A Shallow Well Full of Hope for Women in Kenya’s Lamu County

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Sophie Mbugua

In many areas of rural Kenya, women spend hours each day searching for water. As they worry about the impact on their families and livelihoods, one project could help them take back the time stolen by the search for water.

LAMU COUNTY, Kenya – Every morning at 3 a.m., Esther Katuma, a 34-year-old mother of five, leaves her house in search of water. She hopes to return before her children come home from school for lunch and in time to scare away the baboons that have been devouring the bananas and pawpaws on her farm.

Every day, she says, women like her from Maisha Masha village, near Lamu County’s Witu Forest, walk over 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) through the forest, dodging wild animals, some of which are also looking for water. “Everyone, including the animals – both wild and domestic livestock – depends on water wells within the forest,” says Katuma. “The earlier you get to the well, the earlier you return home to other chores.”

With no river running through the county, Lamu residents rely on shallow wells, water pans and boreholes to harvest groundwater. Until recently, the groundwater was regularly recharged by seasonal rainfall. But a dry spell has left the area water stressed, as wells and boreholes run low and any water left becomes too salty to drink. “The wells are turning saline due to lack of recharge owing to inadequate rainfall this year,” says Dishon Mwamburi, the director of water at the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning.

Villagers – mainly the women – are forced to dedicate more and more of their time searching for water. But a new project is helping communities adapt to the water shortage, letting women get back to their livelihoods and their children.

Maisha Masha village is a relatively new settlement, built on a wetland that was meant to provide residents with a reliable water source. Natural or manmade areas that are seasonally or permanently flooded with water, wetlands make up 3 to 4 percent of Kenya’s land surface. But according to Mwamburi, unplanned settlements and an increased number of people and livestock in search of arable land have been encroaching on the wetlands over the past few years. At the same time, climate change has been leading to hotter dry seasons and shorter rainy seasons. Together, those factors have resulted in a water shortage.

For many women in Lamu County, the time spent looking for water is time away from their children. Damaris Kandenge worries that while she is busy on her long walks for water, her children are vulnerable to being targeted by the militia group al-Shabab, a militant Islamic group with ties to al-Qaida. “This forest is inhabited by the al-Shabab group,” she says. “I worry about my children. What if someone tries to recruit them and I never get to know about it?”

Kandenge, along with 20 women and 10 men, formed the Back to Eden group a year ago,to support their families through beekeeping and tree planting. She says other mothers in the group worry that, without supervision, their children are missing school or engaging in underage sex. Kandenge points to the fact that so far this year, the number of young girls getting pregnant is higher than in past years. “We have no time for the children,” she says. “When you return and find an empty bowl of food, you assume the children have come home for lunch.”

The long hours spent searching for water also lead to conflicts at home, says Kandenge, with some men engaging in extramarital affairs because, they say, their wives are neglecting them. “This water has become a thorn,” she says. “It’s a race between finding water, ensuring our children are safe and our men are happy – all in one woman.”

According to the 2015 Joint Monitoring Program by the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund, 2.6 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water sources since 1990. Despite the global achievements, Kandenge and Katuma are among 663 million people who are still without access to water globally.

Mwamburi says that due to financial constraints, there are no current plans to provide water solutions to Maisha Masha village. So the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) has stepped in to help. As part of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development IGADBiodiversity Management Programme, funded by the European Union, ICRAF has been working with Maisha Masha residents, promoting water technologies to help them access water and cope with rainfall variability. “We are combining roof catchment, rainwater harvesting, surface runoff and groundwater to ensure they have water available throughout the year,” says Wilfred Muriithi, a groundwater and agriculture engineer at ICRAF.

Muriithi and his team are helping the Back to Eden group build a freshwater shallow well that should be ready for use by the end of October. The hand-dug well, which costs over $500 and is co-funded by the community and ICRAF, taps into a flowing underground aquifer and should permanently serve the community, says Muriithi.

The shallow wells make use of natural aquifer’s in the ground to extract clean water flowing from the highlands to the ocean. An aquifer is an underground layer of water bearing, permeable rock that can be tapped into, providing a constant source of clean water.

Muriithi says the wells will provide a long-lasting solution to Lamu’s water as long as they are well maintained. “[Their] sustainability depends on the water usage and protection of the aquifers upstream,” he says.

Kandenge can’t hide her excitement as she talks about the benefits the shallow well will bring to her family and community. She plans to use it to rescue the vegetables and 2,000 seedlings currently drying up in her nursery, and for beekeeping and household use. And the time she will save not having to walk miles for water, she plans to spend with her family. “I cannot wait for this well to gush out water,” she says.

As Mothers, Wives and Farmers, Women Feel the Strain of Climate Change

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Sally Nyakanyanga

With Uganda suffering through climate change-related drought, flooding and unpredictable weather, women take on most of the work to keep their families fed. But lack of land rights means they reap few benefits.

LAGAJI VILLAGE, Uganda – In Nwoya district, families face a daily struggle to grow the crops they rely on for food and income. Extreme weather leaves the ground either too wet or too dry to grow anything. Drought and deforestation mean villagers – usually women – have to spend most of the day traveling long distances for water and firewood. And then there are the elephants.

“We have to grapple with elephants ravaging our crops, resulting in us being unable to fend for our families,” says Stella Ojara, a peasant farmer and mother of 10 who needs her crops to feed her family and the surplus to sell for school fees. A government conservation scheme in nearby Murchison Falls National Park has had success in increasing the area’s elephant population. But when the massive animals go in search of something to eat, they can devastate local crops, sinking Lagaji’s farmers deeper into poverty and hunger.

Even without rampaging wildlife, the effects of climate change – unseasonably high temperatures, perennial droughts, extreme and unpredictable weather – put enormous strain on farmers across Uganda. Making up more than half of the country’s farmers, women bear the brunt of the fight to survive from one planting season to the next. “When the rains come and we plant our crops, the rains vanish, leaving our crops to wilt and die due to inadequate rainfall,” says Jane Ochira, a farmer in the village of Lagaji.

But with limited land rights, few can reap the benefits of their work.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the agricultural sector remains the backbone of Uganda’s economy, contributing over 70 percent of the country’s export earnings. Women constitute 56 percent of Ugandan farmers and make up more than 70 percent of agricultural production, nutrition and food security, at the household level, according to the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET). But while women do most of the farm work, they only own 16 percent of the arable land in the country.

Edidah Ampaire, coordinator for Uganda’s Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation project, says that women’s rights and roles are severely restricted, particularly in rural areas, and that government policies don’t do enough to address the imbalance. “Gender inequality in agricultural practices demonstrates how men have an advantage over women,” he says. “Women from rural areas are highly dependent on land, yet they are less likely to own land.”

WOUGNET says making land available to women gives them the chance to sustain themselves and their households as climate change forces them to spend most of their time cultivating fields and collecting firewood and water, leaving little time to make an income.

But even women who own land can find themselves unable to grow enough to feed their families, let alone surplus to sell on. “The poor and rural communities, mainly women, are greatly affected by climate change as they depend on extracting resources from the land for their daily survival,” said Paul Mukwaya from Makerere University, speaking to the press last year. As farmers and family caregivers, women have to deal with a slew of consequences resulting from drought and flooding, not just food and water shortages, but also high incidences of malaria and other water-borne diseases. “Food has been rotting in the garden due to floods, and diseases like malaria have caused deaths in families,” says Lagaji farmer Jane Ochira.

Struggling to provide for their families, constantly on the search for food and water, and often battling illness or caring for sick family members, women also suffer from the impact that climate change has on their husbands. According to George Onen, the parish chief for Patira and Pabit in Nwoya district, many women in rural Uganda are subjected to domestic violence due to tensions at home over food shortages and mainly during harvest time. “Poverty and food shortages create fertile ground for conflicts and domestic violence in the home,” he says. “It’s saddening that some men during harvest time, instead of saving the money and preparing for the next farming season, will decide to waste the money on drinking and marrying more women.”

And when the situation becomes too dire to bear, women can find themselves completely alone in the struggle to keep their families fed. When a crop fails due to extreme weather conditions, men will often become “migrants,” leaving for the city to find work and sometimes not returning, according to Maria Mutagamba, minister of water and environment. “They abandon the family when the land is no longer productive to search for work in the city, leaving behind the women suffering with the children.”

This story was reported with the support of an African Great Lakes Fellowship from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Landless women farmers receive land tenancy for the first time in Pakistan

asiapacific.unwomen.org - Durdana is a young widower from Pakistan’s Dadu District in Sindh Province. She is one of 1,214 landless women farmers and sharecroppers who have received land tenancy rights for the first time in their life. Speaking of her new status, Durdana shares that farming is her life: “I do not know anything else but working in the fields. Who could think a poor female widower like me would be given land! For the first time in my life I can say something is mine. This land, as far as the eye can see is mine - this paper says so. This is my land and I am its queen,” she says beamingly.

UN Women Pakistan in collaboration with local partners, Baanhn Beli and Gorakh Foundation, in Mirpur Khas and Dadu Districts, respectively, is working with 1,214 vulnerable rural women farmers, like Durdana, to acquire land tenancy rights from their feudal and tribal landholders. These landless women farmers were trained and mentored to prepare tenancy agreements and landholding maps with their male landlords.

In the process, they have been provided with a viable livelihood option that could take them out of poverty and enable their upward social mobility.