University don takes his big brain on climate change to the village

On a chilly Tuesday morning, everything looks normal inside Kilifi County Women’s Hall except for one man and his attentive audience.

The motley group occasionally interrupts the speaker to ask questions and make comments.

After several minutes of listening to their conversation, we realize that this is no ordinary meeting at Kaloleni Village — it is a knowledge sharing session led by a university professor.

Samuel Kariuki, an Associate Professor at Egerton University’s Department of Biological Sciences, is talking about climate change with 25 smallholder farmers, whom he says have borne the brunt of harsh, erratic climate.

He has done this occasionally for the past three years.

His students are mixed farmers, some of whom have never stepped in a formal classroom, not even a nursery school. Some can neither speak English nor Kiswahili — the most common language spoken in the region.

This notwithstanding, Prof Kariuki, popularly known as S.T at Egerton, is on a mission to educate farmers to respond to the ravages of drought.

VITAL ROLE

“My motivation to travel all the way from Nakuru County to Kilifi is smallholder farmers who play a vital role in feeding the world yet they are faced with challenges because of lack of knowledge,” says the don who has lectured at Egerton since 1989.

“Many of these farmers do not understand what they are doing on their farms because of limited knowledge unlike large-scale farmers who are often well-educated, and if not, can hire experts to manage their farms and businesses.”

He begins his lecture with an introduction, as he tries to understand the type of crops grown by each of the student farmers. He also seeks to know why and which new crops they have introduced from the time he started lecturing them three years ago.

The instructor also asks his audience the type of animals they keep and the type of trees on their small farms. Later, he asks them how they are coping and responding to the ravages of climate change.

While none of the farmers have pen or paper, the expert scribbles notes.

“Farmers have a wealth of indigenous knowledge. By interacting with them, we try to understand their methods of adapting to climate change in order to identify the best bets,” he tells Seeds of Gold.

Some of the very valuable adaptation techniques have never been documented but have been passed from generation to generation.

And those are the techniques the university is capturing under a project called Capro, which disseminates information on climate change adaptation, and give smallholder farmers practical lessons on how to cope with the phenomenon.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTED IN COUNTIES

The project has been implemented in Nakuru, Bungoma, Kajiado and Embu and seeks to develop training manuals for university students.
So far, 150 farmers have learned directly from the project. The spill-over effect has not been documented.

“We have learned the importance of planting trees, we have learned about drought tolerant crops and animals in this area, but above all, we have learned about different methods of harvesting rain water,” says Chimale Cathleen Kisima, a farmer from Vuga-Rabai village.

Farmers have suffered prolonged dry spells and floods when it rains in Kilifi county.

“We used to grow rice in this area when I was still a young girl, but not any more. The current climatic conditions are not conducive,” says Charity Mganga from Kwambaji village.

Prof Kariuki says: “The climate is changing, and it’s no longer business as usual. That is why the university seeks to interact with local people to understand how they are coping with the phenomenon, and not to continue doing things the traditional way.”

The experts have improved on some of the techniques used by small-holder farmers and according to Prof Nancy Mungai, the Capro project coordinator, the best ones will be replicated across the country. They include ingenious ways of conserving soil moisture, novel rain water harvesting techniques and treatment of domestic animals using traditional herbs.

Comparing university students with the farmer students, Prof Kariuki says the only difference is that university students can read on their own, while the farmers entirely depend on what they are told.

“But you cannot underestimate their understanding capacity even though they rarely take notes. You tell them something today, and when you visit again after some weeks, you find them implementing it on their farms. Through the same technique, you find them with new ideas, which form a new basis for discussion,” he says.

INTERRUPTIONS

During Prof Kariuki’s lecture, Beatrice Emali, one of the student farmers, interrupts the lesson to ask why the Capro project is popularising dairy goats instead of cows that give more milk.

Her comment is received with a hearty clap and cheers from her classmates. Several minutes tick away before the professor gets a chance to explain that goats are more resilient to climate change compared to cows, and that goats eat and drink less.

It’s at that juncture that Charity Mganga also interrupts the lesson to share her experience of how her neighbour’s child quickly recovered from an illness after drinking goat milk every day.

“Even if you have a curriculum, you must let them drive the agenda. The only thing one can do is to moderate the discussion and ensure that it does not deviate from the primary subject matter,” observes Prof Kariuki.

Although the university is documenting some of the important ideas coming from the farmers, experts point out that climate change adaptation techniques are region-specific.

“What works at our site in Kilifi is not necessarily going to work perfectly at the Bungoma site,” says the don.