Fmeale genital mutilation-Towards an end to the Cloak and Dagger ?

The Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) education campaign progressed remarkably smoothly in Laikipia North this year, now in its third year the 28 established NHP Health Workers and their support team , led by NHP Nurse Rose, are now proving to be a self motivated and highly efficient team –Rose’s smile and calmness have maintained a positive effect on the whole community, deflecting the fiery exchanges seen in our first year.

The new Bill outlawing FGM, passed on September 7th, has helped this campaign dramatically. The Bill, proposed by Mt Elgon MP Fred Kapondi back in 2010, provides that a person convicted of carrying out FGM will face seven years in jail or a half million shilling fine; causing death via FGM can result in life imprisonment. Aiding and abetting FGM also carries heavy penalties. Three years ago it was difficult to get local politicians to support the campaign to, at the least, delay female circumcision, since they were not sure on which side votes lay; but the new law has made things clear for all. We have been fortunate that the local Chiefs have taken a very positive and forward thinking stand, ensuring that progress over the last three years has been fast. Traditionally, as soon as a girl has been circumcised she is pronounced ‘ready’ for marriage, leading to the end of her education. But in many cases the Chiefs have actively insisted that girls not be taken out of Primary school and have also assisted them in registering themselves in school, where local teachers have identified girls being kept at home.

Our campaign in Isiolo is in its first year, with a brand new team of highly enthusiastic Health Workers. Here many lessons have to be learned concerning logistics- particularly as we are currently drowning under a sea of mud, wiping out roads on a daily basis.And never underestimate the infinite time required for Kenyan politics ! No one can focus on education until the all important decisions of how many ‘lunch’ goats to be assigned to each village has been settled. Perhaps such precise allocation decisions have more priority in the Samburu community than in the Masai community where NHP was formerly based. We still have the biggest Baraza (meeting) tomorrow, and rains permitting, we will meet our last year total of over 2,000 attendees.

The team are promoting an alternative public ‘Blessing’ for the girls as their Coming of Age ceremony- rather than the Cloak and Dagger (..literally) ceremony that has been taking place behind closed doors for so many years. Since the average age for circumcision is puberty this has meant few girls accessing secondary education.

The health problems begin with the infections and heavy bleeding caused by the non-sterile and unprofessional operation, proceed via the hazards of early pregnancies, for girls who often have several more years of growing and are already poorly nourished ; through to large areas of scar tissue causing horrific and often life threatening tears and haemorrhaging during birth. In addition mothers will starve themselves during pregnancy, even when food is plentiful, in order to limit the size of their baby to limit the danger and pain of a healthy birth weight baby.

I cannot say that I am taken in by the argument given against the cut by many men and women, at every baraza that the lack of sexual satisfaction obtained by the women causes more female 'promiscuity' or as generally translated from the Maasai 'prostitution', but I guess I am not one to be able judge this question.

Whilst meetings can be highly charged, and to some it is still seen as a controversial and emotive topic; if each year another cohort of young girls is given the choice to delay the cut until after secondary schooling that has got be a good thing for Kenyan development.. and Kenyan politics.

Girl's Education.. Family Planning Choices.. and Fertility Rates...

On Tuesday,leaders from around the world meet in Senegal for the International Conference on Family Planning. As the population in Kenya has soared in the past 30 years by two and a half times, with an average growth of 3 percent per annum, this topic needs to be top of kenya’s development agenda.

The current Kenyan population level is 41 million, up from 21 million in 1989. There is no greater challenge to development, as over-population tends to nullify economic progress. With the advent of Free Primary Schooling in 2003, kenya did a great job of getting Bottoms On Seats. Access to education has improved enormously, but as population levels rise the GOK and donor governments have been unable to meet the required funding, particularly in the poorest rural areas where fertility rates remain highest. In schools we work with, if we removed our teaching support, class sizes would rise in some cases to 120 pupils to one teacher. Education for sure: but based on Quantity not Quality.

There is a clear correlation between levels of female education and female fertility rates. Education leads to delay of marriage, to increased knowledge about contraceptive choices, to greater economic choices for women, to increased autonomy in women’s decision making and to greater communication within marriage: all of these assisting in access to Family Planning and increased exercise of choice. As effective FP choices increase so greater education is required. With the advent of three year Implants, choices increase in both number and complexity.

It is inevitably the economic cost of education, versus its perceived benefits that will be the prime determinants of parents sending kids to school in the poorer rural areas. When the drought of 2009 in the Ol Lentille Community killed over three quarters of domestic livestock, not only did the schools see a large increase in enrollment of younger children, but also many Morans, who would formally have been out herding, entered primary school for the first time.

Seven or more years in school cuts fertility rates in half; but it is years in Secondary Education which has the greatest reduction in fertility rate for girls and the greatest delay in marriage. Educating mothers decreases child mortality and leads to healthier infants.Access to Family Planning is a basic Human Right which cannot be seen in isolation from those other basic Human Right- Female Education and the Right to Health Care.

Pictured are the Nabakisho Health Care nurses in action at a mobile clinic at Rumate where FP choices are discussed... levels of understanding of their full range of FP choices will remain hazy for many of these women who have no education.

Happy Thanksgiving..... much to be grateful for...

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American Friends ......and a reminder to ourselves that we have so much to be grateful for this year. After all these years when our friends in America have probably become fed up with us moaning about endless droughts and the ensuing hardships in the community (...remember 2009 when 80% of cattle died..) In 2011 we have to remind ourselves daily to be grateful for wonderful rainfall.. since March we have not had to worry about empty dams and water tanks and November is proving to be the best rain season that the community can remember for many years.

The conservancy looks stunning with waving grass more redolent of the Masai Mara than of these semi arid lands. Whilst it is somewhat more challenging hunting for the game in these conditions it is certainly there..and at least elephants are always easy to spot... yesterday we stopped counting at 300 and this Greater Kudu was spotted in the morning 'drive' to work ....

It was also the first time in six years that I have spent most of the morning being stuck in the mud... but am certainly not complaining as the sun was out and it is amazing how many friends you make along the way when you are trying to dig yourself out!

So if next year drought bites again, we will look back to this blog and remember that we are not always crying drought....

Clean Cookstoves... Save Trees.. Save Lives

As a follow up to the May 17th blog, this blog is certainly somewhat overdue! With the huge support of Paradigm Stoves , we now have Institutional Stoves working in 9 schools, plus our own Staff Kitchen. This donation has been a resounding success, and no unintended consequences have so far been thrown up. The implementation of the project was bigger than either we, or Paradigm, could have imagined. In the first instance the smaller nursery schools had no kitchens... so step one was to erect simple secure, weather proof, structures.. only not so simple when we realised that we would have to make new roads to Rumate and Singa'un nurseries, before we had any hope of getting materials and stoves to them! Finding a route through the luggas, rocks and dense bush to Singa'un required a day on foot feeling rather Dr. Livingstone'ish, before we could hope to get a pick up through. The huge added advantage of this is that now we have a road that the mobile clinic can traverse once a month to this remote Samburu village. How people survive in this location in the dry season beggars belief.. the trip for water is a 6 hour round trip with donkeys that each household has to perform every two days.
Below is the new kitchen at Narasha Nursery school-

These stoves use a very minimal amount of wood... where children were collecting wood on a daily basis this is now reduced to once or twice per month. Paradigm also provided a training for all the school cooks who have been universally thrilled with the stoves.. where we could have foreseen some resistance to 'new' technology the benefits are all self evident.. virtually no smoke , much quicker cooking times and , an unforeseen benefit of much easier cleaning has led not only to happy cooks but also to a real pride in the cleanliness of the kitchens.

In addition we have given away 80 household stoves to the Ol Lentille employees, Conservancy Rangers and and Health Workers, and have sold another 100 at subsidised prices. We still have some 40 more to sell. This area of the donation has been enormously interesting- (if at times somewhat challenging!) showing how much research we still need to do to work with communities on the best fit of stove for them. Communities being made up of individuals, of course means that no one solution fits all: age , gender, education levels, family size, are just some of the variables we need to consider. This is still very much a work in progress that we will come back to as we collate our results...

Amazing Maasai Ultra Marathon ....2012

Entries opened today for the 2012 check it out and come and support Girls Education in Laikipia! Runners, volunteers and sponsors all needed!

The inspiration and support for the 2010 Kimanjo Community Marathon.. with the whole community running in support of the new Kimanjo Secondary school.. introduced Molly Fitzpatrick to the Group Ranch Community as the only ‘International’ runner.. (...we were expecting a Chinese girl... but found Molly to be most definitely American... at the time resident in China..) also Molly was the only ‘woman’ to complete the 42K!....as a result of this Molly bravely set up the Amazing Maasai Ultra Marathon 2011... in aid of girls secondary school sponsorships. 15 girls from community Primary schools will receive four years of secondary Boarding full bursaries from this achievement!
Race Director Solomon is pictured below with fellow Ol-Lentille work colleague and marathon running partner, Johnson.

As the first Kenyan Ultra Marathon the 2012 race should really fill a gap in the market and it will be great to introduce more of the Maasai community to these longer distances.. see last year’s winner below... Il Motiok school boy David Simpiri, many miles ahead of the rest of the field... he finished 75K without breaking a sweat...

Musul Group Ranch member Sapuk Safiri is here celebrating his 42K win.. Sapuk is a very useful Kenyan marathon runner and a popular local winner.

Poaching, rhino horn, education ..... and China links

Everyone enormously pleased to have John back in Kenya following his trip to China. China is not only an enormously important market for tourism in Africa, but it is also a cornerstone in the education fight to combat poaching of rhino horn and elephant ivory. As powdered rhino horn now equals the price of cocaine, surpassing that of gold, the market has become so lucrative that 2011 has seen a major increase in animals lost to poaching, destined for markets primarily in Vietnam and China. In an effort to raise Chinese awareness on this challenge Laikipia Wildlife Forum has hosted many senior Chinese entrepreneurs and government officials this year to show them the important rhino conservation work being done in Laikipia in conservancies such as Ol Pejeta and Ol Jogi. In the last month three elephants have been poached in areas relatively close to the Ol Lentille conservancy. John welcomed the chance to talk to many prominent Chinese business people, and we look forward next year to being able to show some of them these animals in their natural habitat. It is great to see this growing understanding that we must all be working together to extend these educative links: if the rhino is to survive much longer the power of the camera lens and the healthy safari experience has to be harnessed.... above that of the bullet and the supposed 'curative' effect of powdered horn.

Water.. Water ... Water...and Water Holes...

After six years of struggling with a cycle of droughts we are now swimmingly enjoying one of the wettest rainy seasons the Kijabe Group Ranch has ever seen... as rains sweep across kenya. The conservancy has never looked better. In our strategy to build more dams, to keep elephants out of the community dams and mitigate the conflicts they cause there, last month we embarked on a major new dam project.

As the workforce is now underway constructing the seven metre (yes METRE!!) wall for this latest dam, their biggest challenge is not to drown in the ever deepening lake! Enormous thanks to recent volunteer Audrey and her Great Friends for their fund-raising for this project... and to Derek for his fund raising AND very useful technical support. the rain is also working to our advantage in having dispersed our resident 80 elephants further north .. allowing the workforce to get on uninterrupted .....

Female Genital Mutilation -moving away from The Cut

This is a busy week for the NHP team at Lentille. Prior to the December circumcision season they are organising as many 'barazas' as they can cope with.

A Baraza is a big community meeting, under a tree, with Chiefs, Community Leaders, men, women and youth.. and much food to be consumed! The subject of discussion is alternatives to female circumcision.. last year over 2,000 people attended these meetings.. as we extend now into Isiolo District this number is expected to rise. This week 3 barazas will be organised in an attempt to keep girls in school in January- and prevent the medical horrors of The Cut which leads to so many child- birth problems. Traditionally, as soon as girls are circumcised they are taken out of school to be married -and childbirth quickly follows. Since the traditional age here for circumcision is puberty (13 years) the medical complications for these young girls giving birth when they are still growing rises further. Often the girls starve themselves during pregnancy in the hope of giving birth to a smaller baby... not a healthy state of affairs for mother or child.

However tradition is changing very fast and in the two years we have been running these barazas we have seen a huge sea-shift in the attitudes to girl-child education and a far greater understanding of the dangers of circumcision. Increasing numbers of girls are now being allowed to delay circumcision until completion of secondary school when they can themselves make an informed choice. Health care here is tied directly to education- with the buiding of the new classes at Kimanjo Secondary school parents and daughters can see a real economically viable alternative to marriage. By incorporating the new government secondary Principal, and the Primary head-teachers, into these barazas we try to join up the education/health-care work.

This year we are also trying to positively incorporate the female circumcisors into health care work by offering them incentives to become agents of referral in bringing pregnant Mums-to -be, to the clinic... so they no longer need the added revenue stream of conducting circumcisions. We look forward to following up this post on how lively these barazas are this week! Change will not come without contoversy for sure!

Polio Campaign

 This week is phase one of the Polio Campaign for Laikipia North and Isiolo District. Kenya has been Polio free since 1984, but occasional outbreaks spread from neighbouring countries. The most recent, this year, spread from Uganda. The current campaign is organised by the Ministry of Public Health in association with World Health, UNICEF and partners. It targets all children under five, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated already. Nurses are traveling door to door with Community Health Workers to persuade all families to allow infants to be vaccinated against this incurable disease.Onset of polimyelitis can cause paralysis leading to deformity, more often in the legs than the arms, it is spread through faecal contact from infected persons,generally in the under fives. Sudden onset of weakness in limbs in those under 15years should be reported immediately to health professionals. So long as take up for the vaccination remains very high we will not see this tragic disease on the resurgence. Ol lentille Trust conveys great thanks to our Nabakisho Health Care team and its 36 Community Health Workers - health care programmes across so much of Africa are made possible by such locally dedicated men and women. Thank you all!

Friendship Day

Today is Friendship day for The Ol lentille Trust www.becomeafriend.net">Become a Friend group of schools here in Kenya, UK and Ireland.. and some new friends in the US too! All pupils are drawing their idea of what friendship means to them.... a sample of Kenyan ideas to date ranges from riding on an elephant with your friends to racing in a marathon with your American friends.. a little ways behind!The become a Friend vision is to promote friendship and understanding across cultures. Creativity is fostered through topics that centre on health-care and conservation... never forgetting that education should be fun!

The picture shows one of the winning drawings in the 'I've been brave as a lion ' competition... the winning drawings have been converted into stickers to be handed out to all the children receiving injections at the mobile clinics. The become a friend website is a great place to showcase the childrens artwork from all countries.

Fauna and Flora International

I'm loving their It's In Our Hands initiative, raising awareness of the plight of endangered species. As Laikipia residents we are particularly in line with their cause. Laikipia, an unprotected area of community and private ranchland, has higher numbers of wildlife than anywhere in Kenya except the Maasai Mara. Wildlife numbers are increasing in Laikipia, whereas they are decreasing in the rest of East Africa.

Eastern Black Rhino in Laikipia

Laikipia is home to Kenya's highest populations of endangered species (large mammals) including half of Kenya's rhino population and 37% of all Eastern Black Rhinos in Africa. 70% of the global population (a mere 3000) of grevy's zebra live in Laikipia (including on the Ol Lentille Conservancy) as do similar numbers of reticulated giraffe.

Reticulated giraffe in Lentille Conservancy, April 2011

We frequently have packs of African Wild Dog denning at Lentille, and Laikipia has the 6th largest population of this highly endangered animal worldwide. Jackson's Hartebeest, Patas monkey...I could go on. Laikipia is a hugely important ecosystem to so many threatened species so I wanted to highlight this World Environment Day (yesterday) campaign by FFI to bring this issue to the forefront of conservation discourse.

FFI have asked people to upload images of themselves holding a piece of paper with the name of an endangered species on it to their online library:

"As the library of images grow, so too will global awareness not only of the futures of thousands of species on the brink of extinction, but also of human involvement in it – from both negative and positive angles. These images will create a link from the people championing them, directly back to the species they’ve written on their paper sign"

Here is my contribution:

Ol Lentille Conservancy part 5: the future is global

We now have a community with diversified livelihoods, less dependent on livestock, which are so vulnerable to the massive problem of climate change. The land is improving, lessening the impact of climate change, the potential for abundant grazing is around the corner; and there is the prospect of carbon income.

So how does the community perceive these changes? In the (in)famous words of Bill Clinton (no not those words ;)):

This community has so far sacrificed 20,000 acres of their land for conservation. They could have used the grazing, or they could have rented it out. They could have put 2000 cattle onto that land for 6 months of the year. And they could have had an income from it of $30,000 per year. Instead, total economic input from all sources generated by the Project has averaged $400,000 a year for the past 5 years.

In itself this is a community development challenge: a large and sudden increase in income and wealth is something most people do not deal with very well. Look at lottery winners- no different here! The temptation for a corrupt elite to pocket the dosh is huge. So here, much (though not all) of the income goes into infrastructure projects like new and improved schools, additional clinic nurses, a mobile clinic. Decisions on what projects to undertake are taken jointly by community members (teachers, elders, ranch officials, ranch members etc) and Regenesis directors and staff.

Nkiloriti Nursery School in 2006

Inside new classroom number 2 at Nkiloriti, 2010

Under the agreement with Regenesis the approximately $50,000 a year which is free cash, deposited into the ranch bank account, has to be used “transparently and equitably for the benefit of the entire community”, and is audited. AWF has supported the setting up of a village microfinance bank, and community leaders including women (traditionally marginalized in this society) are getting financial and business training and advice.

Women of Lentille community, with visiting teacher from UK

This blog was supposed to be about our conservation strategy. For those disappointed that there are not lots of wildlife stories, I apologise. But conservation is not about wildlife. It is about people. (Though we do still get extremely excited when we spot the endangered African Wild Dog hunting in front of the lodge, and happily watch elephants ‘playing’ at destroying things for hours)

African Wild Dog in Sinyai lagha, Ol Lentille Conservancy

The biggest question of all though, is can conservation pay? The answer is yes. However, if the world wants to conserve the wildlife and ways of life of East Africa, it is the world which will have to pay. Rural East Africans can successfully be in the business of selling to a world market so-called “ecosystem services”, but the international community and its Earth Summits and the plethora of well-meaning but for 50 years wholly ineffective NGOs will have to wake up.

The Tanzanian government (the same one that wants to drive a highway through the Serengeti National Park), wants to put a soda factory on Lake Natron. Soda is an essential commodity chemical crucial to the lives of all who live in the “Western” world, manufactured in ugly and habitat-destroying factories. Lake Natron is at the heart of a vital ecosystem, and one of the world’s most stunningly beautiful places. Conservationists want to stop the soda factory. It’s my view that in that case the world community must pay Tanzania for the income lost. Don’t make Africa pay for your lifestyle!

The Politics of Poverty

Development professionals have recently started talking more about the role of politics in opportunities or constraints for poverty reduction, alongside the role of economic growth. This shows recognition of the role of governance in development and the need for appreciating politics when considering development opportunities. Even the notoriously economic-centric World Bank has begun to reassess its apolitical stance, through consideration of the role of corruption in development.

I write this because, in Kenya, every development goal we seek is hindered, affected, constrained or, occasionally, helped by politics and corruption. Policymaking is highly politicised, resource allocation is often unequal on the grounds of ethnicity (which is also a primarily political issue) and the inequality in the country, at an all-time high, has been made worse by corruption in all levels of politics, the judiciary, the police service and service delivery. It is an issue we deal with every day working in Kenya, and one I am particularly passionate about tackling.

Politics is in everything: governance, policy, institutions and the ‘bigger picture’ of political ideologies and systems- there is huge scope for poverty reduction strategies to be politicised. Politics and poverty will always be country specific, affected by history, political parties, ideology, civil society and the types of institution in that nation, as well as international interactions with regard to aid, trade and conflict, which all impact upon poverty and its alleviation.

The idea of pro-poor politics as opposed to pro-poor economics emerged out of the good governance debate. Good governance alone is insufficient for development- governance reforms will only benefit the poor if they have representation and influence over institutions. A pro-poor polity must have the capability and commitment to creating an environment that allows space for citizen participation to reduce poverty through empowerment and through accountability and responsiveness of the government for improved resource allocation and service delivery.

Kenyan citizens have huge political motivation. In my time living in England, I have been saddened by the lack of interest in the country’s political situation, and the lack of knowledge of politics even at the basic level (try asking a bunch of 15 year olds who the PM is). In Kenya, people have passion, commitment and interest in politics and reform. John Githongo (the former anti-corruption tzar, exiled for whistleblowing and now back in Kenya) has started a social movement called ‘Ni Sisi’ – "It is us". We, the people of Kenya, must work to hold our government to account, to not accept corrupt practice and to use the political landscape to our advantage, encouraging the implementation of pro-poor policies alongside supporting the country’s economic growth. Transparency in politics is also necessary, to provide the appropriate information to citizens to allow them to better influence policy debates and political discourse.

We need political leaders committed to poverty reduction through service delivery, economic stability, social and state security, well-devised policies, both social and infrastructural, with capacity to implement them equitably, and a state responsive to civil society. We need a state which allocates resources equitably and efficiently. We need a government that exhibits capability, responsiveness and accountability to all citizens. Only then can Kenya attract more investment potentially improving the environment for poverty reduction, and ensure equitable resource allocation.

The aim of pro-poor politics is to create a political system that allows space for citizen participation, leading to poverty reduction through empowerment and enhanced policy focus and implementation, via advocacy and improving accountability of those in power to all citizens. This process is limited by political structures and affected by the agenda set by the powerful elite.

Though a state may be considered broadly democratic, there are varying levels of democracy. Corruption, excessive Presidentialism and patronage politics may perpetuate poverty. This occurs more often in a fragmented political system where many political parties, with little regulation or commitment to the poor, compete to ‘rule rather than to serve’ the citizens.

Though it is political leaders that have official power in many polities, the civil service can affect implementation of policy and therefore poverty levels. If employment in civil service is highly politicised (and oversized), it diverts resources away from poverty reduction strategies and thus reproducing poverty in the country. Weak institutions, lacking capacity and commitment, mean the mixture of ‘formal and informal rules’ will affect policy formulation and implementation, determining whether outcomes are pro-poor or not.  Strong institutions are able to ‘rein in the power of individuals’ and produce the rule of law, via downward accountability. This will have positive effects in terms of poverty reduction, ensuring appropriate and equitable resource allocation. If institutions are weak, or informal rules dominate, the use of power cannot be regulated, leading to non-delivery of pro-poor policies, or formulation of policies which exacerbate poverty. Those who are unable to affect these informal rules therefore suffer disproportionately.

As a group, people can gain power and influence decisions that affect their lives, advocating for appropriate resource allocation and protest against ‘anti-poor’ political structures and informal rules. Influence can be used to ensure that the government use their power appropriately and effectively to improve the lives of the citizens.

But what if an environment for social mobilisation cannot be created? If political power has been gained through support from a regional group, ethnic loyalty or economic wealth, the poor feel powerless to effect change. If elites are governing in their own interests, the poor, who feel vulnerable, are unwilling and unable to challenge the state. Personal or patronage rule inhibits social organisation.

Poor governance structures affect the political capabilities of the poor, directly affect service delivery, through misallocation of resources and funds and hinder external investment and donor collaboration. Important aspects of poverty reduction are empowerment and service delivery, as well as security, from economic shocks, corruption and criminal activity. These will all be compromised by corrupt practices and informalised political structures. We need transparency and accountability measures to improve the situation, as well as decentralisation of power, thus providing citizens with knowledge about the resource allocation process. The new constitution may well help this in Kenya.

Politics is about power relations. It is the distribution of power that affects a state’s ability to implement successful poverty reduction strategies. This includes issues of corruption and conflict and can be somewhat counteracted by effective, appropriate institutions staffed according to merit rather than patronage, allowing for some regulation of power and therefore resource distribution, improving service delivery to the poorest. There must first be sufficient political commitment and capability to pro-poor politics to enable bottom-up advocacy for change. Poverty can be defined in terms of empowerment, service delivery, access to markets and security. The political system and informal rules can shape these aspects of poverty. The most crucial ingredient to political development is organisation and mobilisation of the poor, as it is they who can potentially influence those with the power to effect pro-poor change.

Ol Lentille Conservancy part 4: Pastoralism for Conservation

So in order to maintain the health of the land, we are planning to put cattle back into the conservancy. It has been successfully demonstrated at world-renowned Laikipia conservation ranch Ol Pejeta that cattle, managed and herded rigorously, are very highly beneficial to wildlife habitat. Wildlife and livestock can co-exist – and apparently semi-symbiotically.

Of course, traditionally the Maasai and Samburu herdsmen already knew that. Before they were dispossessed, before East African land was privatized, subdivided and fenced, and when they roamed free with the rains and their cattle, these were the golden days for wildlife too.

A scene from Southern Kenya, outside Amboseli NP, where
zebra and cattle share grass in harmony. There are few areas left where
this can happen.

Pastoralists (lots of great info at www.iucn.org/wisp) know that looking after habitat for livestock benefits wildlife too. Also, the very essence of pastoralism is a life of adaptation. What could be more appropriate in this time of climate change – this is an interesting paper on the topic from ODI.

Running cattle with wildlife in a restricted area, and under the noses of tourists, though, provides a number of major challenges – mainly political/societal and managerial. Happily we are not breaking new ground with this. It is already well-proven and, through the Laikipia Wildlife Forum, we have access to the world experts of The Savory Institute, whose founder Allan Savory won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Prize for his work on these matters.

Critically, these same methods can be readily applied by the community outside the Conservancy, on their grazing lands. Today, as you enter the Conservancy even an untrained eye immediately notices the dramatic difference of plant cover between grazing land (little or no grass- see these pics of land around Kimanjo) and conserved land (abundant grass and diversity of species). We can help change that.

 

We started this story in 2000 with a community who had lost 80% of their assets and income. A community with only one economic string to its bow. And now? As well as livestock, the community benefits from tourism, from community development projects funded by guests of The Sanctuary at Ol Lentille, and by employment. The Ol Lentille Project employs over 80 people: lodge staff, conservancy rangers, community health workers and school teachers. The potential for abundant grazing is around the corner; and further down the road the prospect of carbon income. The Project also intends to introduce and to help manage community bio-enterprises such as honey processing and aloe products.

Inside the Ol Lentille Conservancy- showing the amount of grass
compared to the barren grazing lands (quad bike for the entertainment of guests!)

In the final installment of this blog series next week, I’ll discuss (using info from my daily chats and consultations with community members) the societal impact of these changes and look forward to future benefits.

Bioenterprise: traditional beekeeping

Ol Lentille Conservancy part 3: Conservation for development

Seeing the very visible and dramatic changes in the health of this land, and also the tourism and community development benefits (such as education and healthcare programmes) the area was receiving, neighbouring communities asked to participate in the conservation programme. So the Ol Lentille Conservancy is now 20,000 acres belonging to 4 communities. This year we are set to go to close to 30,000 acres as a fifth community comes on board.

Now we know we can save degraded land and bring it back into good health, we have started scientific monitoring of plants and soil quality. We work with Kenyan environmental consultants Wajibu MS to do this. We have trained local monitoring staff and had Speedbird satellite imagery done to enable this. The International Livestock Research Institute whose global headquarters is in Nairobi has provided innovative, easily learned, monitoring methodologies to us. The science of course is interesting, but it’s what we can do with it to benefit the community landowners that makes it worthwhile. And that is the prospect of carbon trading!

Ngabolo School children on a day out in the Ol Lentille Conservancy

The 'carbon credits' phenomenon has been accused of a. not working to combat climate change and b. encouraging exploitation of developing countries. This may well be true at some levels. Of course the trading has to be done right, like all development programmes- the 'how' matters. Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Laureate, has endorsed the involvement of tree-farming in her Green Belt Movement in the Carbon market, knowing that if done right, carbon trading has true potential. Conservation here is about people, and finding a way to allow communities to sustain their way of life by improving their environment. Carbon trading can do that for this community. It provides an incentive to conserve land, bringing wildlife back into the area and retaining an ancient ecosystem. Income from carbon could provide potentially massive social development through funding education and healthcare programmes. 

Elephant in Ol Lentille Conservancy, Jan 2011. There are now almost too many
elephants in the area; there were none 6 years ago.

It is little appreciated that the quantity of soil organic carbon (SOC) on Planet Earth far exceeds the carbon “sequestered” in the attention-grabbing rainforests. Now don’t get me wrong – the rainforests must certainly be saved. But with the exception of ILRI, little scientific attention is being paid to SOC, and no scientific methodologies for determining it and monitoring it have been so far approved for carbon-trading purposes. With the inadequacy of Earth Summits, especially the Copenhagen failure, we cannot see when this will be resolved. But resolved it must be.

The Ol Lentille Conservancy beneficiary communities could, we conservatively estimate, have an income of many hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 15 year period from 2015 by trading their carbon rights. This would be a major addition to their portfolio of income generating activities.

Tourism- one of the Lentille community's major income-generating activities

You may have concluded that we can improve SOC levels just by resting land. You would be right in the short term. However, in the long term land can be over-rested. If grasses are insufficiently grazed they eventually become rank and moribund, and cease to replenish the soil organic matter and nutrients especially in a semi-arid climate like ours.

Of course, wildlife is the first to benefit in the Conservancy from improved grass and plant cover. However, when you have as much grass as we have you need a large number of big bulk grazers like zebra and buffalo, and it is only this year that zebra have returned to this area after long absence. And the three buffalo who visited us last August have long since disappeared. On a sidenote, we are very excited that our new zebra population consists of both the common Burchell’s zebra, and also the highly endangered Grevy’s zebra (less than 1500 left on earth).

The endangered Grevy's zebra- the
Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem is their last major stronghold

So what to do? We are planning to put cattle back in the Conservancy! Read on next week to find out why and how we have gone full-circle.

Allowing cattle into the conservancy would benefit both conservation
and the cattle for whom there is not much food elsewhere: a
double benefit for the community members

This got me thinking...

This new data tool is my favourite toy of the day. It lets you display graphs of different development indicators and the relationships between them, based on the UN's Human Development Index model. This particular graph shows the relationship between adult literacy (Y) and life expectancy (X). The size of each bubble (which represent countries) indicates the GDP per capita and the colour shows the country's position on the Human Development Index, with red being the most 'developed' and blue the least.

You can see there is a strong correlation between X and Y- I've added the black line to demonstrate. So theoretically the better the adult literacy rate, the higher the life expectancy. Without going into cause and effect too deep (my brain is filled with ideas, but I fear I might bore you) and without listing the many variables, I'm going to say yes, education does contribute to better health, more opportunities, probably less conflict, and therefore higher life expectancy. It's clearly not the only factor, but that's all we're looking at here for now.

So why is Kenya an anomaly? For the level of adult literacy, it ought to have a much higher life expectancy. As it is, the literacy rate is 75%, but people are only living into their mid to late fifties (there are a lot of exceptions to this rule, notably the father of a good friend of ours, a Maasai elder in his nineties!).

If you look at the interactive version of this chart, you'll notice that pretty much all the outliers are African countries. Taking into account GDP (not a good indicator of social development as inequality is often a huge distorter) as well, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea have hugely low life expectancies for their economic development.

So what's the problem? An inadequate healthcare system...corruption, poor quality medicines, lack of funding, lack of good medical staff, lack of government focus? Too much disease that the health system cannot deal with- HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB? Too many people living in remote areas who cannot access the healthcare system and are therefore dying from preventable diseases- inequality and rural poverty? Road traffic deaths? Conflict? High child and maternal mortality due to nutritional problems (drought, famine, poverty, poor nutritional education), FGM, stigma of accessing peri-natal healthcare?

It's definitely something to think about...

I See You Through the Smoky Air

Those who follow us on twitter will know that Nurse Steven’s biggest problem in the Lentille community is respiratory disease. It is closely followed by diarrhoeal problems, and he spends a lot of time on maternal and child health (especially nutrition), but the most common presentation at clinic or on his rounds out-and-about in the manyattas is a cough, bad chest, breathing problems.

So what are the causes? A Maasai manyatta, though developing from the very traditional low-ceilinged mud-and-sticks, to a higher roofed, sometimes tin-roofed hut with larger window or door spaces, has very little ventilation. Food is cooked on a traditional 3-stone hearth, and the fire will burn the majority of the day and night. The manyatta has no substantial dividing walls and so the whole family sleep in smoke-filled air every night. The WHO says being trapped in a manyatta with these fires is the equivalent of smoking 40 cigarettes a day. But if they didn’t burn, they wouldn’t eat. 1.6 million die each year globally of cook-smoke related disease, mostly women and children. More children under 5 die from this than from malaria or malnutrition.

A woman in her home cooking on her open fire

So what can be done about it?

We need to reduce the amount of smoke and increase the efficiency of the fire. In order to do that, we must reduce the amount of fuel burned, or change the type of fuel. Living in a remote area, these families only have access to wood (or charcoal, often illegally made). Women spend around 4 hours each day collecting firewood and may have to walk several miles, burning calories they cannot afford to lose. This just to feed their families on fires that may be killing them.



Women burn more calories fetching firewood than they
can afford to consume

  

Furthermore, the Lentille community get a large proportion of their social and economic development off the back of their conservation efforts (see John’s weekly blog on this). Using up wood, a finite resource, in this way will eventually lead to deforestation, exacerbating poverty. In Kenya, over 100 million trees annually are used by rural families for energy consumption, whether burnt immediately or sold as charcoal (which by-laws, though in place, have not prevented as people need this small income.) This generates a massive amount of CO2, which goes directly against our conservation aims. Destroying trees further decimates the environment by allowing erosion (see photo), stopping grasses growing and causing a chain effect leading to desertification. No grass for livestock and more drought, which kills up to 90% of the herd (the only income for many families)- further poverty. Now that the Lentille community have put aside some of their land for conservation, they need an alternative fuel source, to save their lungs and their livelihoods.

Enter Paradigm Stoves: a commitment by one of our amazing partners, the Paradigm Project, to change 25 million lives by 2020. Real social, environmental and economic progress. For further info on Carbon offsetting, as mentioned in this video clip, keep reading John's weekly environment and conservation entries on this blog.

The Community Health Workers, Conservation Rangers and staff of the Sanctuary at Ol Lentille (over 60% of whom are from the local Maasai and Samburu communities) have been issued with Paradigm stoves, gratis, with the idea that they will act as Paradigm Ambassadors in the community, showing people the many benefits of these cookstoves over traditional cooking methods. So far, as a result, over 50 such stoves have been sold at a vastly subsidised price to other community members. Each manyatta is home to a family of about 7 people, almost 100 stoves have been distributed: this is improving the health of 700 community members and using 80% less wood fuel.

One stove saves $280, 1300 hours, 33 trees and reduces smoke by 60%.

The next stage is to provide larger versions of these stoves to the 8 schools that we work with for cooking lunches and boarders’ meals. 

The cook at Ngabolo school looks forward to being able
 to cook for 400 kids much more efficiently!

The Paradigm stove model works by ensuring a good draft into the fire, controlled use of fuel, complete combustion of materials, and efficient use of the resulting heat. It reduces fuel consumption by 80% and toxic smoke by 60%. For an idea of the sorts of stoves we are using, this video from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (UN) is a nice introduction.

It is also designed in such a way as to protect children from the fire. One of my first encounters with Kimanjo clinic, 6 years ago, was when driving around the area, responding to a call on the radio to collect a child from a manyatta and take him to clinic. This was in the days before Stephen, and there was no nurse present at Kimanjo. We picked up this child, aged about 18 months, with his hand singed, scalded and burnt through the skin, who didn’t cry, stayed cuddled to his mother and looked totally stoical, and drove him 40mins to the next nearest clinic, where we had to drive into the village to find the nurse. The hand was treated, bandaged and the mum told to return next day (we managed to find her a lift). The nurse did not look hopeful, and to my (relatively untrained) eye it looked like the child wouldn’t get functionality back in any of his fingers. But babies have an amazing power to heal, and today he is a happy kid with 5 working fingers and scars to tell the tale.

In an upcoming blog post, Nurse Steven will discuss his work in the community with the aforementioned Community Health Workers, and explain how problems such as malnutrition and maternal health are addressed. For now he, and all of us at the OLT, hope that this project will reduce the number of respiratory problems the Kimanjo Clinic and Nabakisho Healthcare Programme team have to deal with.

Community health workers from our Nabakisho Healthcare Programme
arrive at Kimanjo clinic by bike

Ol Lentille Conservancy Part 2: Creating Conservation

Part 2 of John's conservation story...

Under the agreement between Regenesis Ltd and the landowners (Kijabe and Nkiloriti Group Ranches), fees became payable immediately, even in the absence of a lodge or any guests. So the “economic engine” of the project started up early- the community gained financially just from Regenesis being there, and more so when the lodge was complete and guests began to arrive.

All the while, since 2000, the community had successfully excluded its own livestock from the conservation area and had eliminated poaching. Unfortunately neighbouring communities’ cattle were not so respectful, and the community had not enough resources and organisation to exclude them from the area. When John and Gill arrived in late 2005, it was obvious that the land was still being grazed on- ‘bomas’ were visible, you often saw Samburu herdsmen in the conservancy with their cattle and youngsters with sheep and goats. They knew they were not meant to be there and would run if you tried to talk to them, but always crept back in to the conservancy.

Cattle were a frequent sight in the conservancy in
2005-6 and still try to return if drought gets bad

With the help of the world-famous Lewa Conservancy, John and his Head Ranger, Sergeant Samal Kimorgo (more commonly known as ‘Kilo 1’, his radio call-sign), turned the volunteers into an organized, trained, disciplined, well-equipped, uniformed, and paid security force. Pretty soon all livestock were being properly excluded from what had now become the Ol Lentille Conservancy.

Ol Lentille Conservancy Ranger at an Outpost. Teams of Rangers
rotate on Outpost duty in various remote parts of the conservancy

You may be asking why it was necessary to drive livestock out of the area. After all, cattle are the prized possessions of the tribesmen. Well, it’s fairly simple. The land had to rest. It was almost exhausted. There was no grass-cover with resulting loss of top-soil and huge erosion gullies. The soil had become capped with a hardened crust so any rainfall just ran off it. Because the land was permanently hot, rainfall was less likely. Invasive plant species, unpalatable to either livestock or wildlife, which thrive in poor soils had started to take over.

Opuntia, an invasive species which thrives in degraded soil

Today, after 5 years of dedicated hard work, and even with 2 extreme drought years in that period (yes inter-drought frequency is decreasing – climate change is upon us here- it is also becoming more unpredictable, not like the El Niño/El Niña’s of old), the Ol Lentille Conservancy has abundant grass cover and the invasive species are dying out as soil quality improves, indigenous plant species thrive and smother, wildlife grazes and fertilizes the soil, and rainfall increases. Remarkably, since the water table has risen, a spring, long dead, has come back to life, and is a major magnet for wildlife.

Elephants in Ol Lentille Conservancy, 2010

Next week, we get into the science of conservation, showing how the Lentille conservation strategies can be extended and used to bring even more benefit to the communities here.

Greater Kudu in Ol Lentille Conservancy, 2009