|
Catch 22
Jenine Langrish, a trustee of Excellent Development, relates this vivid description of her recent trip to Kenya.
In the unrelenting heat of the midday sun, we drive along a red, dusty track, past field after field of dead maize. Amongst the faded stalks, some of the more drought-resistant pigeon peas have survived. Their green leaves appear to give some cause for hope, but they will provide no food for six months, and may die too if the much needed rains do not arrive within the next couple of months. We are in Kevanda, a small village east of Kibwezi, a sizeable staging post on the tourist route from Nairobi to the National Parks of Tsavo and the nautical attractions of Mombasa. Few non-Kenyans ever venture off the beaten tracks, and so our arrival is met with some curiosity by the local children. Excellent Development Kenya and its partners are helping the community here to build an ambitious irrigation scheme, which will bring desperately needed water, from an Excellent Development dam 11 kilometers away, to their farms. In the long term, this will enable the farmers to save their crops in times of drought, but in the short term there is a pressing need for food. The work is heavy and physical. In the midday heat, a group of women bend from the waist to shovel and sort stones. Meanwhile the men mix cement with water, sand, and stones to make concrete, which is then carried along the line to fill a wooden frame. Once it has set today’s labours will have produced another few meters of a concrete aqueduct to channel the water across a small valley. Elsewhere other workers from the village are digging channels in the sandy soil to enable the water to continue its journey. Later we meet with Mutio Moki, an octogenarian farmer standing in front of a field of brown maize stumps. “Our stomachs are empty” she tells us. It’s the ultimate catch 22. The villagers are willing to work hard for weeks to improve their chances of feeding their families in future. However, with little food left, they will shortly become too weak to continue such exhausting work. One of my questions before I came to Kenya, was whether it is right for Excellent Development, which is a development charity, rather than an emergency relief organisation, to offer food for work. Our long term aim remains to give people food security, not food handouts: to give them the means to self-sufficiency rather than dependence on others. In this small village, a few miles off the beaten tourist track, I found the answer. The communities with which we work are so keen to achieve a better life for themselves and their families that they are willing to do gruelling manual work 6 days a week in sweltering heat to achieve it. But sometimes this is not enough, and they will sometimes need a helping hand from us to survive in the meantime. Note: An estimated 10m people in Kenya are facing starvation as a result of post election violence, poor harvests, low rainfall and the rising cost of food and fertilisers. In Ukambani, the area in which we work, around 80% of the population are at risk. Excellent Development is currently planning to provide food for work for many of the communities with which we work at a cost of up to 30m Kenyan Shillings. We estimate that for each person who receives food for work, around 7 children or members of their extended family and community will also benefit. Excellent UK wants to raise £20,000 as soon as possible to help provide food for work in Kenya - Click here to learn more.
news summary... |
