Widowed by terrorists, they pick up the pieces one hive at a time

When tens of Nyeri quarry workers were massacred in repeated terrorist attacks in Mandera between 2014 and 2016, dreams were shattered, women widowed, and families left without bread winners.

Others were kicked out of their matrimonial homes by their in-laws making the already bad situation worse.

This left the widows from Chaka area in the semi-arid Kieni constituency dejected as they struggled to fit into their husbands’ shoes with many turning to menial jobs.

However, to supplement their meagre earnings from the manual jobs, some widows came together and ventured into bee keeping. Brought together by  Richard Waithaka and Rose Nyamathira, the widows registered a group under the name Change Ambassadors Bee Keepers with a membership of 28 in 2016, out of which 23 were widows.

While Waithaka offered them technical support, Nyamathira, a counsellor, offered psychosocial support. The group started a bee keeping project after realising that the area was favourable for the venture.

"Beekeeping has advantages in that it does not need a lot of capital to start, is not labour intensive and not time consuming," says Waithaka, adding: “So they underwent the process of psycho-social support and were given training on entrepreneurship and financial literacy.” 

They are now focused on developing a value chain where other than producing honey, they will also be processing beeswax, producing candles and other byproducts.

Their goal is to scale up from about 150 hives to 300 to enable them to support a fully fledged processing unit that has a commercial value.

But their major challenge is how to increase their production capacity by increasing hives, acquire protective clothing and processing equipment and if possible get access to government resources such as forest reserves to install more hives.

“Market for honey is so open and big and cannot be exploited because the produce is in high demand locally and internationally,” says Waithaka.

The group, he adds, is negotiating with the government to explore ways of starting to export their honey.

Currently they harvest 500kgs per year with their produce seeming to be on an upward trajectory with production per hive being between eight to 15kg. A kilogramme goes for Sh1,000.

Waithaka, who is an accountant and an information technology expert, says their expectation is to attain 500 hives in one year. One hive can give them an average income of Sh15,000 which means 500 hives can rake in Sh7.5million in a year.

Chaka people largely depend on working in quarries but started moving to quarries in Mandera as local ones were getting depleted.

"Mandera quarry owners also paid much better than local quarries and so they moved there for greener pastures," Nyamathira says.

But things started going South when suspected al Shabaab militants started killing them in masses with attacks reported in 2014, 2015 while the worst massacre was  in 2016.

“After the burial of their loved ones, some of them were very desperate, lacked emotional support and did not even know where to start because of the trauma,” Nyamathira says.

But today they are happy that beekeeping has enabled them to supplement what they earn from manual jobs.

Jane Wairimu whose husband James Maina was killed on 7 July, 2015, leaving her with four children says their lives are now much better.

Teresa Muriuki, a mother of five, and whose husband Joseph Muriuki Maina died in November, 2016 also shares Wairimu’s sentiments.

 “When he died, three of our children were in secondary school, one was preparing to write the KCPE exam and so the burial had to be delayed,” she recalls, adding that the last born was only two weeks old.

Mary Waigumo, a mother of four who also lost her husband Joseph Githinji, says their coming together enabled them to give each other moral support, energy and the determination to move on.

Some of the well-wishers who have supported the project include Housing principal secretary Charles Hinga and his Trade counterpart Johnson Weru who bought them 10 hives.

Nyamathira says there is a need for the government and more well wishers to chip in, expand the venture and introduce more other income generating activities to enable them to diversify and earn more.

“These activities will enable them to boost their earnings and easily cater for their needs such as paying school fees, buying clothes and food for their family and meeting other necessities,” she adds.

-Edited by Sarah Kanyara