Chop my veggies! Chop my money!

It has not rained in Cheptuyis village in West Pokot County in Kenya, and the unforgiving sun has baked the ground.

As a result, there are no vegetables in the local market, but that is the least of Sarah Kwambai’s concerns because, in that weather, she has green kales (Sukuma wiki), Cowpea leaves (Kunde), carrots, onions, cabbages, Coriander (Dhania) and tomatoes.

She cooks the vegetables for her family and sells the surplus to her neighbours. The money she earns buys the food she cannot grow, like sugar.

Sarah and other women in Cheptuyis are an exception since the county is one of those categorised as arid and semi-arid lands, facing the worst food crisis in the last decade.

West Pokot is one of the 23 counties the government says is experiencing a drought, with “942,000 cases of children aged 6-59 months acutely malnourished and 134,000 cases of pregnant or lactating women acutely malnourished in need of treatment”.

Sarah and more than 25 women in this village say a group they formed— Cheptuyis Mother to Mother Support Group— taught them about nutrition and small-scale farming in rough weather as Cheptuyis. The group has a kitchen garden in the compound of one of the members, where they use locally available innovation to grow vegetables for their household use.

Sarah said she knew what food she needed to give but could not afford it.

“I would need to spend more than Sh200 for vegetables that would be enough for the entire family for just one meal, and that is money that I could not raise every week, and when I did not have it, there was no meal,” Sarah said.

Only when the ministry of Agriculture sent a small garden specialist to attend the women's meeting did they learn that the parcel of land behind their homesteads would free them from hunger. Michael Wamalwa, a crop development officer from the Ministry of Agriculture of Kenya in charge of the Pokot South Sub-county, worked with the women groups from preparing the garden to harvesting and storing the food. 

Cheptuyis, like many parts of West Pokot, is arid. The weather, which does not favour even small-scale agriculture, is partly why the county records one of the highest levels of malnutrition in Kenya at 35 per cent of all children under five. It does not help that the mothers need to learn what nutritious food types are.

Salome Tsindori, a programme manager with the humanitarian non-profit Action Against Hunger, said: “it is not enough to tell people what to eat without telling them how and where to get that food.”

“There is a lack of vegetables when there is no rain, and that is why I am keen to ensure that each household has a kitchen garden from which they can get adequate vegetables for their consumption and sell for other nutritional needs,” Michael said.

When the farms, the specialist and the women were ready, Action Against Hunger bought the seedlings for the women and a tank that could harvest the little rainwater and irrigate the farms.

6-months shelf life

Rosina Kiralem, from Kapkitony Mother to Mother Support Group in the neighbouring village, said that she learnt more than she had anticipated: how to prepare her garden by putting enough soil so that her nurseries, how to transfer the crops to the central garden. Rosina said she also learned the art of spacing the different crops in her gardens to allow each plant to benefit from the sun, make weeding more manageable, and control pests and diseases. The women's group also learnt to prepare compost manure from garden waste and the goats’ poop in their compounds.

When the vegetables were ready for harvest, Michael from the Ministry of Agriculture taught them how to preserve the food. After chopping, the vegetables are dipped in hot water with salt to stop the enzyme activity that would stop the rotting process. After two minutes, the vegetables are returned to cold water and dried on a rack. They store the dried foods in a clean airtight container for future use.

“After the drying, the vegetables have a shelf life of up to six months,” Mr Wamalwa said.

Sarah said that apart from adequate food for their families, they have saved money and earned more when they sell the vegetables to the community, and for that, she is grateful.

This story is part of the “Focus on the North” project produced in collaboration with Defrontera Media Group in the Star’s solutions journalism initiative.