Mennonite
Central
Committee

Fighting the desert in Kenya

Tim Shenk
June 8, 2006

A prolonged drought ended in many parts of Kenya with the arrival of heavy rains in April and May.

Around the town of Kola in Kenya's Eastern province, the rains filled eight new "sand dams" with water. The sand dams, which were built by a MCC partner organization, are concrete barriers that store large amounts of water underground for people, crops and livestock.

Over the next five years, MCC is funding the construction of 400 sand dams in Eastern Province and other parts of Kenya that are frequently affected by droughts. In addition to providing local farmers with water throughout the year, sand dams help to reverse the environmental destruction that leads to droughts, according to Joshua Mukusya, the director of Excellent Development, MCC's partner organization in Kola.

Overgrazing and deforestation have left many parts of eastern Kenya without enough natural vegetation to absorb and retain water, Mukusya says. As a result, once-green areas have become barren wastelands.

"What I have learned over the years is that Kenya is running to become a desert," Mukusya says. "In the few areas where people have been planting trees, conserving the soil, terracing land and building dams, when it rained, there was a big difference."

Sand dams are built across dry stream beds in order to force water underground when it rains. Over time, rainwater deposits sand behind the dams, which stores a large amount of water and prevents it from evaporating.

Local people draw this water from shallow wells and plant crops nearby, which flourish due to a plentiful supply of groundwater. They terrace the soil beside the sand dams and plant grass and trees to retain more moisture in the area.

Mukusya has worked with farming communities around Kola to construct more than 60 sand dams since 1978. He says that the environmental effects of this work can now be seen.

"A lot of land around Kola is not so much naked as it used to be," he says.

Farmers in the area are installing pumps to irrigate their fields with water from the sand dams, and some are harvesting their first vegetable crops since the rains, Mukusya says.

However, in neighboring districts where the land is more barren, farmers have not recovered from the drought, and water holes are in danger of drying out soon.

"I am very much convinced that if nothing happens, it is going to be a desert," Mukusya says.