Stop Waiting on the Rains: It’s Time to Build Resilience

Nature at its core is a conjugate of tiny versions of itself; call them mini-natures, or miniatures for the love of words.  Nature chooses to begin from the smallest of scales, building up intricate bonds and connections to form bigger versions of itself.

Consider us, humans, we’re just myriads and myriads of tiny elementary particles bonded together to form living, breathing, walking conjugates. At the core, we are mere Carbons, Hydrogens, Nitrogens and Oxygens floating around on Earth.

I guess science wouldn’t take offence on me if I said that nature is one mega pool of minute miniatures. But, the beauty of it is how they all come together in their minuteness and become great together.

Little Bundled up Together is Much

 Think of this: a crumb of bread joins a thousand more crumbs – they form a slice of bread. When a speck of sawdust joins a million more specks, you have wood.

Little is much, very much when you round it up, collect it together into one.

This is elementary Physics, a little of Biology and some philosophy, nothing much to fret about. Stay with me.

What am I driving at? Rain – rain is my contention here.

You see, I hold rain to be like a treasure whose value is only realized when it is amassed in bounty-fulls, when the little that comes from the heavens is bundled up into a huge bank of rain water.

A crumb of bread can barely feed an army of little ants, and there’s only so much of wood a speck of sawdust can make.

It’s not any different with rain, you need as much as you can gather if you are going to feed a whole nation especially in these uncertain times.

Cats & Dogs, Crickets & Beetles

The usefulness of rain grows exponentially with the volume amassed. Little rain will not raise seed from the ground, neither will it secure a good harvest into the basket. So here the problem arises.

In proper perspective, the problem is that sometimes it rains cats and dogs, while the other times it’s crickets and beetles.

Extremist Climate Disaster

Now more than ever, the baskets of harvest have shrunk and profits have been sucked up by costs. The sheets do not balance anymore. It’s a result of the changing climate. There is not enough rain most of the time.

What we’re experiencing is an extremist climate disaster, and we have developed no capacity at all to handle it.

There is no longer a distinctive rain pattern. Today’s climate is unprecedented and irrational, so much like power outages, so you don’t want to stick your hopes entirely on rainfall events.

Kenya has long been dependent on rain-fed agriculture. But to survive and feed ourselves in the future, bare-boned approaches like rain-fed agriculture will have to be abandoned and highly discouraged. They cannot stand the test of uncertainty.

Out of the 40 % of Kenyans employed by Agriculture, 70% are rural area smallholder farmers, heavily reliant on rain, which is beating them pretty hard.

Sowing and Moons

There is a certain perception held about rain, not just by smallholder farmers. It’s all over the country, especially with folks of the early and mid 20th century.

The moment clouds begin to gather up in the sky to rain down on us, some reminder clicks in the mind – it’s time to sow. They will immediately switch attention to their farms. Sowing seed will take the top priority.

They even know how to anticipate the rains. You will be surprised at how ‘common knowledge’ traditional rain forecasting is with these folks.

They’ll take a look at the moon and say, “The rains are almost here.” True to their prediction, it might rain, but not always.

Scientifically, there is evidence to support the moon’s influence on rain. From this study, the moon has been proven to cause very slight fluctuations on how much rain we receive.

We (geeks) already know that the moon’s gravity has a hand in the formation of high ocean tides. It works in a similar fashion with rains. I’ll spare non-enthusiasts hard jargon.

Well, the moon, 384,400 km  up in the sky somehow pulls Earth’s atmosphere outwards, creating bulges on it, kinda like how a dough of flour turns into a ‘bulge’ of frowning mandazi on the frying pan.

And like the hot steamy inside of a mandazi, there is high air pressure and warmer air in the bulges. The thing with warm air is that it can take in a little more moisture, and if it’s taking in more, then it’s not giving out.

If it’s not giving out, it’s not raining. How simpler could this get!

So all this reduces the chances of it raining, just slightly. The in-depths of the whole study are on this paper.

Most folks will be on the look-out for disappearance of the moon (what geeks call the invisible new moon), or the appearance of the full moon. Traditionally, these signify the onset of rains.

So far, what science says is that without the moon in sight, bulges don’t form, so there is no reduction in rain.

It seems there isn’t a complete agreement between science and tradition. They will catch up with each other. It needs more research. Someone should take this up.

Science detour over.

The Future Belongs With Resilience

We’ve had the wrong idea of rain; folks and young bloods – everyone. It’s time to bring down the thought that rains are meant for sowing. We need to bring these two asunder!

Country people, get this clearly. The times have changed. It’s no longer about watching out for the moon and seasons.

It’s no longer about dropping seed into a thirsty, impoverished ground and waiting for it to rise against all odds. That, I would equate to idling around; for anyone who understands the new order of climate.

The future belongs to the one who can adapt to the extreme adversity of climate change. It belongs to whoever builds resilience.

We’re living in uncommon times. We have more mouths to feed, more nutrition needs to satisfy. But the rains aren’t getting better, and neither is the entire climate getting any friendlier. Worse is on it’s way.

Worse could be a severe drought or violent flood. A La Nina or an El nino. Are we getting ready for these? How many times do we have to be hit by droughts to turn our heads to the future?

Now is the time to turn heads, we’ve been stuck on the past for way too long. Building resilience against climate variability is the buzzword into a food-proof future.

Of the many ways we could build resilience, storing up rain is of ultimate significance. Rain; or irrigation water is the resource with the single most power to transform the image of farming in Kenya.

End of part one.

Stay tuned for the next part of this series!

Thank you for reading. Aloha!