On March 21, 2000, a two-hour water battle took place between monkeys and villagers in Kenya's Mandera district. The problems started at the end of the dry season, when the villagers were collecting water from three rescue water tanks. The thirsty monkeys, who could no longer find water in the dried-up river bed, attacked the women. They had no choice but to run away. Naturally, the villagers formed up for a retaliatory attack and the 8 monkeys paid for their thirst with their lives. Similar battles for water are fought by people in Kenya, for example, with elephants or among themselves. Imagine a group of guys, armed with machetes and shovels, traveling from the more remote semi-arid areas of the lower reaches of the rivers to the foothills of Mount Kenya to destroy and dig irrigation systems. Local residents built them (often illegally) to divert river water into their own gardens. It is a reaction and at the same time an act of desperation of the inhabitants of the lower reaches of the rivers for long periods of drought. Unfortunately, such "actions" often lead to loss of life. If drought and crop failure are accompanied by a growing population, unemployment, lack of funds for anything, but also so-called tribalism (loyalty to one's own tribe), conflicts over water, or hunger and food shortages are an irreversible reality. This is also why, according to many experts, the fair distribution of river water for irrigation needs is a key challenge to achieving peace and food security in However, the solutions lie or flow from another source: rainwater.
Retention of rainwater
Since rivers are an unreliable source of water due to their seasonal nature, up to 80% of the country's agriculture depends on rainwater. However, due to uneven spatial and temporal distribution, even rainwater is not a reliable partner for farmers. According to several experts, who give both positive and negative examples and case studies, the unequivocal future of the entire region of sub-Saharan Africa is the thousand-year-old, but minimally used, method of collecting and storing rainwater. This method has the potential not only for solving or preventing conflicts over water. It is at the same time the cheapest and most important method by which it is possible to solve several social, economic and environmental problems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Corn and beans are not everything
We emphasize this method of agricultural land management in the framework of the Human in Danger project, aimed at increasing food security in central Kenya. We focused on the young generation, that is, on secondary and elementary school students who have various interest groups in the afternoon. One such circle is devoted to farming, agricultural practices and techniques. However, the problem with most clubs is that the schools do not have enough money to provide practical lessons and the schools do not have any school gardens. This is also why agriculture is considered unattractive among the local young generation. However, the reality is that in a country where the economy stands and falls precisely on this sector, young people from the remote countryside have a much better chance of living a dignified life by producing food and farming than dreaming their millionaire dreams in the slums on the outskirts of big cities.
The effort of the Man in Danger in cooperation with the local organization Seanet International is to restore the clubs of young farmers, to make them more attractive for club members and, through their quality work and positive example, to inspire farmers from around the schools or other children at schools. In the newly built school gardens (most schools are located on huge and often unused plots of land), where there will be large tanks for collecting and storing rainwater, or an irrigation system for its use, male and female students will be educated in new agricultural techniques and practices.
In the 11 schools with which we work, we plan to grow different types of vegetables and run small farms for the school canteen. This will enrich the nutrient-poor diet, which now consists mainly of corn and beans. The majority of the country's agricultural production is focused on these two crops, and therefore many farmers experience burnt crops, hunger and economic hardship during periods of drought. Therefore, we also want to focus on the cultivation of original and more drought-resistant types of crops that were traditional in Africa, but were forgotten for various reasons. As part of the project, we will also build greenhouses in many gardens for growing, for example, tomatoes and other vegetables. Some schools are interested in restoring beehives to produce and sell honey. We will also introduce agricultural practices such as mulching, interannual crop rotation, as prevention against soil depletion and its protection, or planting several types of complementary crops on one field (one plant provides shade, the other provides nutrients and helps each other grow). We assume that all this knowledge and the joy of successfully growing crops (also thanks to the rainwater collection system, its storage and gradual irrigation during the dry season) will motivate young people to apply their new skills in the agricultural sector.
However, our project does not end here. In order to be attractive, agriculture has to be modern and "cool" in a certain way. That is also why we undertook the difficult path of connecting all project schools to the Internet and creating an Internet platform for the exchange of experiences between the male and female students of these schools. Each school will receive approximately 20 computers from the American organization One dollar for life. We will start by educating the teachers, they could then continue to teach their students.
They will also try it at home
A country poor in education is also poor in thoughts and ideas solving its problematic situation. Ordinary people have a hard time accessing information that could improve their lives. There is a lack of positive examples and motivational factors. Poverty and the daily struggle for survival do not even give people time to think about the fact that a small investment or loan can move them to a better standard of living in the long term.
One of the goals of the project is to inspire people from local farms to apply similar agricultural techniques as we implement in local schools. It is gratifying that after the presentation of the idea of the project, there were two teachers and one headmistress in three schools who decided to try something similar at home. The headmistress of Gakawa High School, where we have already started building the school garden, let us hear that she finally knows what she will do when she retires. And we believe that there will be more such people. It can help not only them, but also the entire region.
Lukáš Zorád since January 2011, he has been working in the project of the civil association Human in Danger as a field coordinator of the project to increase food security in central Kenya. The project is implemented in cooperation with the Kenyan partner organization SEANET International and with the financial support of SlovakAid. He writes his observations from the town of Nanyuiki in his blog at http://zorad.blog.sme.sk.
The article was published in the Development Aid - Spring 2011 newsletter. It is published by Platforma mimovládnych rozvojových organizácií (MVRO), which is an association of legal entities - an umbrella organization of 31 (23 regular members and 8 observers) Slovak non-governmental organizations that deal mainly with foreign development and humanitarian aid.