Aaron Kaah Yancho
At the Dourum
community in the Far North Regions of
Cameroon very close to the Lake Chad river basin the planting season
is in the offing. The local farmers out there need no scientist to remain
them. By indigenous knowledge and design it will just be a repeat of an
old aged tradition to plant at this time of the year.
Optimistic farmers like Mme. mama Binta, 63 and mother
of 6children have being cultivating their dusty
farm fields hoping to sow millets and groundnuts seeds once the first rains
fall. Like all her community mates farming for food and family incomes, Binta
has taken urgent measures to “select”
the planting seeds at best make them ready for sowing. Women
working in small community mobilization groups, do all they can to help one another catch up with the coming of the first rains.
This month like any other in the farming
calendar present a glaring statistics of the gender inequalities between women
and men as primary food producers
and providers. .“I leave home early enough to do the man’s jobs and the wife
work” Mme. Binta says proudly holding
an old blunt matchet.
This woman clears
and hoes her fields dreaming of reaping the
fruits of her labor in times of harvest.
This year the rains have signaled their
presence over the entire neighborhood. There is
joy not only with the farmers like Binta but the grazers who have been
seen walking the red dust in the hills
and valleys of the community wondering where next to tend their cattle. In these tiny villages of
mud houses all the peasants always wish to be correct in issues of
farming. Two to five bags of millet
grains are a family primary source of food and money security for a year.
Yet over the years it is not only hunger that has beaten the
communities, the rains too have become unpredictable resulting to the soils being
unfertile and unforgiving. “This
has made farming a very tedious job” Binta complains. Farming without manure leaves the soil too
even more depleted and barren in this
region of Cameroon. Financially not viable,
affording farm inputs is a
puzzle and dreaming
of ever getting any kind of irrigation for their crops is a joke. The task of farming for 90% of the population has gotten more harder, demanding and not rewarding .
CLOUDS WITHOUT RAINS!!!
Farmers in this regions
of Cameroon as well as along the Lake Chad River basin utterly dependent on rains to grow crops. But the sustained decline in
rainfall since 1980 had long thrown the farmers in to confusion. For many months Mme. Binta and her community
has to absorb the shocks if not deal with the realities of
the changed pattern in rain fall. Every
sunrise the farmers wait hopelessly looking at the starry skies. “And
all what we just see is heavy cumulus dark clouds in the horizon but no rains, cold winds and breeze”. Binta remarks. Strange
enough, this dull unpredictable weather also has its bearing’s on the community. A lot of kids and women have caught common cold and cough. Shortly before sunset a cluster of these
sick kids are at a local health care unit. Only God alone knows when a bucket of water trapped at a
camel’s back arrives the unit
before these kids are
administered a highly priced dose of
paracetamol.
Waiting and
wondering in her farm field Mme. Binta only anticipates why
the rains have become irregular every day. This
woman’s woes present the classic
challenge of farmers in the Far North
region of Cameroon and around the Lake Chad river
basin plaque by climate change. Many years back these very farmers could proudly
look at the weather and tell when it will rain. Now the whole community has been thrown in to a crisis of
rain if not water. A community leader by name Yayah Mallam is urging the local
farmers to hold on in this uncertainties
“may be, just may be the unexpected will happen –the rains will fall”
Mallam opines. According to experts
walking the region and who are they to
help educate the likes of Mallam these
are the climate changes that
scientist have been predicting that have
and will hampered food crop production world wide and leave Sub Sahara Africa and the Lake Chad river area one of the
poorest regions in the world today. In a report to confirm the change in the
climate at the ministry of Agriculture
and Rural development in yaounde Cameroon researchers in 2010
explained that when the first
rains come and the farmers plant in this
region and the Lake Chad river basin which constitute part of the North of
Cameroon …… the rains disappear again
for good making these poor farmers even poorer as seeds for the next farming
season are lost. “The results have
being over bearing” A staff of the world food program in the region cries. Low
food crops yields lead to abject poverty, hunger and misery.
Binta’s
husband Jaillaya Mohammed is a
grazer and polygamist with 2 other
wives. In this case their
problems are exaggerated. “Our big family now has to face the
temptations brought in by the climate changes, how to feed and to acquire money
for our immediate needs in a big worry”. Binta said. The grazing of livestock cattle on the small pasture on which this family depends for cultivation means the
worse is yet to come.
Not far from Binta’s grass roof thatched house lives a wiry woman
Amina Anre’ in her late thirties as
she struggles with a six months pregnancy. Amina’s potential hopes
are on two fowls perking on the sand next to her hut. The hut she calls home
relatively will not survive the end of the next drought as the already decompose
grass and bamboo’s fall off each time a strong wind blows. Community members like Binta don’t blame
themselves or fellow mates like Amina for living on next to
nothing. While Binta blames the weather for their predicaments, Amina
and her 2kids have a plethora of
difficulties. Her husband died a long time ago from an infectious disease. “My
capabilities to cope in the tormenting climate weighed down to
almost nothing” Amina explained. This girl later sort help from a women mobilization group and
built her present “abode” doing almost all the manual labor alone. Amina’s
two teenage girls who have not gone to school and will never
as she put it because of poverty.
After her husband death she was left with a long stretch of red
dry land and a few sheep to depend on for food, income and
the education of her kids. The poor yields and the longer dry seasons left her almost
miserable in the face of the challenges.
“The options for me like a widow
to improve my livelihoods
have been very slim” Amina said in tears.
Women like Amina and Binta are every where in the world especially in
communities where the change in climate
has hit. They form the majority of the
world’s poor that turn to be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In an Oxfam
report published in 2008 and titled Oxfam Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Resource -these poor women are affected
in their multiplies roles as food
producers and providers , as guardians of health, care givers and economic actors. In the report women like
Amina work extremely harder to secure their basic resources ………and this means
that they will have less time to earn an income, get an education or training.
To guard
against the worse times Mme. Binta and other 21 women like Amina who faced
similar problems have come together in their community under a self help group to share their workload, joy
and sorrows. Many development organizations in their
localities are raising awareness on climate change and how to cope in the extreme weather conditions
-what is it and how to adapt. These women have lobbied for aid and are
trained on integrated livestock management, gardening
and compost manure application, income generation activities as an
alternative to source income and food crops. Though trying hard to fend together their challenges
are still unshakable. The high levels of
inequalities among men and women in these communities and the
soaring levels of illiteracy among these women and girls as well as low
participation in decision making cycles
is hampering this effort. Very few women
have dared to venture in to business and whether by design or tradition they have accepted
their roles as house keepers.
Their only asset is landed property. while
men like Mallam Yaya- Binta’a husband may leave home annually to trade
in cotton, the task can be scary, harsh
and excruciating for women like this who are
always home when the troubles of climate change like droughts, floods,
and fire outbreaks strike.
WHERE
IS THE HOPE !!!
In search
of hope girls of school going age in
these region tend to follow their mum’s
to the farms to lean support on food security. At family levels they trek with their mothers through
long distances to crouch in the
empty river beds digging up muddy water
for drinking and washing on the same spots where livestock cattle drink under the biting heat.
In a report on climate change mitigation by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation entitled: What do We Do?,
2008 and the Oxfam international the “Right to Survive” and the humanitarian challenge of the 21th
century , the world is warned that the
impact of the climate change in areas like this will continue to worsen and for
people already affected the need to adapt is urgent. Farmers and
communities mentioned above fall in this poster.
By working
to help
farmers coaxing a living in this
arid lands, strategies for implementing
these solutions need
to be rooted in an understanding
of how these people sustain their
livelihoods. Working at community levels
like what the peasants are doing along this shrunk Lake Chad river basin can not
be sufficient response enough to
support effective adaptation. Climate
change is a long term issue for people living in poverty and by supporting tree planting campaigns like what the Ghana research institute for Agro forestry is doing in Kumasi,
encouraging farmers with farm inputs and small financial
schemes to
farm with trees can go along way to bringing some remarkable solutions. The government of Cameroon and the other states surrounding
the Lake Chad river basin on a surface
area of One million square miles with an
estimate of 42million people can play a fundamental role in also reducing these communities vulnerability to climate
change by ensuring the proper use of
carbon credits and by putting in place visible structures at
grass root levels to coordinate actions and intervention. From experiences scanty
resources breed conflicts for grazing
land and water sources. Citizens especially women who are the most affected in
climate related issues most talk their
husbands to put down their arms and to work with them in order to sake common solutions as a long term measure of achieving this development
goal.
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