Prayers for rain
I crave sunshine. I think it comes from being born just after Midsummer. I feel at my happiest when sitting in dappled sunlight, underneath the promise of a cloudless blue sky.
So the last three weeks of constant rain, and the forecast of the wettest and coldest May for many years, fill me with melancholy.
Yet in spite of the current weather, we are in a time of drought, and counties up and down the UK face hosepipe bans until the end of this year at least.
It’s strange to be in drought during a time of so much rain. I was in Kenya during the drought in the Horn of Africa last summer. It was the worst that the region had witnessed for 60 years. The red flesh of the earth was barren, the empty river beds like bloodless veins. Cattle carcasses littered the horizon, and the wind carried the pungent smell of death.
One woman I met told me that she prayed for rain every single day, a prayer for rain to comfort the earth, to bring food and hope and life.
So today – even though the rain makes me crave tea and hobnobs and an old film and bed – I am remembering that woman, and her prayers for rain. I am reminding myself to be grateful for it.
There’s another drought this year in the African Sahel, which comprises Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal. A toxic combination of low rainfall, high food prices, entrenched poverty and regional conflict means that 13 million people are at risk of malnutrition and starvation.
Those 13 million mums, dads, children and grandparents are probably praying for rain too.
We are so lucky we don’t have to.
Unlike some larger NGOS, Practical Action is not an aid agency, and we do not deliver emergency relief. Instead, we believe passionately that it is only through long-term development work using appropriate technology that poor and vulnerable communities can become more resilient, and the desperate tragedy of drought and famine can be avoided. You can support our work here.
No Comments » | Add your commentWalking for water made its mark
I’ve never entertained the idea of getting a tattoo…until last year, at the age of 33, when I went to Mandera in north east Kenya during the height of the drought.
What I saw there shocked me.
People walking an average of 20 miles a day in 40°C just to go and fetch water. And this journey is one fraught with danger. Water is in such short supply that violence regularly breaks out at the few remaining wells – with many innocent women and children wounded or killed.
Most of the time, the water they get isn’t even clean. It’s water like this from a polluted, dirty, hand-dug well that’s infested with all kinds of visible things…worms, tadpoles, bugs:
Unsafe water like this kills 4,000 children every day…and it will continue. With climate change, the incidence of drought is increasing. People will continue to take desperate measures to get water – any water.
Practical Action is reducing the trek that people have to make to fetch water by rehabilitating shallow wells dug into seasonal river beds and building sand filters to purify the water further.
I spoke to Nadifa at one of the rehabilitated shallow wells who said she now only has to walk two kilometres to fetch water and feels much safer.
“The well helps my family so much. The water is good because it is fresh. I can drink it and use it for my cooking”.
This month, the UN announced that the international target to halve the number of people who do not have access to safe drinking water has been met, five years before the 2015 deadline.
Yet 783 million people still live without safe water.
Today, Thursday 22 March, is World Water Day – a day of the year when we spotlight the global safe water and sanitation issue and the collective efforts underway to get solutions to those struggling and in need.
The issue has made a permanent impression on me. So, here it is:
It’s my own way of honouring a cause that is close to my heart. Any nervousness or reasons to not get it done are easily overcome by the reminder that at the end of the day, I have clean water to drink.
What has made a permanent impression on you?
5 Comments » | Add your commentCamels – Helping people escape the drought in East Africa
Intrigued by ‘A Field Manual of Camel Diseases’ (on special offer at our bookshop www.developmentbookshop.com) I decided to find out why camels are so important.
As I write, East Africa is in the grip of crippling drought. Nearly 70% of households in Mandera (one of the areas in Kenya where we work) are receiving food aid. With climate change the incidence of drought is increasing and in many ways becoming a fact of life. But relief aid is only a palliative solution and at Practical Action we understand the vital importance of long term sustainable solutions – solutions that give people hope and build ability to cope.
This is where camels come in. There are 1.8 million camels in the North Eastern Province of Kenya. They are used for milk and meat, for transport and power. Someone’s just told me the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation regard camel milk as a super food as it has three times more vitamin C than cow’s milk and even in drought conditions camels produce between 3 and 5 times as much milk as cows. But this traditional way of earning a living and feeding families in drought prone areas is being overlooked – in part because camels are not being managed and looked after properly. Preventable and curable conditions such as mastitis and internal parasite infestation account for more than 50% of diseases killing these vitally needed and precious animals. Just one reason why this book is so important.
Camels can make a significant contribution to food security and child nutrition – even in situations of extreme drought.
I never knew that, now I do – our field manual really is important.
No Comments » | Add your commentTime to act to alleviate food insecurity
2011 Blog Action Day on 16 October – World Food Day – is, naturally, themed around food
World Food Day gives us an opportunity to not only reflect but also to rethink how we can, in our capacities, feed the world.
Feeding the world is one of today’s biggest challenges for many countries, especially in the greater Horn of Africa where more than 11 million people face starvation. In recent months, millions went hungry and countless malnourished children died. Many are still without food today. This was, and still is, without doubt, a major world crisis. In Kenya, nomadic pastoralists living in the fragile northern parts of the country are particularly at risk. Women, the old and children under five are worst affected.
The region has suffered from more intense recurring drought and flooding over the years. The affected populations who have witnessed the negative effects now associated with climate change know the consequences of these natural and man-made disasters. The levels of malnutrition and famine have reached their highest percentages.
The distressing experiences of their tales haunt those who dare spare some time to ‘feel them’. One such statement is from Kausa, a 50-year-old grandmother, we met in Elwak, northern Kenya, two months ago.
“As a woman, it hurts to see my children cry with hunger,” she said. “It’s more painful as a mother to tell them that I don’t have any food to give them.”
The sheer need of this situation only confirms my belief that Practical Action’s long term development work, which is reaching out to these vulnerable communities to increase their resilience to climate change and drought, is needed now more than ever.
We know that pastoralism will be seriously affected by climate change but on the degree and locations of these impacts we are less certain. But unless we put in place adaptation to climate change, many millions of the poorest already negatively affected by food insecurity and other challenges will continue to suffer the most.
Tackling food insecurity/hunger requires more than just increasing livestock production and farm outputs. We should all aim to produce sufficient food to supply the full nutritional requirements of the human species whilst attempting to live in harmony with the natural environment and its finite resources.
Simple calculated steps on the choice and use of appropriate technologies can, and always will, yield good results. A vital step is to empower these vulnerable communities and groups to take control and increase their own food production. And to do this, we have to combine the best of all approaches to sustainably to improve the food security situation.
For the pastoralists, whose mainstay is best suited for the fragile ecosystems they inhabit, it is time to put in place pro-pastoralist policies and interventions that will lead to the industry being not only profitable, but competitive, more resilient, better able to provide environmental benefits and give greater choice, innovation and value to producers for them not to rely on relief aid.
Sustaining the above wishes will of course require huge commitment and continued effort by all stakeholders over the long haul. There are no quick fixes. But we know that we can defeat hunger by investing in: interventions that improve food production, marketing and the market systems, and their supply chains that in the long term will empower them to produce more and earn an income that can be used to cater for basic healthcare, education to ensure food security in the future.
2 Comments » | Add your commentInvesting in agriculture to alleviate hunger
2011 Blog Action Day on 16 October – World Food Day – is, naturally, themed around food
Food is a basic human need. Yet for many people across the world, this basic human need is not that easy to come by.
Putting food on the table is a struggle for small scale farmers and pastoralists with little income or natural resources. It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it, that the very people who grow food or rear livestock for food are those that go hungry? Why? Lack of agricultural knowledge and investment, little access to credit, little access to markets, growing competition for land and price volatility.
What is more, where the climate is changing year on year, there are no spare resources to adjust or adapt practices in order to reduce the impacts of droughts, floods and other extreme weather events.
Mothers queue for hours at Mandera District Hospital to get food
I was recently in Mandera, north western Kenya, where I came face-to-face with the terrible reality of drought, and the devastating impact it’s having on families and children.
People hadn’t eaten for days, yet when asked what they needed, not one person said they needed food. In fact, any food aid they received went to their livestock. What they needed was rain so they could grow their crops and feed their livestock.
So it was good to see Practical Action working with agricultural communities to cope with drought by helping to develop drought resistant crops, protect livestock and conserve precious water.
High up in the Andes in Peru, the temperature can drop to as low as -35 degrees centigrade and there is practically no vegetation. Practical Action works with communities to grow food that will survive these harsh conditions.
And in flood prone places like Bangladesh where it’s impossible to grow crops, Practical Action has developed a technology to allow farmers to grow food on flooded land.
We work with entire market systems, often focusing on helping poor farmers and producers to build their abilities to engage with people they do business with and get better deals for themselves and their communities.
Investing in farmers and pastoralists like this ensures not only can they put food on the table but they can also earn more money – working themselves out of poverty.
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Working to Save Pastoralists’ Livelihood in Mandera
Mandera residents are among the hardest hit by the current drought. However, their plight has not been highlighted as much compared to other areas like Turkana. As a result, many pastoralist families continue to suffer.
Able bodied men and women, who in the recent months were proud owners of healthy animals, have lost a majority if not all their animals due to the drought. The Ministry of Livestock estimates the losses to between 45-60%. The loss of their animals – the main source of their livelihoods and income – has reduced many to internally displaced persons living in makeshift camps where relief supplies are normally distributed by the government or humanitarian agencies.
During our recent trip to the area I could not help but notice the loss of pride and the level of devastation in the eyes of these pastoralists. Their experiences are moving. It is overwhelming. I can only imagine the explanations the men and the women give to their children when they are no longer able to provide food to them.
“What needs to be done to secure the pastoralists’ sources of livelihood?,” asked Tom Kimani, a Kenyan journalist.
As an organization we believe that although time is extremely short and the needs are great, efforts by all stakeholders to save the lives of many pastoralist and their generations should not stop at providing emergency aid. Relief is important but not enough. We must move beyond it to help these impoverished regions escape from extreme poverty and become more resilient to the changes in weather associated with climate change. The use of appropriate technology to address the challenge cannot be overemphasized.
Despite the above state of affairs, all is not lost. Our mission came across healthy herds of animals at watering points in Garba Xuoley, Borehole eleven and in Mandera township thanks to one of the current emergency interventions by Practical Action in the area. The initiative, built on observations that pastoralists share some of the limited relief food supplies with their animals to save their capital asset, has so far given a number of the pastoralists a reason to smile. The organization with support from the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA) and The BROOKE is not only providing the animals with supplementary feeds and concentrates but also providing them with essential animal health services to secure a nucleus of animals capable of surviving the overwhelming effects of the drought.
A pastoralist boy holds one of their remaining sheep in Elwak
“The animals being fed today are descendants of those animals that were secured during the 2005/06 drought period. We are not only grateful but optimistic that the animal feed and the health services will help see a number of our animals to the next rainy season,” said Fatima Mohamed whose herd has been reduced from 120 to 40.
And although the noble initiatives are making a difference in the lives of the animals of poor pastoralists in the area it does not reach all the areas. The rations are not enough. Generosity and speed are of the essence. With your support more can be done to cushion pastoralists’ sources of livelihood.
Veterinary care helps pastoralists cope with drought
Pastoralist communities in Kenya’s arid lands depend on their livestock and their donkeys for income. Basic veterinary care is one of the best ways to protect their animals and pastoralist livelihoods in these areas.
This is especially vital during the drought because weakened animals are at major risk from contagious diseases. But in remote areas such as Mandera in north eastern Kenya, pastoralists are unlikely to have access to veterinary services.
That’s why Practical Action vet Dr Golicha and animal health assistant Abdi Hamid, with funding from animal welfare charity The Brooke, have been training and mentoring 110 community-based animal health workers (CBAHWs) in the area in an effort to bridge this gap.
Dr Golicha from Practical Action (right) with some of the community based animal health workers
What are CBAHWs?
CBAHWs are predominantly herders themselves from pastoral areas who live and move with their animals in search of water and pasture.
I spoke to some of them at a watering point near Mandera town where pastoralists bring their livestock to drink and load their donkeys up with water to transport back home.
CBAHW Adan Ibrahim told me that they provide animal healthcare services to members of their communities. They diagnose and treat common diseases and play a major role in disease reporting, surveillance and community mobilisation. They contact Dr Golicha and Abdi Hamid if there’s anything that comes up which they are unable to treat.
I watched the team treat donkeys for worms and give them vitamin supplements aimed at reducing opportunistic diseases and infections associated with drought.
“My donkey is vital because it carries water from this shallow well 16 kilometres back home.”
Pastoralist Adan Abdirahiman with his donkey
Pastoralist Adan Abdirahiman said many of their livestock have died and donkeys are their only hope of earning money – through collecting and selling firewood and water:
“My donkey is vital because it carries water from this shallow well 16 kilometres back home. We are grateful for the help that Practical Action and The Brooke have given us – drugs for our donkeys and animal welfare advice to ensure we’re not overloading them – this is especially important during this drought when they have to carry water over longer distances and are more likely to suffer from health problems.”
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Drought devastates pastoralists
A pastoralist girl holds on to one of their family's weak animals
The pastoralist way of life in Kenya, is in jeopardy. There is less rain and growing pressures on fewer areas of pasture and water sources.
This means the animals that pastoralists depend on for their livelihoods have no food or water. They are either too weak to sell or are dying. Pastoralists therefore can’t get an income and can’t feed themselves or their families.
Our drive through the vast rangelands of northern Kenya reveal s the devastating effects of the current drought to pastoralist families in these areas.
The most affected are the most vulnerable groups including children under five, breast feeding mothers, the elderly, and people who have lost their livestock. They cannot travel to the nearest relief distribution centres. And the humanitarian agencies bringing food relief cannot reach these people in remote areas due to the poor road and communication network. They are on their own.
But as both humanitarian and government agencies are busy fundraising and using the available resources to reach the most vulnerable, this is the right time for development organizations to put in place measures to address the current challenges in the long term. It is time to act, plan and ensure that long term development interventions are implemented effectively to bring back the pride of pastoralist families.
Practical Action’s drought preparedness project in Turkana is a good example of what needs to be done to ensure pastoralists cope with the negative effects of drought. The project works with stakeholders in the livestock and water sectors to supply essential animal health services and safe clean water to the communities. This has helped the pastoralists ensure their livestock are healthy and have enough water and pasture in dry spells.
No Comments » | Add your commentA long walk to water
We’ve all read about how Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. But have you ever read about how people in Mandera, north eastern Kenya, can walk a round trip of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) to fetch water?
For someone who only has to walk a few paces to get clean running water, this is incomprehensible; especially when you consider that these people have to walk this distance in temperatures of up to 40˚C. I almost consider trying it just to see if I can make it and appreciate the suffering that these people have to endure.
But this journey is one fraught with danger. Water is in such short supply that violence regularly breaks out at the few remaining wells – with many innocent women and children wounded or killed.
Practical Action is reducing the trek that people have to make to fetch water by rehabilitating shallow wells dug into seasonal river beds.
I spoke to a woman at one of the rehabilitated shallow wells who said she now only has to walk two kilometres to fetch water and feels much safer. While I was there, I was told by several pastoralists that the trough next to the shallow well gives their livestock easy access to water and as a result, is helping to keep them alive.
Patoralist Adan Ibrahim said: “The rehabilitation of these wells and the building of new wells is crucial to the livestock because they will always have water. This will ensure that they survive the drought until the next rains come.”
It’s clear that amongst the complex solutions we’re introducing to this area, this simple technology is a life-saving answer.
This is why it’s so critical for us to dig more wells and rehabilitate more wells. 90,000 households across Mandera county depend on them.
Find out more about our shallow well work.
No Comments » | Add your commentThe future of pastoralism
Emergency relief camps in north eastern Kenya are full of pastoralists whose livelihoods have been destroyed as a result of recurring droughts.
The droughts have decimated their livestock. Now many of them have been forced to forsake their traditional culture.
Kausa with one of her remaining grandchildren
We visited a refugee camp in El Wak where I met Kausa, a 50-year-old grandmother. After the rains failed and drought killed her livestock, she was forced to leave her home and walk more than 50 miles to El Wak to get help. By the time she arrived at the camp four days later, two of her grandchildren had died. She said:
“My husband ran away when the animals died. There was no water, no food. First the cows died, then the goats and the camels. I knew we had to leave. Everyone was weak from hunger and thirst.”
She now depends on handouts in El Wak as she’s unable to provide food for her remaining ten children and six grandchildren.
Former pastoralist Fatima outside her make-shift grass hut in an emergency relief camp.
Another grandmother, Fatima, aged 56, told me that when she lost her herd of 200 goats she knew that life as a pastoralist as over. She said:
“I know I cannot go back and I will now carry firewood on my back to earn money to feed my family because there is not enough food here to feed everybody.”
The pain and suffering that I saw here made me so deeply sad but also frustrated. There is aid coming into the Mandera region. Indeed, the guest house that we were staying at was also hosting people from humanitarian aid organisations.
People collect food aid from a distribution centre
But this is food aid they are bringing for people, not the livestock they depend on. Yes, these people are hungry and need food – I can’t disagree with that. But this is a short-term survival solution. They cannot live on handouts forever.
In drought-affected regions of Kenya, 25-50% of livestock is expected to be dead by January. In parts of Mandera County, 65% of cattle are estimated to have died.
Unless decisive action is taken to help these nomadic herders adapt even further to the extremes of climate change, they will no longer be able to sustain their way of life. There must be a huge programme of investment to enable pastoralists to cope with climate change.
Practical Action is working with communities on a variety of projects such as:
- rehabilitating water structures such as shallow wells
- improving the market for livestock
- supporting animal health services working with authorities and organisations on managing drought situations
- improving access to information services on health, water, vaccinations, seasonal forecasts and technology
- linking them to other emergency service providers.
You can find out more about these projects by following my blog.
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