Making a Difference in Turkana

The Turkana district of northern Kenya is one of the most inhospitable natural environments on Earth. Amidst the vast Rift Valley, home to some of our earliest recorded ancestors, the colourful Turkana people work hard to eke out a living in temperatures exceeding 90oF all year round.

Severe droughts often lead to the widespread death of livestock and the wilting of vital crops which form the mainstay of the population’s food supply and income.

Within this harsh and often neglected setting SCIAF is working with Lodwar diocese which plays a major role in helping the local population provide the necessities of life. From the district’s main town of Lodwar the diocese stretches 450 kilometres from north to south and 200 kilometres from Lake Turkana in the east to the Ugandan border in the West.

The diocese’s development role in the area dates back to the provision of food and healthcare in the mid-1960s. It has since mushroomed and now encompasses education, both primary and secondary, health, including a hospital, dispensaries, mobile clinics, and HIV/Aids counselling, justice and peace covering women’s issues, as well as projects for street children, and children with disabilities. Around 70% of healthcare provision in the whole district is provided by Lodwar diocese with 30% taken up by the Kenyan government.

To help administer the work across the region each activity is managed within larger departments such as health, education, and justice and peace. All the departments come together at least three times a year to help identify problems and plan future work.

Father Manuel Hernandez, originally from Spain, is the Financial Director of Lodwar diocese and has been working in northern Kenya with the Turkana people for the last 17 years. Whilst co-ordinating activities throughout the diocese provides great challenges, he said, there are also benefits:

“Our work in the diocese is divided across the district into departments with representatives from each region coming together three times a year to plan projects together. We recently had requests from three villages to set up bakeries but instead of just doing ad hoc initiatives like this we set up a study group to see if the projects could be rolled out across the diocese.”

Another benefit of this strategic approach is cost savings when buying supplies in bulk. Father Hernadez continues:

“We train women and groups from all around the area, buy materials in bulk, distribute them, and make co-operatives so that we save money. For the farms, when we buy seeds, instead of buying for one place we buy for the whole diocese to optimise whatever resources we have. Equally, when we buy the medicines we don’t buy for one dispensary - we buy for the whole area and distribute them so that it is much cheaper.”

The diocese also works with the government’s Ministry of Agriculture which periodically sends representatives to the area to give talks and practical training on farming for the people in the district. It is within this field that Father Hernandez has more to offer than most. As a boy he was brought up on a farm and has transferred much of his agricultural and animal husbandry knowledge to initiatives in the area which are now being used more widely by the community to generate food and income.

A farm project in Lodwar pilots new crops such as napier grass and sugarcane to test their suitability for growing in the extremely hot dry climate. If the crops are successful they are then transferred to other farms. The pilot project, set up six years ago, also breeds a range of animals including cows, goats, and turkeys using zero grazing. Father Hernandez is currently working to introduce a new breed of goat which produces a higher yield of milk. The produce and livestock generated on the farm are passed onto the community, together with the knowledge of how to farm the animals themselves.

When a new crop or farming technique is introduced the local population often copy the ideas without further outside assistance. Father Hernandez said:

“In the area around the project there are farms that have been created by the community without us having to do anything. By looking at the example of the pilot farm there have been many others created by the people themselves. Once people saw the farms working, others started their own.”

SCIAF is also helping to develop an innovative land reclamation programme to create new farm land. Stone-filled wire cages (gabions) are placed in the river running through Lodwar, at right-angles to the bank. These slow the flow of water and collect silt which over a six to twelve month period builds up into new fertile land suitable for crops. The land is then divided into plots and allocated to families in the area through a local women’s group. The new farms enable families to grow maize, sorghum, sugarcane, cowpea, mangoes, guavas, limes, and oranges. Any additional produce is sold on the market to provide a small income for the family. To date five separate areas of new farmland have been created using this technology.

Willimena Asekon Lokalei, the Women’s Group Co-ordinator in Lodwar, said the land reclamation scheme started out as a secondary benefit of protecting the river banks from erosion. She said:

“This project was started in 2004 to protect some of the institutions of the diocese based on the banks of the river such as the Saint Teresa centre which is used for meetings and workshops and Saint Kevin’s secondary school. So the aim of the gabions was initially to protect the institutions so they wouldn’t be washed away by the river. However, when the gabions were first put down more land was created for people to cultivate so during 2004 we started identifying families in surrounding villages who could be given this new land.”

Williamena, a Turkana by birth, helps to mobilise the community and identify families that can benefit from the scheme. When new land is created Willamena holds discussions with the villagers who then nominate ten families. The land is then divided into ten equal plots and a number is chosen by each family to determine which section they receive. So far, families from five villages have benefited. The communities also help construct the gabions so they are involved in the project from start to finish.

In a place where generating enough food and money to support a family is difficult at the best of times, this project is making a big difference to many. Willamena continued:

“This project was needed because of the shortage of food (caused by droughts). For the last ten years we have been getting relief supplies but not everyone is given this. And even if they do get some he or she will still have something extra from the farm for themselves. Our hopes for the future are to make these farms sustainable so the people can continue work on them and help them survive in the future.”

Whilst the challenges of living in one of the world’s harshest climates will continue, the impressive work of Lodwar diocese and SCIAF across the Turkana district of northern Kenya will no doubt continue to play an important role in that future.

Val Morgan works at SCIAF and just returned from northern Kenya following a visit to see how the money donated by the organisation’s supporters is helping those most in need.

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27th September 2007