The Rift Valley

After finishing up in Kisumu, we headed about two hours northwest and uphill to Eldoret. Eldoret is an agricultural town in the middle of the Rift Valley, Kenya’s largest and most populous province. It is also the most fertile area of Kenya, and produces the majority of its food. According to the GPS, Eldoret sits at an elevation of about 7100 feet, and as a result it was often chilly. While large parts of Kenya are currently suffering from drought, this area is currently in the middle of a six-month rainy season (May to October) and so for the five days we were in Eldoret it rained for at least a few hours every day.

   Eldoret was another center of post-election violence in 2007-2008. On January 1, 2008, 35 Kikuyu who had been forced off their land were burned alive by a mob as they took refuge in an Eldoret church. We drove past many more burned-out houses and businesses in this area.

   This area is really a completely different world than what we saw in Tanzania and Malindi. People in this region have radios, TVs, electricity, and a fair number even have cars. It seems as though  anything will grow here: wheat, maize, tomatoes, passion fruit, potatoes, the list goes on and on. In fact, it is one of the great tragedies of the current food crisis in Eastern Africa that this region produces a large excess of food. While families in other areas of Kenya are suffering from lack of food, people here face financial hardship (but not necessarily hunger) because the supply of food so outstrips demand that producing food is often not profitable. I would like to point out that such a situation can lead to hunger, for example if food prices drop so low that families have to sell most of their produce to purchase other essentials such as medicine, fuel, and clothing. This might explain why the family I interviewed in Kisumu, which seemed to have such a prosperous farm, is currently struggling to obtain adequate food. But I digress. The problem in Kenya, as many people have noted, is not that overall food supply has dropped dramatically (it hasn’t). The real issue is that subsistence farmers in some areas have no money to purchase food when their own crops (which make up a small proportion of Kenya’s food supply) fail.

   There are several strategies for coping with this problem. One is to try to prevent crop failures in advance through irrigation projects and improved farming methods. The Kenyan government is committing to large-scale irrigation projects in the wake of this crisis, but of course it's too late for such measures to be of any help combatting the current shortage. Another is to help subsistence farmers find other ways of earning money besides planting traditional crops. In one of the poorest areas of Malindi we interviewed a woman who was planting trees in a food for work program developed by the Red Cross. This program allows the Red Cross to combat hunger without having to deal with the costs and logistics of distributing food aid. It also keeps people employed, helps aid agencies target people who really need food (only people who really need help will join these programs), and provides a lasting benefit to the community. The trees that were being planted by these women will provide shade and firewood, and a recently completed project in the region provides irrigation. This strategy does not necessarily require an agency to hire people. One program in drought stricken Northern Kenya teaches locals how to develop and sell products from a drought resistant tree that is rarely utilized. Giving peole the opportunity to purchase available food can be much more efficient, less disruptive of people's lives, and have a more lasting benefit than directly delivering food aid.

  But with so many malnurished subsistence farmers who can’t afford available food from other regions, the government has resorted to redistributing food. It has struggled with this task. This is due partly to inefficiency, partly to corruption (today police caught two truckloads of diverted emergency food aid), and partly to the difficulty of reaching remote areas accessible only by poor roads. And so the food emergency has continued.

  The roads were pretty poor in the region, as well. When it rained, the roads would become so muddy that they were often nearly impassable. Our vehicle had four wheel drive and was usually fine, but the Synovate van was not so well-equipped. There were a couple of instances where we'd end up walking a few kilometers to reach a village, but these walks were a welcome break. We spend most of our days sitting in a car, sitting in on interviews, and sitting around at hotels.  

   Anyways, things wrapped up pretty quickly in the Rift Valley. On the last day we had a nice talk with one of the SILC project managers who told us about all the progress the program is making. There are now over 27,000 SILC members in the Eldoret diocese, and the groups are beginning to run without direct CRS funding. This program is really growing quickly, and hopefully the research we did will help it to grow in a way that is beneficial to all those involved.

   So our field work is finished, and it's finally time to head back to Nairobi and then the U.S.A. I definitely have mixed feelings about leaving, but more on that later. If you have any questions about my trip so far, let me know and I’ll answer them in my last post.