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G21 AFRICA - Maji Ni Uhai/Water is Life: Moraa Gitaa produces the first article on your World's Magazine's Focus Issue this year, water.
Mombasa, KENYA - " ... A person does not walk very far or very fast on one leg. How then can we expect half of the people to develop a nation? Yet the reality is that women are usually left aside when development needs are discussed." - Tanzania's First President the Late Julius K. Nyerere
Moraa Gitaa 'Maji Ni Uhai' is simple Swahili which, translated into English, means 'Water Is Life'
As recently as a couple of months ago, when reports were first filed by journalists to newsrooms that - as they traversed the Northern frontiers of Kenya - they were met by plaintiff cries of 'Piche ci!' Piche ci!' which is the Rendille dialect for 'Give me water!' Give me water'! from thirsty children, most Kenyans in Christmas moods brushed off the stories as pure sensationalism.
Reading the dailies, one was again tempted to assume it as hearsay, until dismaying and heart-rending live television broadcasts beamed into our living rooms images of corpses and visibly dehydrated, emaciated and malnourished children; the elderly and women with babies strapped to their backs queuing for the precious commodity as all dams had dried up, bringing the tragedy home. These unfortunate people on our television screens had traversed over 40 kilometers, together with their dying livestock.
The disturbing images brought to mind the 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the malnourished Ethiopian child crawling to a UN relief food camp miles away with the vulture hovering overhead waiting for the child to die.
Concerned drivers of passenger buses plying the famine-/drought-stricken Northeastern Frontiers of Garissa and Wajir in Kenya have resorted to carrying water to help save the lives of the famished residents along the 350 kilometers of rugged terrain. The people do not even have water to cook the relief food given to them by humanitarian organizations.
To handle the more or less perennial crisis, suggestions from stakeholders have included short-term measures like establishing a relief commission with authority and responsibility to monitor and filter information from early warning systems.
What is a crime against humanity if not a search for water by thirsty Kenyans when the Government is spending 878 million on four-wheel, top of the range fuel guzzlers for Government officials? The Government is supposed to wake up, smell the coffee and realize that it is their duty and responsibility to make the provision of clean water to all a priority.
Water, like the issue of land, is a crucial natural resource component that is necessary in the process of producing/creating wealth and thus plays an important role in eradicating poverty.In most communities, women have proved to be competent custodians of family and community property and also managers of water projects, which is a symbol of empowerment.
At the moment, I'm working in the Monitoring & Evaluation department of CRSP (Coastal Rural Support Programme-Kenya) a project of the Aga Khan Foundation, which is dedicated to attaining sustainable and equitable improvement in the livelihoods of poor households by stimulating economic growth and social development in the programme area. From data I've been entering into a database, the implication is that if the number of hours women spent working were to be translated into Kenya Shillings most of them would be millionaires. But we are not.
As an integrated development programme, CRSP works in a number of thematic areas, including infrastructure, crops and livestock, education, social organization, health and enterprise development in Kwale and Kilifi districts of Coast Province. Amongst the Programmes success stories is the establishment and commissioning of water pans, dams and SFR's (Small Farm Reservoirs.) enabling the community to have easier access to water for the much-favored drip irrigation.
Living Water International, a US Christian Charity Organization, has also sunk boreholes in the highland parts of Kenya including Mai Maihiu.
Rural women spend a lot of time looking for water. The biggest nightmare for any woman is fetching water downstream. Sometimes it requires two trips of close to 20 kilometers to the river carrying 20 litre jerry cans: a back-breaking task.
In the Coastal hinterlands of Kenya, women are slowly but surely taking charge of water resources and have become custodians of the valuable commodity - even though it has sometimes meant jump-starting abandoned boreholes which had been sunk by colonial masters before independence.
The case studies of NGOs intervening for the poor in order to ease availability of water translate into time saved from walking long distances to the nearest source.
Crucial questions remain. Who has control over water sources, facilities, resources and supply? Who has the responsibility to maintain water facilities and supply? Lastly, is it affordable to the poor households?
The recent demographic report released by the Central Bureau of Statistics, costing the Kenyan Government 650 million Shillings and entitled 'Geographic Dimensions of Well Being in Kenya: Who and Where Are the Poor?' has probably been shelved by most readers to gather dust, joining 'Falling Apart: Facts and figures on inequality in Kenya,' a report by The Society for International Development of October 2004 which ranked Kenya as being among the most unequal countries in the world.Unequal distribution of power and resources has resulted in poverty, injustices and food insecurity. Proper techniques of water harvesting and irrigation investment coupled with improvement in access to safe drinking water could mean better lives and productivity.
African climates are vulnerable to drought and instability. Coupled with our rain-fed agriculture, vulnerability to climate instability is increasing due to long-term global climate change.
The link between deforestation and reduction of rainfall, on one hand, and the drying up of streams and rivers, on the other, is an undeniable fact on which consensus has long been reached. The felling of endangered species of trees for charcoal burning means no rain and thus no water.
Indigenous forests are important because they play diverse roles:
Bearing in mind the recurrent water shortage and that ASALS (Arid and Semi Arid Lands) constitute about 70% of the land area in Kenya, government agencies, NGOs, research institutes and the private sector should seek long-term solutions instead of mere rhetoric and quick-fix-it band aids.
- Conserving endemic biological diversity (i.e.: the wide variety of species of plants, animals, birds, insects and micro-organisms) and providing habitat for the species.
- In the long run the forest floor accumulates a lot of leaves and debris, which decompose to form a thick, expansive layer of organic matter, which facilitates reception, moisture retention and conservation of rainwater.
- They serve as water reservoirs that recharge the underground water table and regulate the flow of water in streams and rivers encouraging soil fertility.
- They slow the rate of water run-off and thereby prevent soil erosion, in turn reducing silting and sediment load in river water.
Retrogressive cultural practices, which relegate women to peripheral roles in the community and deny them places in society, should be abandoned.
Scenarios have been encountered where women and girls are always the last to eat and drink water at the behest of male members in family settings and are hence normally the first to starve in cases of food insecurity.
Such demeaning practices will be defeated only when Africa becomes serious in granting rights to women, honoring and entrenching them.
A couple of weeks ago, the Minister for Water, Honorable Mutua Katuku, while touring Ndakaini dam in Thika noted that the water in the reservoir was low due to lack of rainfall and he said that Nairobi's main water reservoir will dry up in 5 months if the current drought persists. To further stress the point, the chairman of Nairobi Water Company, Mr. Kabando Wa Kabando, said water rationing had already started in parts of the metropolitan city, urging consumers to use the commodity sparingly.
Since the historic United Nations Millennium Summit meeting in September 2000, when leaders endorsed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) it's now five years but, from the above incident, it seems like Kenya is nowhere near attaining MDGs as articulated in the Kenyan government's Development Agenda vis-a-vis the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERS) for the period 2003 to 2007. The ERS is founded on the four pillars of rapid growth with macroeconomic stability, rehabilitation and expansion of infrastructure in human capital and strengthening the institutions of governance.
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs (Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the MDG's - also voted by Time magazine as one of the world's most influential leaders) has produced a book The End of Poverty - How we can make it happen in our lifetime. His take is that Africa's extreme poverty is not due, primarily, to bad governance or leaders per se, nor primarily to exploitation by the West, but due to environmental factors like drought, geographic isolation, poor infrastructure and the extraordinary disease burden. These, he believes, are the major culprits in ensuring that donor funds DO NOT effectively reach the poor for whom they are intended. At the Professors suggestion, the UN has bestowed upon Kisumu (a Kenyan lakeside city) the honor of declaring it the First World Millennium City because of its rich resources, good infrastructure and lake transport.
It beats logic why, then, when we have part of the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria and various other large water bodies in Kenya, should we perpetually suffer from perennial water shortages.
In Kenya, as the Ministry of Water moves towards embracing water privatization, let's hope that women will be incorporated in the management of water firms in the cities, town Councils and municipalities. To others it might seem like a small step for women but, in reality, it is a giant hop, skip and jump for humanity. After all, it has been said that to educate a woman is to educate a whole nation and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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