Nairobi-Bamako-Ouagadougou-Accra-Nairobi

By Ochieng' Ogodo

The Kenya airways steel bird touched down at the Senou International Airport in Bamako, Mali, almost exactly at the appointed time, 12.45 hr on October 3, 2011. We disembarked and headed straight  to the arrival lounge. According to my original flight schedule, I was to have a six-hour hold on here waiting for connection to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, my final destination in this trip.

Immediately we reached the immigration desk, in the arrival lounge, I realised I had problem, I was unable to communicate easily. As we cruised through the sky, clouds seemingly in a mad race below us, with flight KQ 512 making steady move to West Africa, this had not occurred to me, but it was a reality that I hade to face.

Senou Airport, Bamako

The mean looking police office took my passport, flipped through it and with a wave of his right hand, he beckoned me to his office. 

He fished out a piece of white long rectangular paper with the government insignia on it and moved it across the table towards me. Obediently, I picked it and started filling up the dotted lines beginning with nom (name). The normal official requirement took me about five minutes, after which I gently pushed it back to him. I had missed out on two important areas, date of travel and the name of my professional body, which he quickly brought to my attention. Promptly I did the necessary.

He picked up the passport again and stamped it, meaning I had been granted transit visa. As they do it here, that required I get out of the airport before I could come in again through the departures gate.  It was the first airport personnel I met here that unknowingly gave me a tip that English was not their lingua franca. “Excuse me sir, I am on transit to Ouagadougou and would like to know where to move from here,” I inquired.

He answered, or appeared to have done so but in French. I got lost. It was after this that I decided to approach the police officer who gave me the transit visa. But, other than issuance of the transit visa to me, the officer was not of much help more than that.  I asked him what to do next and he answered back in French. I gathered myself out of the armless chair that was infront of his desk and slowly moved away. I was thinking of what to do next, who to ask what a transit passenger should do, where to get the necessary information.  

Luckily I heard a lean built man of medium height utter some words in English, disjointed though, to another passenger who was facing the same fate. I decided he must be my help. My many years of travels across the globe have taught me not to waste a chance.

“Excuse me sir, I ventured. He stopped and bent over his head towards me.  I explained myself.

He beckoned a dishelved short young man and after conversing with him in French, I was handed over to him. I wanted to know how to move. There was still much time as I believed we were going to depart Senou at 17.50 hrs to arrive in Ouagadougou at 19.10 hrs. The young man went to the baggage belt pointing at each and every luggage hoping for a nod from me.

From Nairobi, I had checked my luggage and retrieval was at the final destination, Ouagadougou airport. Using signs, I told him I can only get my suitcase in Burkina Faso.  With a bright smile he waved me to follow him, which I did promptly. Up to this time I still thought he was an employee of Mali’s airports authority. 

In Ouagadougou

At Senou airport, those on transit are granted transit and must come out through the arrivals exit before you could be allowed into the departure lounge. It is not like other airports I have been to where you are absolutely not expected to get out of the airport.

My guide took me to the transfers’ information desk, just outside the departure gate. I made inquiry and a young medium built lady of chocolate complexion told me the flight had been rescheduled and instead of leaving the airport at 17.50, the flight had been rescheduled to depart airport for Ouagadougou 9.30. So, my waiting hours was extended.

I decided to go and rest on a steel chair, which was close by. It was now time to disengage myself form the guy. As I thanked him, he reluctantly looked at me, and in French said something to the effect that I should pay him.

In airports I have been to, Oliver Tambo, Bole, Mount Kilimanjaro, Heathrow, Schiphol, Atartuk, Indhira Gandhi, Ohare, Dallas, Harare, Dubai, Frankfurt, such information is never paid for and I was not going have an exception here.

Grumbling he went away. I learnt that at this airport, there are many brokers who earn undeserved money from unsuspecting travelers.

I arrived at Ouagadougou airport at about 11 PM for the Africa Region Meeting on RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands that was to commence on October 4 at Splendid Hotel. But one thing had happened, my suitcase was left behind and the next four days I had to struggle to have it with me. Again, here language was an impediment in some of the things that I wanted to do. French is the official language for instructions.

Infront of Splendid Hotel, Ouagadougou

But Ouagadougou was a fine place to be in; generally a lovely and hospitable that would charm you with some rare honest and a somewhat slow and relaxed life you would not encounter in most places you visit.

On October 8, about 8.30 A.M I had to leave for Accra on my way back home and after about twelve hours in Ghana, I was airborne heading to Nairobi, the place I know and understands most, so I believe. 

It's no easy life in the streets

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

[NAIROBI] “Sometimes you feel that the world has neglected you with all the cold merciless winds of suffering ranged against you. You have no space and you just want to die,” Ramadhan Njogu Mbugua a.k.a ‘Msani’ summed up his many years experience in the streets of Nairobi.

With a distant look in his eyes under the shade of a curved peaked cap, he breathed rather heavily and uttered, “It’s been difficult; very tough. Years have rolled by and life has been extremely tormenting. Living in the streets is no easy undertaking.”

He went on, “the society does not accept you. People look at you very suspiciously whenever you walk around.”

Dressed in a checked cotton shirt, a denim trouser and a pair of heavy soled suede shoes-all soiled out of their factory colour-Mbugua is the embodiment of the harsh reality that life is for many street children in Kenya.

Born in a poverty stricken and quarrelsome family, Mbugua abandoned school at primary when in class three and hit the streets at the age of about 11 in 1998. In the first two years it was an on-off affair.

“The first time I started staying in the streets it was very miserably, not to mean that it isn’t today. Then I was about 11 and I had to struggle with older boys, some of whom were ruthless and could forcefully take my food away,” he remembered.

According to Mbugua it has been a life with hardcores, some of whom settle their problems using knives. Use of drugs like cocaine, mandrax and bhang is rampant. “People even injected themselves with drugs. As for me, I have been using marijuana. What else would one do to remain calm in this hustle that is street life,” he posed.

His day starts at 5 PM when he wakes up and goes to clean some premises in the bustling business estate of Eastleigh in Nairobi. Sometimes he gets a paltry US$1.2 that he uses for breakfast. After that he takes a break and rests at the base. 

According to Joseph Nandwa, an officer with the Undugu Society of Kenya, one of the most experienced organisations in dealing with street children in Kenya, the street children and youth operate in gangs of about 10 in specific locations code named base.

Back to the base after morning odd chores, Mbugua takes a rest until 4 PM when he goes scavenging through heaps of garbage for discarded materials like plastics bottles and broken plastic containers, cartons, charcoal and sells for them an income. He also wanders about for scrap metals, which he sells to dealers.

Just turned 20 recently, Catherine Wanjiru dropped out of a secondary school in form three after she conceived in 2007. Then she was staying with her grandparents after her father and mother died in 2002 and 2004 respectively. With her aging grandparents unable to support her properly and her expected child, she was forced to leave Nakuru town, about two hours drive south west of Nairobi, where they were staying to move to Nairobi.

She joined a married age mate. “Her husband always pestered me for sex and one day he tried to have carnal knowledge of me then I reported him to police. He was arrested, prosecuted and jailed for two months,” said Wanjiru.

 “It was at this point that I moved to the streets to beg. Some were sympathetic while others outrightly abused you.” She got another street boy who married her and they rented hovel in a slum area but violence made her flee back to the streets and to a different base.

Out there, she aid, some want to take advantage of your desperate   situation and exploit you sexually. One of the most serious frustrations, according to Wanjiru, is harassment by city councils security personnel and police who pounce and arrest them.

 Some of these people sometimes lead the girls to dark alleys where they are raped before being set free. They don’t have food, no shelter and people sleep in the cold covering themselves with polythene sheets during rainy season

But why the street?

According to Undugu Society of Kenya Programme Manager, Children and Youth, Josephine Muli, poverty is one of the major reasons accounting for this. “Those who cannot find food at home take to the streets to beg.”

Mistreatment by step parents, especially where there are semi-orphans or total orphans also drives them to the streets.

In slums areas there is overcrowding. “When they reach a certain age they feel they can no longer stay with parents in those tiny ramshackle and they will move to the streets.”

There is also the peer pressure from those already   in the street. “Whenever they tell those not yet in the streets of how they make a few shillings from begging, they also get encouraged to join,” said Muli

Started some 44 years ago by a Dutch priest who was concerned about the plight of parking boys, Undugu Society of Kenya has done the task well but its has not been easy.

 “From a humble beginning we managed to put up two children’s homes in Dandora, one in Eastleigh and another in Kitengela,” Muli said.

“We go to the streets and talk to them to quit, something we do at night when they were not scared of city security workers and the Kenya police,” she said.

Muli said the mantra of their message has been for them to think beyond the street life; that there is a much better life out of the streets and to also ask them to think seriously of what they want to be in future.

In those days a few of them could turn up in the homes the following morning. “We rehabilitated such and took them to their parents but some would return to the streets and that has been one of the big challenges in dealing with street children; the return back syndrome,” said Muli.

But three years ago, the organization changed its plan and in the new Strategic Development Plan 2006 to 2010, the emphasis moved from having them in homes to working with them in the streets. 

Capacity building

“In the streets they operate in gangs [base]. Every base has a leader and we try to put the leaders of different bases together and train them on leadership skills. We also give them knowledge on HIV/Aids, group dynamics-how a group works, to know how to handle different characters and on the lifespan of a group,” she stated. They become trainers of trainers for effective trickling down of information.

Undugu Society of Kenya then trains the leaders and the group members on business skill on how to become and how to become entrepreneurs. “The second stage,” according to Muli, “is capacity building; building confidence in them, make them have self esteem then give grants on average US$ 150, or more based on what they want to do, to start small businesses.” 

To ensure that this works smoothly, Muli said, they introduced the association model and they seek the opinion of members on what they want to do with the grants.

Some do garbage recycling, others environmental cleaning while some sell small merchandises like sweets. Some are trained in skills like hairdressing, dressmaking. “We attach the children to artisans and we pay for the cost of trainings like in mechanics.”

Currently they are making contacts with the government to include them in the Youth Development Fund so that they can be advanced loans to run businesses. She said during the interview that a few have registered with the fund.

The Undugu Society of Kenya shut down all their homes under this new strategic development plan except one in Kitengela where they take very small children for between one to six months after which they are taken back to their homes and put in school with the organisation meeting the cots of education.

“We also talk to teachers and local chiefs about the children and incase there is problem they reach us.”

 Undugu’s challenges

City security officer and regular Kenya police harass them making it difficult to operate as an association. And because they have been living on begging they expect handouts almost all the times. Another major challenge for any organisation in dealing with street children is their coming back to the streets. “But, for those who have gone through us only a few come back,” she pointed out.

Nandwa says there is also the bad attitude from the public and people see them as potentials criminals whenever they are about. At times they are suspected of a crime, which could be true or false, and people are always quick in administering mob justice on them without bothering to determinate truth.

Whenever they are under the influence drugs a quarrel may ensue, for instance sharing proceeds from chores undertaken, leading to a serious fight among them according to Nandwa. Some also use them for crime perpetration like theft of motor vehicle side mirrors.

**Ochieng’ Ogodo is a Nairobi-based journalist whose works have been published in Africa, the US and Europe .He is the  English-speaking Africa and Middle East region winner for the 2008 Reuters-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He is the chairman of the Kenya Environment and Science Journalists Association. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ogodo16@hotmail.com.

Abused and ejected out of a marriage

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

[NAIROBI] Tears welled in her eyes as she narrated what turned out to be twenty five years-that was in 2005-of agony encapsulated in intense physical, emotional and verbal abuses in the name of marriage.

Alice Wanjiru said she had not only known nothing about peace in marriage, but was also abandoned by her husband and was forced to take care of their four children after they were ruthlessly evicted and taken to her parents’ original home.

Her story is a chronology of marital violence and typifies that of the many women suffering similar fate but remain hushed.

Wanjiru says, ‘When he came to my home in 1984 and everything was transacted according to Kikuyu customs, I was happy to leave my parents to go and start a new life with a husband,’ she reflected.

In 1985 they were blessed with bouncing baby girl, Susan Wairimu, but soon after violence, which has tenaciously stuck to their marriage, reared its ugly head.

According to her the man showed her the door when the girl was only three months old. And with the child tucked in her back, she picked her way to Saba Saba in Muranga, her birth place. As she was about to reach home he appeared and convinced her into coming to Nairobi.

When their first born was bout to join primary one, the wild beast in his husband exploded again and she found herself on the way to her parents’ home. But this time she left the kid behind. This was in 1992.

Even the prospect of another baby in 1987 did not insulate her against the beastly acts. She ran away two months to delivering Francis Macharia to escape the incessant quarrelling and physical violations.

Wanjiru was to stay at her home until 1989 when she came back to him. It was in the same year she gave birth to Mary Wambui. But when the kid was five months old she was chased again by the husband and had to spend the next three months with her parents. The husband visited her home and after a meeting with his in-laws, agreement was reached and both came back to Nairobi.

But this was not the end to the agony that their marriage had now been steeped in.

In 1993, three months pregnant, she was chased away again. A week to delivery the husband visited their home incognito, and at the ungodly hours of the night. They thought he was alone. It never occurred to them the man was up to something nasty. With him were other men who stood at strategic places in the darkness within the compound.

It was a trick

After his pleas to her parents about his desire to have her come back, he asked her to escort him up to the gate. Once she set her foot in the darkness she was lifted up and spirited to a vehicle he came with.

‘He called me out and pretended he wanted some information on certain documents he could not trace in the house ever since I left. It was trick,’ she said.

Her mother who was making tea got alarmed and on coming out in her defense she was pushed to the ground as they sped off. On the way her husband remarked, ‘this dog has been disturbing me for long. I am going to kill her,’ she remembered.

Incensed by what happened, her parents arrived In Nairobi the following day and after lodging a complaint with the chief went to their house and declared the two unwanted in their compound as what they had done was an abomination.

In 1995, after several pleas, they defied the ban and went to her home. That matter was deliberated upon and the ban was lifted. But the violence that ruled their house continued and reached boiling point in 1999. On February 17, 1997 the man married another woman and rented a house in their neighborhood in Mathare B.

At this time they had a kerubo (local brew) club where he operated from the second wife’s house on daily basis. On 17, February 1999, he went to her house and demanded food. “For about three months he had not stepped into my house,” she said.

He stabbed her

A quarrel ensued and he stabbed her on the upper part of the left arm. A few days later chased out of the house. Like before, she went to her home where she was to stay for months.

On December 23, 2001 he sent all the children to her grandparents place. He told them to stay for two weeks and come back with their mother.

Two weeks later a woman who took the kids to their grandparent’s home appeared saying she had been sent by the man to collect them and their mother.

Wanjiru budged and they trooped back to Nairobi, the children in her tow. A semblance of peace existed for some months. In June 2002 he started campaigning for a civic seat and left Wanjiru to run their local brew pub.

He requested her to look for Sh.20,000 from her merry-go-round group and pump it into the business. But, once she got this money he diverted it to his campaign. From kerubo proceeds she was able to refund the money. Elections came and he won. But with the victory came another dimension, the man of the house was mostly coming home to change clothes. Sometimes he sent a girl he employed at the civic ward’s office to collect for him some clothes to change.

Incidences where he could pop in the house in the middle of the night with a woman and order her wife out of their matrimonial bed for them, she said, dot almost the entire marriage life from consummation.

‘It was quite humiliating but what could I do. I have children I wanted to take care of under their father,’ she stated. In 2003 May, she was shocked when the office assistant became plain that her husband had proposed to her. A few days later she was confounded by her husbands surrendering one of his cell phones to the office help when he was away in Mombasa for seminar. ‘I cried to God, why me.’

Accused of peddling her body

Come October 2003, he ordered the kerubo club locked allegedly because she had turned it into a place for peddling her body. ‘He told me to go and sell my body somewhere else but not in his club,’ Wanjiru reflected painfully.

She said he now could disappear from the house for days. Also stuck in her minds is October 20, 2004, when he strangled her almost to death and it was by the grace of God she is still alive.

The eve of 2004 Christmas saw him call the house and ask everybody to prepare as he was taking them somewhere. For a family that lived in fear from his brutality, they looked at each other wondering at what it was. He came home and asked them to get into the car. A few meters a lady appeared from the roadside and the man braked. She was asked to get in. The wife reacted coldly and this earned her severe verbal abuse before her children.

“Referring to me as prostitute, he asked why I was not greeting people properly,” she said. They drove up to town and she was given Sh.8000 to do some shopping. They were driven back to the house. Surprisingly after what looked like change of heart, the man decided not to talk to anybody in the house save for the last born. Well aware of the fact that the wife was not doing anything substantial. He asked her to pay school fees for their two children in secondary in January 2005.

“He asked me and my elder daughter to look for money whenever we could even if meant selling our bodies,” she said. The man even stopped eating anything from her for fear she may poison him.

Hoping against hope, she was on May 29, 2005 chased out of the house and the office assistant who by this time was staying with them was instructed not to allow her into any of the rooms. The husband locked all the doors. She relocated to her daughter’s bedroom from where he ordered her out on July 07, 2005. As if that was not enough the man sent all the children away with a promise he will never educate them and they went their grandparents place.

Her daughter, Wairimu, remembered the many incidents of violence their parents had. One such was in November 2003 when her mother bled profusely from a beating. She has not been spared either and has had to drift from one relative to the other to escape the wrath of the man. At one time the father accused her of swinging her back in the estate for men to see and that she was a hopeless creature.

‘Currently I am staying with my uncle after my father chased me away on July 7, this year.

In the past he had hit her sometimes even pulling her hair strands but on this day, after quarreling he went into her room and started removing his trouser. ‘I wasn’t sure of what he wanted, I got scared, probably he wanted to curse me,’ she said. That was the agony they had to endure.

The writer is the winner of the English-Speaking Africa and the Middle East region for the 2008 REUTERS-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ogodo16@hotmail.com
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Climbing beans changing Rwanda's small-holder farmers fortunes

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya 

[KIGALI] AT 47, Alphonsin Nyirambranjinka, a peasant farmer in Rwengeri sector in Muganze district, Northern Rwanda, has been around for long. Like any other small-holder farmer here, she has had to grapple with declining bean yield, especially with African soils already very depleted.
Beans are the main staple food in Rwanda-one of Africa’s most densely populated nations-and are relied on as a prime source of protein and a huge part of calories.
Here, beans are consumed on a daily basis by almost everybody-from the very poor to the rich. Whether served alone or with other dishes, it’s an imperative component of the meal table content.
But now, Nyirambranjinka can breathe a sigh of relief thanks to ingenuity of science that has bred various varieties of climbing beans now being adopted in Rwanda and Eastern Africa.
“I started farming beans in 1973 with the bush beans. But yields have been on a downward trend and from a half hectare of land I could only manage about 500 kilograms from one season,” she reflected.
But in 2005 she shifted to cultivating climbing bean type. The first time she got one and a half tonnes but she lacked knowledge on better cultivation methods because of lack of extension services.

Yields has tripled
With the new seed variety and extension services available from the Rwandan Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) the yield has tripled over the last few years and she is now one of proud peasant farmers depending on a climbing bean variety.
She sells the surplus in the local market and money netted is used for other household needs like buying utensils and furniture. Because of her agricultural activities Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture recognized her with a Fraizer milk cow donation.

“From cultivation of this type of beans I have had tangible benefits,” she said with a wide smile as she fished out beneath her dress, slightly above her breasts, a Motorola cell phone she bought using money from sale of beans.
Out of climbing beans cultivation she has educated her children, two of whom are out of high schools and another in secondary school. She is also able to put food on the table for the family.
She is part of the farming community working closely with ISAR from where she gets training, seeds as wells as extension services. According to Nyirambranjinka the new seed variety not only gives good yields but good taste when eaten and is disease and rain tolerant in her high potential area that northern Rwanda is.
“If I plant seeds provided by ISAR then I have no problem with disease and rainfall,” she said. She has no regrets about her shift from bush beans to climbing ones. “This type of beans is changing our lives and raising high our fortunes. The good thing is that it can be intercropped with other crops like maize and does not interfere with them at all,” she said. Maximising use of her land she also grows maize, Irish potatoes and vegetables.
Like Nyirambranjinka, 56 year old Ngiraba Twere has abandoned bush beans variety for the climbing one. For a piece of land that yielded three sacks he can now take home more than 10 bags at harvesting time. “I can now afford to sell some and still remain with what meets our dietary needs at home,” said the father of four.

More income from beans
Although he grows sorghum, he now prefers giving large chunks of his land to climbing beans as “it brings more income than sorghum.”
In the past he has had problems with weevils that destroyed and left their bush bean fields bare but now he can afford plentiful harvest from the new variety. And for people who gets no government subsides, Twere who hails from Lurindo district in Northern Rwanda, said this said this is a most welcome variety.
Dr. Robin Buruchara said a research spanning ten years by the Rwandan Agricultural Research Institute (Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda - ISAR) in collaboration with International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has developed beans that slink up stakes two meters high tripling and even quadrupling yields.
On January 15, 2009 they released new varieties that were bred for lower elevations between 800 to 1600 meters above the sea level, which are medium altitude climbers.

They do well in nutrient poor soils and are also diseases resistant. The beans take three months to ripen and thus offer possibility for four planting seasons annually with a hectare yielding 3-4 tonnes each harvesting season.
Beans are an important source of nutrients, providing the average Rwandan with about 39 percent of their dietary protein intake. Besides they account for 13 percent and 18.72 percent of carbohydrates and lipids respectively, and are potent sources of iron and zinc.
This, according to Buruchara who is the regional Coordinator for CIAT in Africa, is the outcome of sustained research and promotion that has made the climbing beans variety to be increasingly gown across income and gender groups. Today 65 percent of Rwandan farmers grow climbing beans varieties.
Buruchara said the collaboration worked on conventional breeding to improve resilience to diseases and tolerant to rainfall. They took various germplasm from CIAT bean germplasm bank-the largest in the world-based in Cali Colombia and after crossing them they came up with varieties suited for different elevations in the region.
“We worked in partnerships to develope improved varieties through conventional breeding coming up varieties that have better yields and more nutritious but also disease resistant and rainfall tolerant,” he said.
These beans varieties require stakes and in comparison take more labour they help fix soil nitrogen and also curtail soil erosion in sloping areas with heavy rain.
Scientifically referred to as Phaselous vulgaris L., Buruchara said, the improved climbing varieties have gained popularity and are now increasingly grown in Eastern and Central Africa notably: eastern Kenya, eastern DRC, Rwanda, south west Uganda and Burundi .

Improved climbing varieties
According to Augustine Musoni, bean breeder and coordinator of bean research at ISAR, northern Rwanda has had pockets of bush and climbing beans grown. But a devastating roots disease wreaking havoc coupled with declining soil fertility threatened the livelihoods and food security of many people.
“The varieties were vulnerable and the disease wiped all the germplasm they had. But with research and the introduction of improved climbing beans people saw improved resistance to diseases like anthracnose, root rot and ascochyta blight,” he explained.
At policy level, Musoni said, the government is promoting climbing varieties and currently it is estimated that between 50,000 to 100,000 hectares in Rwanda are under climbing bean varieties cultivation.
On land ownership, he said, Rwanda has 0.1 hectare per capita and ensuring maximum yield from the fields is therefore crucial. “You can get five tones on average per hectare when you plant climbing beans and even with potential for more yields but only 500 kilograms on the same piece of land with ordinary varieties like bus beans.”
The beans variety does not only offer small scale farmers plenty of yield despite land scarcity resulting from population pressure that continue to translate into more land division but also allow farmers to use leaves, pods fresh grains and dry grains for food as well as source of income from sales. It is a seed of hope.
The writer is the winner of the English-Speaking Africa and the Middle East region for the 2008 REUTERS-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ogodo16@hotmail.com
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Abducted, raped and made to suffer by Ugandan rebel soldiers

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

[GULU] Her eyeballs rolled left and right in a dance of hopelessness with tears on the edges as she softly bit her dry cracked lower lip. Betty Ajok was certainly struggling with some terrifying deep inner feelings. She was in great pain.

And the harrowing three-year ordeal in the bush that snowballed into her phobic existence is what many a young girl in northern Uganda has had to endure because of the many years of senseless civil conflagration pitting the National Resistance Movement army presided over by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and the sadistic ragtag Lords Resistance Army [LRA] in the hands of Joseph Kony.

She is ex-girl child abductee of the brutal and barbaric lot that is the LRA that has terrorised northern Uganda for the past 26 years turning the once agricultural rich region into a huge camp of suffering and destitution.

Betty Ajok in their makeshift

at Anaka IDPs camp, Northern Uganda

“All that I underwent in the bush makes me feel like I am not a human being anymore. I deeply loathe all that I was forced to do but the experience has stuck and gives me a deep sense of misery each passing day. I feel hollow,” Ajok said.

On a sunny mid-morning in 2000, Ajok and three other unsuspecting little innocent life vessels-they were about 10 in age-walked a little distance from their Anaka Internally Displaced Persons camp in search of firewood. Anaka is about 50 kilometers north of Gulu town.

In a split of a second, as they gathered firewood in the forest, they found themselves surrounded by mean looking and blood thirsty men who ordered them to follow.

“It was about 10 AM on that fateful day when they ambushed and ordered us to follow them. Disregard to commands from rebel soldiers was not possible if you knew what had been going on in this part of our country,” she said with her eyes cast in a hollow distant look.

For three days they were on the move drooping under the heavy weight of looted property in the thick forest further to the north, the stronghold of the rebels that attack and run to hide in eastern Democratic Republic Congo and Southern Sudan.

On those three days they were on the move joining other rebels with abductees, men and children forcefully drafted, in the bush. Once they reached one of the rebels’ make shift camps in far northern Uganda they were declared wives. “I was only twelve and I absolutely knew nothing about having sex. I had never slept with a man but as soon as we reached one of the many make shift camps we were declared wives.”

Like animals in a market place the leaders paired them in jungle matrimony to bloodthirsty rebel soldiers. “The man I was given was about thirty years and I was only 12. Like a ravenous animal he pounced on me subjecting me to excruciating pain in my private part that l will never forget. It was not love making. I was being raped. After sometime I had to resign to this painful, dehumanizing life. What else could I do,” she posed resignedly.

“Any girl, who dared resist was shot dead as everybody watched,” she recollected, a choking pain of anger splitting her voice into a hoarse delivery.

Along the way, as they moved northern from one camp to the other, she got a first hand experience of human tragedy in the hands of bloodletting rebels that have incessantly tormented her ever since then.

“From the day of the abduction I was to stay in the bush for the next three years during which time I saw raw human rage consume many innocent lives.”

In the bush any person who grew weak was shot dead and left to rot there or for the body be consumed by wild animals like hyenas. Some of the areas they passed, Ajok remembered, had human bones strewn all over.

“It was crystal clear from such a spot that several people had been shot dead and just left to rot away. You reach such a place and get bones and skulls spread all over sending shivers down your spine,” she stated.

If you dropped down any of the looted property because you could bear the weight no more, the soldiers turned and snuffed life out of you instantly in a hail of bullets.

Barefoot, Ajok and many other captives soldiered on in places full of thorns, waded through the long dew filled grass and swampy regions.

“We walked barefoot sometimes on stony dry places at times in swamps or on thorns and if you got exhausted and could not proceed any more you were shot dead or tied to a tree trunk to wither off and die, and many died. Many died in places where they were abandoned tied to tree trunks or if you were lucky you were found by government soldiers in pursuit of rebels,” she said.

Many girls got pregnant and gave birth like animals in the bush. There were no hospitals, no midwives. After birth you healed naturally. “And quite often the so called husbands slept with you even before you healed, and there was no room for otherwise. It was cruel. It was the rule of the gun,” Ajok shuddered as she uttered the words.

It was a life of uncertainty and suspicion; you never stayed in one location for long and even immediately after birth you were forced to be on the move.

“We were forced to kill children in the bush. The soldiers could order us to kill some children for hampering our quick movement. We strangled many to death. I did things that I hardly would want to remember yet I did them and I no longer feel like I am a human being.”

Sometimes when people had been killed they were forced to place them in a row and walk over them in rounds. “We made forth and back movements on bodies with their fresh wounds oozing blood.”

Today she lives in a single mud walled grass thatched hovel, which belongs to her elder sister, at the Anaka IDPs center. The center sprung up in neighborhood and when she left there were not many people but on coming back she found it teeming with men, women and children displaced by a senseless war.

Anaka IDPs camp where Ajok lives

In the area they are suffering from many health problems due to the atrocious civil war; respiratory tract infections and water borne diseases like diaorrhea, malaria which has killed three members of their one room household that now houses six

“I have seen hunger, poverty, diseases kill people. I have seen people tortured and brutally murdered. I have seen children strangled to death. I know what this kind of insanity means to people, especially women and children. Yet the world is looking at us from a far,” she said with a blank stare on her face.

A total orphan-her father was shot dead before she was abducted by the rebel soldiers while the mother died when a landmine blew up a pubic vehicle they were traveling in-Ajok was impregnated while in the bush.

She was later released to go home. “As war intensified they did not like those with children because we were making their movements slow and this is how we regained our freedom.”

The father of her son born in the wilderness and is now ten years old was shot dead by government soldiers in hot pursuit.

After their release the three reunited on their way back and by stroke of luck they met government soldiers. The soldiers took them to a camp called Aler, a short distance from Gulu town, before word was sent out to other camps. Her elder sister got the news and went for her.

With no formal education or any skill she is now finding life extremely difficult with three children; two born after she returned back to care for. “Without parents, no job, three children to care for and not being registered with the World Food Programme for food rations life is turning unbearable,” she stated.

Although she is trying a bit of cultivation in sorghum, finger millet, maize, cassava and potatoes the total breakdown in the socio-economic structure of this area makes life exceedingly difficult for majority of the people in this camp.

Ajok hates war. “War is bad, it's destructive. There are many skeletons out there of people who would still be alive were it not for this madness. If I could talk to Kony I would ask him to surrender and bring this senseless maiming, killing and suffering to the people of northern Uganda to an end,” she wished.

Ajok is the personification of what a senseless war can do to the young. She symbolizes the devastation and poverty emanating from a murderous rebel outfit on the loose and what the destruction of socio-economic and political systems of an area can do and the urge to positively push on in life.

The writer is the winner of the English-Speaking Africa and the Middle East region for the 2008 REUTERS-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ogodo16@hotmail.com

@Copyright reserved

Appreciate ordinary protectors of ecosystems

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

[NAIROBI] No doubt, some of those who live and farm next to important ecosystems conserve and protect these natural systems that are endowed with multifunctional life supporting services.
According to Thomas Yatich of the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre, ecosystems provide critical services but the communities who conserve and influence the quality and quantity of their life supporting products are hardly recognized.
“The services include provisionary ones such as timber, food and fibre, regulatory services such as microclimatic and carbon cycles, supportive ones such as soil fertility and those mediated by culture like the Kaya Bombo forest protected for its cultural values,” said Yatich.
However, the ecosystems, according to Yatich, have become degraded over time, as have the services associated with them. Evolutionary and political reasons as well as inadequate policy framework, among other factors, account for this.
In the pre-colonial period, said Yatich, most ecosystems remained intact because of traditional structures and values governing natural resources. “But in the colonial days people were translocated into lowlands, and forests were turned into farmland for products that were exported to Europe,” he said.
After independence, Africans who took leadership perfected the colonial regulations. Land use driven by policies, like those on food security, turned more forest areas into agricultural land. “Population increase led to high demand for food and, therefore, a move to convert more forested areas into to agricultural lands,” said Yatich, adding, “Innovations like the shamba system were aimed at addressing food security and forestation but farmers killed trees to prolong their stay on such lands.”
There has also been the failure of linkages between extension services and farmers’ land use methods in different agroecological zones. While there have been some multi-sectoral acts and policies, these have not only been inadequate but also done little to protect ecosystems.
But even bigger, according to Yatich, has been the lack of appreciation of the role of farmers in different ecological zones. Farmers have been reciprocating government demands, but their roles in influencing the quality and quantity of specific ecosystem services have not been recognized.
“For instance, do Nairobi residents appreciate farmers in upland areas that give them water” Yatich posed. The lack of appreciation can also be blamed on beneficiaries of those services like utility companies providing water, electricity, among others.
Poor linkages between policy and science manifest themselves in farmers upstream pursuing destructive land use practices that would not have happened had they been appreciated and rewarded.
Farmers’ activities upstream can cause water contamination and devastation of ecosystems, which in turn interferes with hydroelectric production.
The law might be clear in relation to protection of landscapes, but the enforcement is wanting and there is disconnect between law and practice.
Appreciate protectors of ecosystems
The World Agroforestry Centre, Yatich said, is now working on mechanisms to put acceptance and appreciation of farmers at the center of ecosystems protection. If implemented, this will result in less harmful land uses and make beneficiaries appreciate farmers’ roles.
The scheme, he said, was introduced in Southeast Asia to reward upland farmers for environmental services they produce.
The Centre is now pioneering this approach in Africa through seven sites including Sasumwa catchment and the upper Aberdares in Kenya where sedimentation and contamination are acute.
“If you reward farmers then you can save a lot,” observed Yatich who is now advocating for a structured appreciation of farmers by utility firms. In western Kenya in the Nyando and Yala river basins, the Centre has been carrying out scientific analysis since 1999. Similar activity is being conducted in Mount Kenya east, the main source of hydropower in the country.
In Tanzania, the Centre is working in the east and west Usambaras, Gulugurus Mountains, and in Uganda the Centre is active in the Albertine rift. West Africa has the Futajalon islands as a targeted area and in Malawi the project is located in Nchitsi district.
Site level enforcement establishes the state of the ecosystem, the existing ecosystem services and what can be done to reverse deterioration. Watershed delineation, land use mapping and other much needed activities are being carried out. “We identify the hotspots through land degradation assessment. We do hydrological analysis for changes caused by land use as well as water quality assessment and environmental acidity. We carry out socio-economic analyses as well,” stated Yatich.
“If you come up with scenarios on the impact to farmers, and the cost of transition and project money that utility companies will save, then you would draft a reward scheme for better land uses such as contour faming, agroforestry and planting trees. These will ultimately reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
But solid scientific evidence is needed to design a work plan, incentive mechanisms for the reward scheme, and to create institutional means that bring producers of ecosystem services and beneficiaries together for the betterment of ecosystems, and their sustainable use.
“There is potential for changing farming methods through the provision of extension services, encouraging sustainable practices, and offering incentives for organic farming,” he said.
“This is a process that fosters collective action and collective learning, and social capital is required for increased cover and reduced runoff,” said Yatich.
It also entails monitoring the impact of trees planted, and can show beneficiaries the important role of farmers so that they “invest in recognition.”
Need for a policy framework
Bits and pieces of acts and policies exist, but there is need for a comprehensive policy framework that fosters the kind of work the Centre is active in. “We are being systematic and this is crucial for the kind of action we are piloting across Africa.”
“We started in 2008 and now we have site level implementing staff,” he said. The World Bank, European Union, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Government of Finland and national partners, including national governments, are implementing partners.
The Centre periodically engages with the private sector to increase awareness of the interplay between ecosystems and businesses. The World Agroforestry Centre coordinates and manages the programme and ensures quality science, provides capacity building, leveraging expertise and technical support (tools, approaches and methodologies), guarantees proper implementation of project activities in different sites, and is accountable to donors.

Agroforesty centre efforts to reverse African soil nutrients depletion

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

[NAIROBI] For a continent where millions of people depend on agriculture as a source of livelihood and economic gains, the prospect of depleted soil fertility is not something one wants to hear.

But African soils are fast becoming nutrient deficient with low yields spelling a bleak future for many. Keith Shepherd, soil scientist with the Nairobi-based World Agroforesty Centre or ICRAF, said many factors account for the worrying scenario. “The organic matter in the soil has been mined intensely but supply has been suppressed. There has been low level of nutrient input,” he said. Because of this there isn’t enough nutrient supply for crops. The decline in organic matter has led to soils becoming physically degraded and has accelerated water run-off, which erodes the richer part of soils into water bodies. “This has led to progressive decline in water quality and increased siltation, especially in lakes and dams.”

Another important soil capital, phosphorous, is inherently low and this basic problem has not been addressed in Africa as opposed to other regions such as Australia, the US and Europe.

Many soils in Africa are also sensitive, including old lake deposits, and if you do not apply good farming methods the soils will be swept away leaving large portions less productive.

“Agricultural development,” he said, “was critical for poverty alleviation in Africa but despite this, there has been a decline in investment in agriculture in the last 30 years.

Not all is lost

“Both policy makers and scientists are now waking up to this,” said Shepherd. The realization is that without reviving the agricultural sector, the majority of people in Africa will remain stuck in a whirlpool of poverty and with ever diminishing ability to adapt to modern technologies.

“A lot can be done by improving support for farmers, like making inputs widely available, creating credit and supplying higher value crops,” Shepherd pointed out.

One of the ways of addressing the problem, according to Shepherd, is through agroforestry where farmers grow trees on farms along with other crops, and can use or sell products from their trees such as timber or fruits.

There are also trees that fixing of nitrogen in the soil and act as natural fertilizers. Another example is leguminous fodder trees which are grown by farmers in many places, including around Mount Kenya, to feed to dairy cows and goats.

Trees, Shepherd explained, can also be important for stabilizing ecological systems, and farmers can benefit from woodlots and planting trees on boundaries.

The World Agroforestry Centre is now involved in many projects aimed at replenishing the diminishing African soil capital for better yields and improved livelihoods.
“One of our main projects is to contribute to the African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) to enable stakeholders to get better information on problems and opportunities relating to soils in Africa,” he said. Taking advantage of georeferencing, the scientists are now sampling and analysing soils from all over sub-Saharan Africa.

Through infra-red spectroscopy - whereby light is shone on the soil sample and the reflected light collected back as a spectral signature - together with new similar x-ray techniques, it is possible to get information on the amounts and types of minerals and chemical elements in the soil. From this, the type and quantities of nutrients in a particular area can be determined and the amount of water it can hold and thus helping to advise on optimal soil management.

Through AfSIS, the Centre and its partners are currently involved in soil survey across sub-Saharan Africa using randomly located sampling sites. Regional field crews in Tanzania, Mali, and Malawi study landforms, vegetation, and measure trees for biomass and water infiltration rates.

“This program started a year ago and is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and is hosted by the Centre’s sister institute, the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT-TSBF)” he explained. The project is also conducting crop testing trials to see how soils respond to fertilizers. “When we work in a particular country we train national teams from national programmes to contribute to the African Soil Information Service to help improve national services”

Advice to different stakeholders

A key goal of the World Agroforestry Centre says Shepherd, is to give advice to different stakeholders ranging from farmers to policy makers and development banks on constraints faced and appropriate land management interventions, like the right agroforestry and soil management techniques for different types of soils and locations. A key need in getting information to farmers, he said, is the building of national and private extension services for advising farmers on appropriate crops and trees, for example for acidic soils. There is also increasing opportunity, he pointed out, to get information to farmers through local internet services and mobile phone services.

At a national level, the Centre provides advice to governments in planning agricultural development programmes for different areas, in developing policies for protection of the environment, and on the role of agroforestry in these developments.

The Centre’s information is made available to the donor community and development banks to provide guidance on funding and support that they could be directed at agriculture. “Agriculture is vital for economic development, poverty alleviation and basic food security, and there will be a lot of spin-offs like processing of food and tree products for internal and external markets,” said Shepherd.

**Ochieng’ Ogodo, the Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor for SciDev.net (www.scidev.net) is a Nairobi journalist whose works have been published in various parts of the world including Africa, the US and Europe. He is also English-speaking Africa and Middle East region winner for the 2008 Reuters-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ogodo16@hotmail.com.