By Clifford Akumu
Nolosio Kuyalo,28, from Namelok village in southern Kenya’s Kajiado County adjusts a worn-out shawl around her shoulders, the fabric frayed from years of use, as she lifts a hoe to dig the ground marked in half-moons.
She hits the ground in unison with other 200 women at Nailepo Conservancy in Amboseli, as they belt out Maasai traditional tunes, amid the relentless heat. She meticulously arranges the dug-out soil to form a mound of earth on the lower side of the half-moon mark.
Sitting under an acacia tree to cool off the oppressive heat is her seven-year-old daughter babysitting her 9-month-old child, who had tagged along.
The women are digging half-moon bunds or water bunds (these are half-moon-shaped basins dug into the earth) that collect water and make moisture available for vegetation for a longer time.
Maasai women groups are rushing against time to make half-moon bunds ahead of the April rains. They then set up grass seed banks in the bunds to grow grass for their livestock and generate income.
Kuyalo, a mother of seven (four girls and three boys), explains that she is the third wife and has to do menial jobs to make ends meet after her husband neglected his financial responsibilities.
Like other women, she and her co-wives resolved to work in the conservancy where they dig out half-moon bunds, earning them a compensation of Ksh150 (about a dollar) per bund. She explains, “This money is what feeds, clothes, and schools my children”.
In this southern part of the country, the effects of climate change, particularly prolonged droughts-have weakened pastoral activities (the region’s mainstay) in recent years.
Lack of water and pasture has exacerbated the situation, causing the displacement of many herders in the region to neighbouring towns leading to heightened conflicts. Kuyalo explains that virtually every aspect of life suffered. Water pans ran dry, fields remained patched, and livestock and wildlife died in their droves.
“I lost most of my herds during last year’s drought. I only have three left to depend on. It isn’t enough,” she tells Science Africa, wiping sweat off her brow.
The community groups have been trained by the Justdiggit organization in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature-Kenya(WWF-K), Big Life Foundation, and Amboseli Land Owners Conservation Association (ALOCA) and aim to keep water on the ground long enough to allow vegetation to re-establish in otherwise degraded lands.
ALOCA is an umbrella body that brings together six conservancies including, Kilitome, Nailepo, Olepolos, Oldeyani, Noolarani, and Osuupuko.
Samuel Jakinda, Programs Manager Amboseli, South Rift Landscapes at Justdiggit organization explains that they are using simple, nature-based solutions to restore vegetation.
“We use rainwater harvesting interventions as our prime tool to restore degraded landscapes. Our interventions slow down the movement of water aiding it to infiltrate the ground,” says Jakinda.
He says this form of water harvesting technique is suitable for slopes. The bunds should be three meters in diameter and gently slope from upstream to half a meter downstream and the soil should be heaped at the lower end.
“We have a technical team that trained the local women and our partners. The first training was on landscape restoration which encompasses several techniques including bund digging, pastoralist-managed natural regeneration,” adds Jakinda.
In Nailepo, where Kuyalo and other women are undertaking restoration, climate change has caused a lot of soil degradation and left the land bare.
Parts of the land are overgrazed, leading to less cattle food and increased competition between people and wildlife for water and food.
Like most women in the project, Sikeita Ene Laisa finally can earn a living and positively contribute to her community.
“Masaai women are used to staying at home, but now, we are empowered. We earn from this project and we use part of the proceeds in table banking, this enables us to keep our children in school all year round,” narrates Ene Laisa, a resident of Nailepo.
Laisa avers that once the grass matures, the community will enjoy a constant source of livestock feed, alleviating the battle of having to buy feeds at exorbitant prices and the trouble of having to trek many kilometres to graze their herds.
The half-moon bunds or Earth Smiles project is a significant step taken by Maasai women to boost the community’s resilience in the face of shifting weather patterns. This, to women like Kuyalo and Ene Laisa, is the birth of a new dawn.
“Since I joined this project, life has never been the same,” notes Kuyalo.
Until she joined the project, Kuyalo only relied on proceeds from selling tomatoes and organic manure from her cattle to meet her needs.
“I used to collect and sell leftover tomatoes from big farms during harvesting. In a good week, I earned about Ksh600 (about US$5),” she recalls. The Maasai women were speaking recently during the Earth Hour celebrations that bring community members and organizations together to inspire each other on how to take care of the earth.
Dr John Kioko, WWF-Kenya Programs Coordinator Amboseli-Chyulu Sub-Landscape says the project aims to restore over 20,000 hectares, a quarter of which will be done directly through soil and water conservation.
The women are also involved in tree growing, conservation agriculture, and holistic grazing management.
“We want to showcase to the world that communities can come together to do something that can better the earth,” says Dr. Kioko, adding that they are looking at initiatives that increase climate resilience but also improve community incomes. The partners are working with 20 women groups within the restoration landscape.
“We also encourage them to diversify the different approaches they are trying to put to mitigate the effects of climate change to increase their coping mechanism.”
Dr. Kioko says that competition for food resources especially grass along the Kimana wildlife corridor is fuelling human-wildlife conflict.
In the Amboseli ecosystem, poaching has declined but human-wildlife conflict is on the rise due to climate change, says James Kupere, a warden at Big Life Foundation, who works in the Kimana wildlife corridor.
Locals narrated how lions jumped over their Manyattas killing livestock because drought had wiped out some herbivores and livestock leaving them starving. While elephants on their part moved where farming was practiced.
This, notes Dr. Kioko, calls for the “adoption of a different approach in pastoral livestock management within the community area.”
The women-led initiative is planting indigenous and adaptable grass species in the water bunds to increase the community and land resilience to the effects of climate change.
“We are planting the African Foxtail grass (buffalo grass), Maasai love grass(Eragrostis superba), or the Rhodes grass (in areas with water) and those with high survival rates and can cope well with the ecological conditions in this area -of generally low moisture,” says Dr. Kioko.
Traditionally, the Maasai community has always had grass banks-locally christened “Olopololi’s”-which are marked areas of communal land, in which grazing is only allowed during specific periods, such as at the end of the dry season, or set aside as a reserve largely for vulnerable livestock, calves or sick ones.
The Olopololi remains the lifeline of the pastoral community, especially during dry seasons.
“We are now trying to mimic that and establish them conventionally, by setting aside an area (under a soft fence), with the women providing labour and we provide them with inputs including grass seeds,” he explains.
The women take care of the grass through their women group arrangements and when the grass is ready they harvest it into hay and sell the seeds to other community members. The grasses produced by the women are then used to reseed the degraded sites.
The bunds notes Jakinda, have turned the economic fortunes of the locals, especially by creating employment opportunities for the women involved. The groups sell the seeds to Justdiggit for reseeding areas where the natural vegetation is depleted.
“We buy the seeds at Ksh 600 (about US$5) from the women and this helps increase their household income. The market rate for the seeds is Ksh1000 (about US$8) per kilogram, while the cost of one bund is Ksh500 (about US$ 3),” Jakinda adds noting there is high demand for the grass seeds.
And for sustainability, “We are establishing a company, Landscape Restoration Enterprise, which will buy grass seeds from the women groups.LRE will then support them with technical assistance by packaging the seeds for other actors who want seeds. This will aid in the continuity of their enterprises even after our exit,” he asserts.
Dr. Kioko says the restoration is a long-term endeavour, but already there are fruits, “Last season, together with our partners, we did 1000 grass banks and the area is now green with grass established. There is also improved biodiversity, with the areas teeming with insects.
“The groups we worked with have harvested their grass and are now selling them in the form of hay and grass seeds. We are now encouraging the communities to construct a communal store.”
The project will improve the condition of the wildlife corridor to reduce competition. The alternative is for both the livestock and wildlife to go to the swamps or wetlands and that’s where the conflict is likely to escalate.
“This restoration will automatically mean human-wildlife conflict goes down because the grass will be enough for the livestock as well as wildlife. It’s very instrumental to the conservation because it’s a mechanism to reducing the conflict and migration within the community,” says Kupere.“The quality grass will eventually spread all over the conservancy.”
“We also want to improve the health of the rangelands to sustain wildlife but generally conservation for biodiversity and livestock,” adds Dr Kioko.
A grazing calendar has also been created to tackle overgrazing. The plots are closely monitored by grazing committees to supervise the sustainable management of the grasslands so that the grass has time to grow back.
“We use landmarks and awareness campaigns to inform local communities in which areas to graze. Game scouts also help a great deal,” says Joshua Kisongoi, chairman of the Nailepo grazing committee.
Back in Nailepo, the women’s new roles have also improved their status in a traditionally patriarchal society where their primary role was to look after their goats and children.
“Most of us used to depend on our husbands even for such needs as clothes,” concludes Kuyalo.“With this project, now I can buy anything of my choice, and school my children.”
