An ingenious farmer from Homa Bay county understands necessity is the mother of invention in ways that have not been conceived for generations.
She is turning a climate change-aggravated adversity into an opportunity for boosting food security and income. Her example is replicable, but success of gully farming needs a strong will, energy, and patience.
Gully erosion has stolen huge acreages of prime land. But this woman is struggling, on her own, as others watch, to reclaim her heritage.
Dry gully basement farming may sound like a new idea, but not so for Phoebe Ouma. Hers is an outstanding case of underground farming.
She wades through an earthen chain of delicate staircases to get to her flourishing farm, about 15ft in the bowels of the earth. Sometimes she crawls downstairs to work on her farm.
Visitors crawl, literally, to get to a farm the shape of the meandering dry gully. One needs strong brakes or pairs of shoes with firm grip to reach the basement garden.
She plants sugarcane, bananas, and pawpaw in the basement of one of 12 dry gullies in Midwest Karachuonyo. The gullies, which were first made known to the world outside Karachuonyo in 2018, through the Chamwada Report: Effects of Gully Erosion in Homa Bay County (https://YouTube.be/Um7qYOHR1AA), are widening and getting wilder.
Snakes, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, hyenas, and bees inhabit the basement. Some of the gullies are hunting grounds for village poachers.
Phoebe Ouma also plans to start beekeeping down the gully. This is another opportunity for income generation through sale of honey.
For now, shakes of sturdy stalks of sugarcane excite chilling reaction from bees. The bees have built hives on the reaches of the gully, and under cleavages of the Berlin Walls of Midwest Karachuonyo.
Bees leave a lingering fear in the minds of visitors. The instinctive question is, how do I get out of the basement when the bees launch a defensive war against intruders in their habitat?
Getting into the farm is hard enough. Scrambling out under the escort of stinging bees would be a nightmare
The gullies have divided homesteads, clans, and villages into desperate islands. Children, women, and market-goers take long detours to reach their destinations when it floods.
Villagers have broken limbs, drowned, and died along the yawning gullies.
The challenge for Phoebe Ouma's neighbourhood is her opportunity to innovate. She does it in style, the results are astounding.
On January 1, she brought four sturdy stalks of sugarcane for auction to meet what Anglicans call 'Estimate'. This is the annual giving of ten per cent of their income. They give annually or during harvest to offset the costs of running their parishes.
The farmer brought her 10 per cent to the church service in kind: sugarcane, bananas and pawpaw. The stalks of sugarcane, each thick, sturdy and juicy, measuring around 15 feet high, were a marvel for residents of a location normally regarded as semi-arid.
The dry gully floods when it rains. The loose sides of the walls of the gully fall off when it rains. The debris heaps, and is sometimes washed away during heavy rains.
To mitigate the effects, Phoebe Ouma erects wooden terraces, at reasonable intervals to control the floods. This protective cover ensures her crops are not destroyed during heavy rains. Some water is also retained in the basement of her farm to support the growth of her crops.
Phoebe Ouma is miles ahead of her neighbours who live on the edge of dry gullies in Midwest Karachuonyo. Her neighbourhood hosts 12 consequences of years of massive gully erosion and neglect.
