A Somali woman who arrived in recent weeks at the Dadaab camp in northeastern Kenya walks with her child to a new extension of the world’s largest refugee settlement. Swelled with tens of thousands of recent arrivals fleeing drought in Somalia, the camp has been unable to absorb the newest arrivals. Photo: Paul Jeffrey, ACT Aliance
A July 27, 2011 interview by Chris Herlinger with Sammy Matua, Church World Service staff member based in the agency’s East Africa regional office in Nairobi.
CH: Drought has not been uncommon in the Eastern Horn of Africa. But how is this current event different from previous ones?
SM: In earlier droughts, even ones that were extended for some time, there was usually short-term relief at some point – the drought could be broken up by some periods of rain, even short periods. In this case, the lack of rain has been continuous – with no letup. That’s a key difference.
But there’s also a difference now because the lack of rain has affected the country’s farming areas, causing a food shortage. So the effects of the drought are being felt in urban areas. Poor urban dwellers cannot afford the high priced-food that is now available in the stores because of the short supply of food from the food- producing areas. A 90-kilo bag of corn has risen from US $27 to $56.
CH: Are you talking about “short rains”? And when did short and long rains typically used to occur?
SM: In a normal year, short rains would come through in October or November while the long rains come in April, May or June. In the past, when one rainy season failed to show up, communities could cope with that and look forward for the next seasonal rains.
However, what has happened in the recent years is that this pattern is no longer predictable and the frequency of back-to-back episodes of failed seasonal rains have not only undermined the familiar traditional coping strategies of communities, but also over stretched their resilience beyond their adaptive capacity.
CH: As you know, there has long been criticism of how aid agencies respond to famine situations – for example, how inappropriate aid is often provided? How does CWS hope to avoid that?
SM: CWS has being working in this region long enough to appreciate the cultural sensitivities and preferences of different communities.
Food aid should also be provided in an empowering way, so that it does not continue a cycle of dependency. So, yes, for a time, emergency food assistance is needed, but we need to move a step further and support recovery and rehabilitation interventions that can reverse the impact of climate change as well.
We do need to be aware that there are some actions needed now, immediately, because the situation is dire. But those actions need to be appropriate and restorative, for example, for children, lactating and pregnant mothers who have very high malnutrition levels. They need sufficiently nutritious food and supplementation now that their bodies can absorb and use to reverse their critical states and prevent permanent developmental damage.
Otherwise, the future for a severely malnourished infant or child in a Horn of Africa kind of crisis is somber.
If you provide communities with the skills, materials and means to conserve water and have them construct water retaining structures that can slow down water runoffs whenever there is a shower or storm, that will go a long way in reversing the impacts of the drought.
Sammy Matua Photo: CWS
CH: Can you say more about the specifics of the plan CWS has in place — what the actions are or will be to assist rehabilitation, agriculture adaptation projects, or specific steps planned to mitigate future crises, be they rural or even urban family gardens or water solutions?
SM: There is no doubt humanitarian workers will have to ‘up their game’ this time round if we have to reverse the recurring famine crisis in Africa. Maybe this is the time to pause and take a big breath and take stock of the best food-security practices that have worked and figure out how to ‘scale up’ these tested practices.
There is no need of re-inventing the wheel. There is, however, a need more widely to bridge the gap between research and practice. For example, what are the already researched adaptive agricultural food producing methods that can ensure household food security? CWS-East Africa is already doing this and closing this gap between research and practice to improve the food security and livelihood diversification for food insecure communities in Africa.
CH: How?
SM: In a number of ways: Household and communal drip irrigation agriculture systems; providing farmers with appropriate drought adaptive seeds for planting; mobile kitchen gardens for household vegetable supply; adaptive animal husbandry strategies for pastoralists through adaptive fodder production methods — re-seeding fields to increase soil grass or vegetative cover and indirectly enhance water percolation whenever there is a storm or shower.
Also: communities hay baling to harvest pasture and to store for cattle during dry periods.
Through our livelihood program, CWS is helping women and youth to diversify their farming livelihoods by supporting them to engage in commerce and generate income to buy food from the market.
We’re also involved in poultry keeping as alternative source of income and a source of protein at the household level. We’re assisting communities to develop water harvesting structures including sand dams, rock water catchments and roof water harvesting in schools systems. Similarly, small community irrigation schemes.
We are providing drought adaptive disaster risk reduction skills and strategies — a mix of both scientific and indigenous knowledge of the communities — to “upscale” drought mitigation and adaptation measures.
CH: What’s the most important thing people outside of Kenya and the region need to know about this crisis?
SM: It’s very clear. People need to know that the impact of climate change is here with us and it is hitting the most vulnerable people in the world the hardest.
CH: What does “providing food aid in an empowering way” look like? “Here is a bag of corn, a bag of seeds to plant later, and an invitation to a neighborhood session on how to grow a backyard garden and store water?”
SM: That’s it exactly.
CH: What about tree and other arid-zone scrub planting to avert erosion and water run off?
SM: CWS is already engaging communities in planting of trees and re-seeding grass and fodder to increase soil cover in order to enhance water percolation and reduce soil erosion (environmental destruction), because whenever there is a storm, it is extremely violent and leaves behind a trail of destruction. Probably these are some effects of climate change.
We need to help communities to take care of the soil which in return will grow the food.
Lastly CWS-East Africa is deliberately driving the youth agenda in all our programs so that this critical mass of people — 33 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of youth of between 10-24 yrs old — is on the radar of CWS development program in Africa.
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