Community Jameel

A pastoralist by birth, Jane began herding livestock when she was a schoolgirl, helping her parents as they moved around to seek pasture and water for their herd. As a married adult, her own family was eventually displaced, and she lost the majority of her livestock due to extended drought.

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It was then that Jane adapted her approach to focus on agriculture, planting grass to feed her cattle during dry periods and creating a pond to harvest rainwater to irrigate her crops. She is now a leader of a community group that grows, stores and sells grass, and aims to raise awareness of climate resilience strategies. She also plants drought-resilient crops such as cassava, sorghum and pigeon peas, and hopes one day to keep beehives on her land.

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"A new practice we have developed is planting fodder, and now more households are planting them in their farms, unlike in the past, when they used to move from place to place in search of pasture and losing their livestock. We have also started a tree nursery so that we can regenerate our indigenous trees. We train the community every two weeks on climate change and the conservation of our environment, in the hopes of securing our environment," she said.

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Photo and interview by Jonathan Rashad.

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Kenya

Jane, Baringo County