Herders the latest casualties of climate change in Kenya

Herders in Kenya are slowly sinking in depression as they watch their only source of livelihood (cattle) succumb to drought. These poor people who counted their wealth in thousands months ago are now left speechless as thousands of cattle die everyday.

The government through the Kenya Meat Commission has tried to salvage the situation by buying cattle from the herders, but this has not helped much because most of the cattle die before they reach the buying point. Most herders in Kenya come from the Northern part of Kenya and the Rift valley which are miles from Nairobi, where the meat commission is based. It is heart breaking to see these people who owned more than a hundred herds of cattle now left with nothing to even eat because that is all they had!

Many Kenyans especially in urban areas are even shunning meat eating because of the disgusting sight of cattle carcasses being shown in the media as herders try to ferry their cattle to the Meat commission. Before the weather became unpredictable, these herders used to be advised to practice farming as well to supplement their pastoralist way of life. Now there is no option we can offer them since farmers in some parts of Kenya have not even witnessed any rainfall in the last three years!

The government has finally publicly acknowledged that Kenyans cannot rely on rainfall any more to ensure food security and is now relentlessly reviving all irrigation schemes that have been dormant for the last twenty years.

But the question that still begs is:

Where do we get the water to jump start the irrigation schemes? No more dry, wet, cold or rainy seasons here, only one stretched extremely harsh climatic condition which I don't have a definite name for yet!