake.
Youngsters scamper and splash through the murky water, chasing one another, leaping and laughing.
The seasonal rains also bring cholera and malaria, destroy rickety hand-made homes and paralyse the aid operation that is the refugees’ lifeline.
On it and still dry lies Yussuf’s blind, 80-year-old mother.
“Dadaab is located on a plain where the rainwater does not drain easily, there are no drainage systems and no nearby river,” explained Caleb Odhiambo of charity Save the Children, which works in the camps.
Cholera is the greatest danger, especially for children who play in — and anyone who drinks — the contaminated waters.
– Flood or drought – “When the area is flooded, people are exposed to several diseases,” said 25-year-old Dadaab resident Mokhtar Dahari.
A driver working for a non-governmental organisation in Dadaab confirmed that some parts of the camps are “flooded and inaccessible.
Humanitarian activities are slowed down.” For now, Dahari has been spared: the floodwaters stopped a few meters (yards) from his hut.
The rains, Dahari said, are enough to make him long for drought.