Atieno Yo!

The Good Life

The pages of Drum or True Love offer a peek into the dreams and aspirations of the Kenyan woman. With stunning shots of exquisitely furnished homes, interspersed with mouth-watering food, and articles on how to attain a beautiful (read, fit) body at home with equipment easily bought at Nakumatt, the magazines both create and curate Kenyan aspirations and hip Kenyan aesthetic. 

This lifestyle with its parquet wood floors, beautifully wrought burglar proofing, high thread-count cotton sheets, and faux-aged sculptures from Maasai markets by necessity require high maintenance. Someone needs to dust and polish the wooden floors, dust the ornaments- something that is inimical to also working out, maintaining that high-octane career, entertaining friends with tastefully prepared in-season & sustainably produced food. A calculation of the person hours required to maintain this lifestyles underscores a central truth: Kenyan domestic prosperity is contingent on the use of lower-income persons’ labour. This is a life that requires a steady supply of cheap and low maintenance labour. The domestic worker is a necessary input into what’s needed to maintain and preserve the employer’s valuables including children, expensive furniture, and ultimately peace of mind from the time consuming work of running a household.

Feminisation of Domestic Labour  

Women make up the vast majority of domestic workers. The female domestic is called on to perform and enact the ‘feminine’ role in the household due to the feminisation of reproductive labour in this sector. This life, a part relic of colonial master-servant relations perpetuates notions of what it means to be a successful employer couple. The idleness of a colonial wife was the mark of a successful colonial husband. He was expected to produce enough money to allow the employment of a coterie of servants. The wife would ensure that the household ran smoothly- without the back-breaking labour required for this of course. In contemporary Kenya, the nanny-cleaning lady-gardener-guard are also deemed as requirements to ensure that the two-income family is possible, without sacrificing the comforts owed the successful man (cooked & hot food, clean house, changed diapers etc).

Consumption/ Work Dualism

The dualism inherent in paid domestic labour is seen in the conception of the house/ home as both public/ private places and spaces for either production/ consumption. For the employer, the home is a sanctuary from the job and state. It’s a space where the employer consumes the fruit of their labour- the flat screen TV, a good book and clean children. It’s the rewarding space where one can purchase both the time and activities for relaxation. For the domestic worker, this is a productive space where labour is traded for a pay check. It’s also a place where the domestic worker also trades in their identity as part of the procurement of their labour. It’s often expected, especially for the live-in domestic worker, that she shall trade in her identity as an adult wage earning Kenyan to a kinda-sorta family member (albeit one who is never present in family photos or events). She’s expected to be asexual (no visits from husbands/ lovers) and her dietary preferences are subsumed by the employers’. While expected to cherish the employer’s children as her own, she is however expected to eschew her familial ties - e.g. the domestic workers’ children are only noticed when they are the underlying cause of a labour interruption “Her child got malaria so now I don’t have a nanny”.  

Workplace Violence:

In Kenya, and elsewhere, this sector is characterised by being very competitive, little regulated and attempts to unionise workers have had little to no traction. Domestic work is characterised by low pay, long hours, job insecurity and high vulnerability which translates to high incidents of workplace violence. The issue of sexual violence against domestic workers presents one of the more egregious cases of victim blaming- even in a country where victim blaming is rife. At bridal showers, wisdom on how to manage house and husband is dispensed with the proper and wifely management of the domestic worker taking centre stage in this curriculum. The bride to be is usually given life hacks on how to ensure that the domestic worker ‘stays in her lane’. “These women will eat you out of house and home if you’re not careful” the bride to be is told (“Lock the store and only remove the tea bags/ sugar you need for a few days”). These Jezebels are also out to entrap your husband and future sons. Care must be taken it’s emphasised, to ensure that she doesn’t sway those hips as bent over, she washes the floor (General advice: “Buy a mop”). If you ever unexpectedly walk into a furtive and quickly interrupted embrace between spouse and domestic worker in the kitchen, fire her immediately.

While there have been gains in labour law favouring domestic workers, power relations are still skewed very much in favour of the employer. While the statistics on this are notoriously hard to come by, anecdotally one assumes it’s prevalent in the sector. It’s quite usual to hear that many men’s first sexual experience was with a domestic worker. It would be highly unusual that these sexual interactions were always consensual from the perspective of the domestic worker.  Domestic workers however have little room for redress or relief, and a study by Oxfam on the working conditions of women drawn from the Mukuru informal settlement seems to validate this. The study showed that attempts by domestic workers to get redress faced obstacles where employers corrupted officials (e.g. chiefs & police) and/or the workers were asked for payment by the police to initiate an investigation.  

While the courts have started logging some impressive victories for domestic workers, a central truth (paraphrasing Audre Lorde) is that the personal and the political should illuminate all our lives. Just societies invariably emanate from just workplaces and just homes. A fair & prosperous Kenya, where citizens aren’t deprived of the rights due them, is dependent on the majority of Kenyans abiding by the spirit and letter of the law. In this case, this entails paying their domestic workers minimum wage, NHIF & NSSF, a valid contract, sick leave and time off. Anything less is not only illegal, but also guarantees the continued existence of slums and unjust society.

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First Takes: Global Gag Rule & Kenya

Within the first week of assuming office, US President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule. Simply, this policy prohibits any entity that receives US Government (USG) funding from carrying out any abortion-related activity, regardless of the source of funds. 

This Mexico City Policy is a partisan affair that’s passed in DC, and plays out internationally on women’s bodies. Ever since it was enacted by President Reagan in 1984, it has enjoyed Republican support with Democrats opposing it. Following its passing, all Republican Presidents have since reinstated it, with Democratic presidents rescinding it every time there’s a President from the Democratic Party in charge.

The problem with this Policy is that studies show that abortion rates increased when the Policy was in effect. This is largely because organisations that provide reproductive health services tend to provide the entire slew of reproductive health services including information and in some cases, access to abortion. Where they are defunded, they can no longer provide information on contraception which leads to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and safe abortions. Indeed, during the launch of the She Decides Initiative that’s aimed at meeting the shortfall from the Global Gag, Minister Liliane Ploumen of the NL pointed out what activists have long known: Denial of safe abortion services leads to increase in unsafe abortions- not less abortions.  

The Policy leaves a wake of 'collateral damage' as it's too blunt an instrument to provide any meaningful differentiation of ‘abortion services’. It prevents any sort of service related to abortion, so for instance, an abortion referral by a health practitioner to a woman who’s been raped or is at risk of death, jeopardises the funding of all other health services. It doesn’t matter if the referral is done in a crisis health outreach clinic funded 100% by non USG funding. It’s sledgehammer policy that puts the millions of Kenyans who access health care in Kenya at risk.  

In the Kenyan context, this is particularly worrying.  About half of the pregnancies in Kenya are unintended pregnancies. About 40% of these lead to an abortion which translated to about 460,000 abortions in 2012. Kenya has made great strides in reducing maternal mortality, but conservative estimates show that around 1,600 women still die every year from complications from abortion. We have also made great strides in increasing information and access to contraception, but a lot of work still remains to be done because we still live in a country where 29% of Kenyan men believe that access to contraceptives ‘makes women promiscuous’. This is also a profoundly anti-poor policy where safe abortions in Kenya, at about $200 are largely out of reach of poor people.

Kenya Public Health Exposure to Global Gag Rule

While previous Republican administrations brought back the Policy, unlike his predecessors, President Trump also expanded the Policy.  This current executive order in addition to legislating on how non-US NGOs can operate, it also includes “all global health facilities”. While the Trump administration has since clarified how the non-US NGOs should act, there is still no information on how the “global health facilities’ clause should be interpreted. Does this for instance also include Government facilities? This would mean that GoK medical practitioner cannot provide referrals or provide safe abortions without forfeiting all GoK health funding including vaccinations, malaria treatment etc. 

In the absence of these guidelines from the Trump Administration, lifesaving health interventions stand at risk. It is not hyperbole to state that this is a matter of life and death for many Kenyans in the coming years. This is because the USG remains the largest funder of health in the world. It is expected that there will be a global funding shortfall around $600m for the next four years because of the reinstating of this policy. While Initiatives like She Decides have stepped up to fill the gap, it is unlikely that they will completely make up the shortfall. 

For Kenya, exposure to the Global Gag Policy is potentially quite high. The USG currently provides almost across the board support to the health sector including health services, population and nutrition support for the people of Kenya. 

The policy has in the past been shown to increase censorship and self-censorship by civil society on the abortion issue; to skew the abortion debate with a lot of bias and misinformation on abortion; to expose women to unsafe abortions and to decrease women’s access to reproductive health services.  Unsafe abortions are a critical public health issue, and the isolation of groups working on providing information and access to these services is a regrettable and unfortunate development. 

In addition to the climate of censorship and fear it engenders, the Policy promises to profoundly impact health services. This is because of our dependence on foreign funding- especially USG funding to supplement our national health budgets. 

To illustrate, of the approximately 60B allocated to health in the 206/7 budget, about 29B of this goes to recurrent spending, and 31B to development expenditure. About 62% of health development spending is financed by development partners with much of this being support for Reproductive health services, immunisations and health systems support. 

The US Government remains the largest bilateral donor for health globally. Regionally, Kenya is one of the biggest recipients of this (after Ethiopia) where e.g. USAID in 2016 disbursed $265m for health in Kenya. Of this, about $233m was for population and reproductive health services $233m and $25m for basic health. Defunding of these programmes would be have major implications on Kenyan Government health spending.

For NGOs working on this sector, while still early days yet, many of the health providers e.g. Marie Stopes & Planned Parenthood have already stated that they will not accept funding from the USG under the Global Gag conditions. This also puts at risk Hivos programmes providing critical support to key populations on HIV/AIDS because of other work that we do e.g. provision of information on safe post-abortion care by other partners. 

Musings on way forward:
The Policy is unlikely to be rescinded as long as there is a Republican President in the US. Supporting the advocacy efforts of US allies in limiting the effect of this policy might be the only avenue still available to us. 

Domestically, we need to have a sober discussion on our domestic spending priorities and how we finance then. As a country, we chronically under-spend on health. The total national health budget allocation for the 2016/7 fiscal year was 3.6% (down from 3.7% in the previous year). Total health expenditures for 2016/7 was at 7.6% way below the 15% target set by the Abuja Declaration. While the counties are currently spending about 25% of their budgets on health, we need to not only resource the sector appropriately, but also plan on how to wean ourselves off donor spending which is a profoundly unsustainable way of financing such a critical health sector. Where over 60% of our health budget is dependent on development partners for funding, we end up with a situation where we become anxious foreign election trend watchers, and less domestic health policy planners.  In a world of growing nationalism and the rise of conservatism, it becomes even more important that we prioritise domestic health care funding. 

This is especially more urgent because the re-classification as a lower middle income country means that many development partners are moving away from aid to trade. For the health sector, this has also meant a growing interest by development partners in investing in the private & commercial health sector and divesting from the public health sector. This is a development that should be of great concern to public health actors in the country. In a country where out of pocket health spending has proven to be catastrophic with about 1 million Kenyans falling below the poverty line because of health spending, it’s imperative that our tax shillings are directed towards a health system built on policies designed around Kenyan priories and needs. 

More immediately, we can provide material and moral support for initiatives like She Decides which have sprung up as the moral alternative to the Global Gag Rule. Countries that have rallied to fill this decency gap include the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, the Gates Foundation and private donations from individuals from multiple groups in many countries across the world. The presence of shining stars like  Cape Verde and the absence of some like the UK to me shows that this is more than an economic argument, and more a “do right” attitude displayed by these countries. Despite a dearth of resources, and competing exigencies like the current drought, insecurity and a host of other clear and present priorities, it would be good if as a country, we also stepped up on this issue, and provided moral leadership for the region.

Female Leaders: A Kenyan Narrative

Something curious happened to the story of Wangu wa Makeri.  Growing up, her story was taught as a cautionary tale on the folly of women leadership. Our Standard 3 history book told of how once upon a time, women used to rule the Agikuyu. Led by Wangu wa Makeri, the women were the warriors of the tribe, and the men had domestic duties. However, at some point, the women let it go to their head, and they started ordering men about and generally throwing their weight around. The story culminates with Wangu literally sitting on a man’s back. This story was naturally told with the shock and repugnance it warranted. “Imagine! A woman sitting on a man’s back!”  Our forefathers, upset with being both literally and metaphorically sat on, conspired to impregnate the women. Thusly incapacitated, the men overthrew them, and took over the running of the Gikuyu nation. 

The story teaches some important lessons. It taught why control over female reproductive rights matter. It taught the gendered nature of domestic duties (How we laughed when we heard that men used to do domestic chores. "Imagine! Men washing the baby and fetching water!"). But mostly, it taught about the folly of female leadership.

But here’s the thing.  Wangu wa Makeri did exist. In the realm of living history. She was actually a colonial administrator at the turn of the century. Conversations with historians are divided on whether she actually sat on men’s backs on not. What’s more certain is that she was a ‘headman’ in 1901. What’s less certain is why an official Kenyan history book, sanctioned by the Kenya Institute of Education, would have conflated her leadership with that of the mythical amazons who ruled Kikuyu land, in a tale that sought to counsel women on the follies of reaching and aspiring too high.

Lessons taught young, unfortunately tend to stick. Female leadership is still not something that we promote in the country. The numbers certainly tell their own story. Female political leadership in Kenya stands at about 20%, a fact that was recently declared unconstitutional. It stands as an island of mediocrity in East Africa. Contrast with Rwanda that’s leading the pack at 64% female leadership, and with Uganda and Tanzania at above 35%. While there are many reasons behind the paucity of female leadership, it is certainly true that the violence threatened at female political leaders, and the meagre and biased media coverage for the few women who do dare enter this realm act as dis-inhibitors for women from wanting to vie for political leadership.

While the historical narrative on female political leadership hasn’t always been kind to Kenyan women, the story hasn't changed much even today. Mass media- both a mirror and also a creator of these images, both reinforces and retells the story of what it means to be female and a leader in Kenya. More often than not, the mass media takes away more than it gives. Female coverage stands at less than 20% of male coverage, and with this relatively meagre press being mainly subjective and non-positive. 

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There's a prevailing archetype found in male leadership. That of the heroic, enduring, solitary, brave leader. He is often seen posed and pensive, deep in the middle of profound state building thoughts. His index finger thoughtfully on chin, he collects many accolades. Bravest warrior. Father of the Nation. Cockerel that crows. Bull that stamps. But this male hero doesn’t quite have a corresponding female equivalent. Rather, we have stereotypes that more or less correspond to Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s four role traps for women leaders: the pet, the mother, the battle-axe and the seductress.  

Of the four role traps, mass media and public opinion is kindest to the mother figure. She maternally worries about Kenya and hugs the country to her metaphorical bosom. She’s instantly recognisable and reminds us of our mothers, and boarding school matrons. This mother figure is dignified, poised, understanding and forgiving. More often than not, younger female leaders are urged to emulate and aspire to that. It's certainly perhaps one of the more 'respectable' role traps to be assigned. 

A staple of popular culture and the tabloids, the seductress role trap is one that female leaders, especially if you're young and conventionally attractive, that many women are assigned, and in some instances self-assign. In the run up to the election this coming year, there’s been an active claiming of this with slogans like “Bae wa Nairobi” Msupu wa Nairobi” that speak to the beauty of the aspirants rather than, say, their experience or aptitude in leadership. It’s perhaps one of the peculiarities of Kenya, where despite a 60% female vote, the marketing and the packaging of the message is almost always directed towards the male gaze.

As a country, we are least kind to the loud, the brash and aggressive. The Wangari Maathai battle axes. The ungovernable Millie Odhiambos. For these, we reserve our harshest opprobrium. We are not very flattering of these women who ‘behave like men’. Who don’t voice their dissent in polite ways. Divorcees who dare contradict sitting heads of state.  We’re not too sure what they’re about, but what we do know is that they’re ‘unwomanly’.

It’s certainly telling that to some extent, the making of these ungovernable women is a function of our politics. Female leaders tell of how they had to “menstream” or under-go masculinisation once they got to parliament. They had to adopt the language, issues and thinking of the dominant patriarchal system they found there. It’s also not entirely surprising that one of the more expedient ways that their male counterparts deal with them is by reminding them that they are “mere women” first and last, using violence laden language and threats of sexual violence.  It's what is produced by a system of "flawed masculinity" as Rev Njoya calls it. 

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There’s a Youtube clip, an outtake really, of Jeff Koinange Live showing gubernatorial aspirant Miguna Miguna taunting fellow aspirant Esther Passaris.  In a sing-song tone, he chides her on her beauty and tells her she’s so beautiful everyone wants to rape her. This clip, in a staggering lack of judgment was subsequently aired after being shot, and the JKL show was removed from air.

Meanwhile, nothing- absolutely nothing has happened to Miguna Miguna.

More recently, Moses Kuria in response to Millie Odhiambo’s insults to the president posted that he would sexually assault her with a broken beer bottle.  We all know what he means. "Look at this woman, trying to be something other than a woman. We'll correct her delusions!” Corrective rape with a beer bottle.   

Meanwhile, nothing- absolutely nothing has happened to Moses Kuria.

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Driving Key Populations Further Underground

Data gaps & inconsistencies matter. The notion of who is counted, and when they’re counted, is a political act. It comes bundled with the motives, blind spots, capacities and values of the persons designing the data collection exercise, and the collecting and analyzing of this data. Often, the decision on what groups are counted determines access to services- or lack thereof- and it’s not a stretch to say that marginalization and exclusions in the ‘real world’ tend to be mirrored during the data collection. The accuracy of the data, as witnessed by the prevalence of ghost plants and contested elections also underscores just how political data is, and differences over numbers and people is one that is played out over and over again.  

In Kenya, this contestation is currently being seen in the fight against HIV/ AIDS. Some activists and NGOs working in this sector contend that key populations - namely Female sex workers (FSW), men who have sex with men (MSM) and persons who inject drugs (PWID) are grossly under-counted. The Government on the other hand disagrees and thinks that this number is grossly over-inflated.

One of the most important tools in combating HIV/AIDs, is captured in the aphorism “Know your epidemic, know your response”. A useful tool in gathering epidemiological data is the Integrated Biological and Behavioural Surveillance (IBBS) Survey which has received good reviews on usability and adaptability for local conditions. The Government of Kenya proposes to use the IBBS to figure out the true numbers of key populations in Kenya. All textbook perfect and laudable. Except! They want to use biometric authentication  for this survey for the IBBS.

Say what?!!!

Assuming that this is all on the up-and up, this is utterly wrong and misplaced from a data & health privacy perspective for all persons involved.  As a general rule, biometric data should only be collected when absolutely necessary and isn’t excessive for achieving the stated purpose. The collection of biometric data should also be done in a way that minimises potential risk to the relevant persons. One senses that the Government is struggling to understand and work through the ramifications of creating patient friendly laws and services that don’t violate patients’ rights. Yesterday, the law courts struck down an ill-advised directive by the president, ostensibly meant to improve services, which called for the collection of information on HIV+ children & pregnant mothers by Government officials including chiefs (!). Last year, the High Court struck down provisions of a HIV AIDS  law that allowed disclosure of HIV/AIDS status by health care workers and declared it unconstitutional and an infringement on Kenyans’ privacy. To be fair, the issue of responsible data collection is a global challenge, and not just a Kenyan one. It is however clear by now that the collection of (physical) biometric information requires a high standard of care. If say, the database is hacked, unlike address or phone, one cannot change one’s biometric data once this is compromised.

And while all my privacy and health rights hackles rise at the above concerns, what should perturb all of us is that this is being done in a context where homophobia and negative attitudes against sex workers are rife. Criminalisation of sex workers & LGBT persons is on the increase in East Africa, and is very much present in Kenya. It is therefore extremely worrying and troubling that the Government would propose to carry out this exercise that would provide personally identifiable information on key populations. Even more worrying is that this seems to be going on with the support, or at least the acquiescence of the Global Fund who have from the very beginning been key allies in the use of a human rights approach to treating and working with HIV/AIDS. This idea should have been shot down from the very beginning, and I’m aghast that it has gone as far as it has without the Global Fund weighing in. As designed, this will increase discrimination against the very population it’s meant to serve, and drive key populations away from services. The very opposite of what this IBBS survey is intended to do.

And to come up with a policy that drives Kenyans away from much needed services is both a great pity and shame.

Show Me Your Magician!

What would make someone invest double the average annual income of a farmer on a biodigester?  I’ve decided to go to Burkina Faso to try and see why Burkinabe farmers are doing this at the rate of hundreds of biodigesters every year.

I’m in Burkina Faso with Sally, our communications officer. We’re visiting Burkina Faso during Harmatan, and what passes for its cool season. It’s 40°C in the shade right after lunch which cools off to a more tolerable 27°C at around the 9 pm mark.  A Nairobi woman born and bred, this is on the wrong side of the edge of extreme weather for me. It’s reminiscent of the solar equinox that Nairobians barely survived a few months ago, and that will soon pass into folklore I’m convinced. Children will hear tales of the Equinox, when Kimbo and Vaseline were liquid, and water ran hot from taps.  But meanwhile in Ouagadougou, people are congratulating us on picking the right time to visit as it is cool and ‘aimable’.

In Ouagadougou, we are ensconced in the Splendid Hotel which thankfully has air-conditioning that they don’t stint on and is running on full blast. The hotel has signs stating that it is still under reconstruction.  At the beginning of the year, Islamists thought to be from neighbouring Mali barricaded the hotel and took the mostly foreign guests hostage. They were finally freed by commando troops from BF and France but unfortunately 30 people died in the incident. The hotel has just re-opened but the neighbouring Cappuchino Restaurant that our Finance Manger recommends highly is still barricaded and awaiting fixing or demolishing.

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We are in Mali to meet with our partners, the Programme National de Biodigesteur du Burkina Faso (PNB-BF) that our Africa Biogas Partnership Programme (ABPP) has been working with for over 7 years. Initially, ABPP started off as a renewable energy programme that sought to provide cattle owners with an alternative form of energy from cow dung.  A farmer with a biodigester collects the dung daily, adds water to it and feeds it into the biodigester. The decomposition of the dung produces methane, a biogas that is piped to nearby kitchens for cooking.  In Burkina, the PNB programme has saved women and children over two thousand years (not a typo) in workload reduction where they no longer walk miles over an average of 4 hours daily to collect firewood.  It has also immeasurably improved health outcomes because unlike firewood or dung, biogas burns cleanly without the attendant lung destroying smoke. Indoor pollution caused by inhaling firewood smoke experts say is akin to smoking a staggering 40 cigarettes a day. The WHO estimates that about 7 million die prematurely due to this indoor pollution. To put it in context, cooking with firewood is more dangerous for women and children’s health than malaria and HIV/AIDS combined.  

In addition to the biogas, every ten days or so, an odourless brown slurry trickles out of the biodigesters. This watery sludge is the by-product of the cow dung the farmers fed into the digester after the bacteria have produced the methane. As it happens, this bio-slurry is an extremely potent nutrient rich cocktail and is why farmers are doing all they can to get a biodigesters.  This slurry is a potent cocktail of nutrients that provides almost perfect nutrition for the soils. Mixed with silage, it also acts as a natural pest and weed controller and in farm after farm, farmers report doubling, tripling and in some instances quadrupling their yield. They tell stories of how in the first year alone, they reduced to almost nothing, their annual purchase of chemical fertiliser. In places like Burkina Faso where rain falls once a year during the annual rainy season in October, the application of the compost from the slurry mixed with farm ‘refuse’ (stalks and stem from the harvested grains) allows the soils to retain the extremely valuable moisture that gives plants that extra edge they need to grow in the face of a baking sun.  Farmers speak of how this organic compost has improved the composition of their soils and the improved soil texture and made it easier for plants to grow where none could before.

We travel to Koupela to see an example of these restored soils. There we meet Sylvian who the PNB team introduce as an ‘agro-buinessman’. He’s a larger than life man who’s constantly on the move. He stops to pick agricultural tools out of the way, call out instructions in Moore to farm hands, and we converse in a mixture of extremely broken French from me, and charmingly halting English from him that produces delightful phrases like “...my cows, they are African. But. Also they are European” (a turn of phrase that puts to shame my utilitarian contribution of “hybrid cows”).  In any case, we’re fluent enough for mutual understanding. Sylvian explains that he bought this parcel of land last year from a couple who had been working it for over 30 years. After three decades, convinced that the land was spent, and had nothing more to give, they decided to sell the land. While the couple who sold him the land was happy to find a buyer, they were also concerned when they heard his plans to grow all sorts of crop on the land. They told him point blank that he could not do it. "Ce n'est pas possible!  C'est impossible!".  They knew the land intimately. They’d worked it for decades. They’d done everything they could and that the land was depleted. Despite their concern and caution, Sylvian insisted he still wanted to buy the land. Tut tutting, they sold it to him and cautioned him on the inevitable heartbreak.

Sylvian however stuck to his guns, convinced that he could make this work for him through the application of bio-slurry. He takes us to the pit where his compost is still curing and he gives me some to smell. Confirmed pluviophile, this is a happy smell for me. It conjures up the smell of fresh rain- especially the first rain of the wet season when everything becomes clean, and wet and new. It’s the smell of Karura forest in October at bright o’clock in the morning. It is the smell of fertile and fecund lands. They are soils that give abundantly, but equally true, are also soils that are given back with as generous a measure through the constant return to the earth of plant and animal materials. The Burkina soil has no smell really. It’s devoid of organic matter, Jan the preternaturally upbeat SNV biogas advisor remarks. It’s what makes it porous and haemorrhages precious nutrients every time is rains. It also doesn’t retain water much and it’s just plain hard for things to grow in it.  To me, the relative paucity of the harvest is less remarkable to me than that anything actually can grow here. Sylvian was however confident that rain permitting, an application of bio slurry would translate to rows and rows of crops.

The couple was in the area recently, and they stopped by their old place. When they saw what Sylvian’s farm looked like, they told him : “Show us your magician! Show us he that’s allowed you to do all this!”  Sylvian laughs as he tells this story but I am slightly misty eyed.  While the science can explain exactly why plant yields increased, I feel like I am witness to something special. This bringing back to life soils that were dead is no less special for being explainable.  Sylvian continues explaining how he showed them the ‘magic’. He took them to the slurry pit, and showed them the compost. He also gifted them with a small truckload of organic manure that he instructed them to use on their land, and report to him on their progress. They’ve since been back asking for more compost, but Sylvian doesn’t have enough for his own land as it is. He has grand plans for his place you see. He speaks to me of organic sorghum fields that he’ll plant as food for the extra cows he’s getting.  He points to two technicians dressed in blue overalls that are currently installing a drip irrigation system. He wants to have two growing seasons a year. He also wants to grow onions, and peppers, cucumbers and ‘poivron’. Our combined Franglish is insufficient to translate poivron, but once I’m back in the hotel, Google translates yields pepper. When I ask him to quantify the difference the biodigester has made, he tells me that what the composting has done to his fields is immeasurable and the best thing he could have done for his farm. Don’t get him wrong, the biogas is great for him too. His employees now cook with this as opposed to cutting down his trees which made him very unhappy. He’s also happy that the gas has eased their fuel collecting chores. But ultimately for him, it’s the difference to the soils that the compost has made that he’s happiest about, and that he’d invest in all over again at double the cost.  

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In 2015, President Kaboré was elected in with an election promise to build 40,000 bio-digesters in Burkina Faso. It’s an astonishing figure. To put it in context, the Africa Biogas Programme has a target of 100,000 biodigesters to build in five countries over a period of about 8 years.  In an early morning meeting with the Minister of Livestock, he states that his Ministry in conjunction with other involved line Ministries are without a doubt going to build the plants. Burkina Faso is one the victims of global climate change, where the rainy seasons are getting shorter and more erratic, and the inexorable creep of the Sahel into what was once farmland is an unfortunate and lived reality. The biodigesters are a tool in Burkina’s climate adaptation arsenal. The Minister tells me that he also sees this as a way of improving livestock management & food security. It’s a plan that has he says has the ‘highest level commitment from the Government’. It’s easy to be cynical about that phrase, but Xavier, the indefatigable head of the PNB is quick to remind everyone that the Government currently subsidises the construction of every biogas plant at the rate of $225 per plant.

No one in the room underestimates the herculean nature of this task. The biogas plant construction process in Burkina is notorious in the African biogas sector for its legendary difficulty. In East Africa, digging the pit for a bio-digester takes 2 people with shovels & a jembe about 1-2 days.  In Burkina Faso, digging the pit requires ten to fifteen strong men armed with pick axes acting in turns. It can take from ten days to one month to dig the pit. Digging the pit reminds me of watching people dig up those infernal termite hills that every so often sprung up in the farms on the outskirts of Thika. Every so often, there was a trail of sparks when the jembes struck a particularly hard part of the termite hill.  Wielded badly, the wrong angle of the jembe or pick axe could -and unfortunately did leave lasting injuries.

Now imagine digging up a concrete like termite hill in 45°C weather.  Constructing a digester is hellish in the dry season where even evening temperatures bring little respite and the soils are hard baked by the sun. The farmer also has to come up with about $300 that the Government subsidy doesn’t cover to pay for the plant.  It is a plan that by all accounts should have a snowballs’ chance in hell of success. And yet, Xavier, the PNB Coordinator is fully confident that this will happen.  He speaks in a very matter of fact way about how they’ll get these numbers.  While he is all too aware of the difficulties, he’s however seen and interacted with too many farmers to know that these digesters are irresistible and invaluable to the farmers of Burkina. He took on what was initially seen as a quixotic task even to his wife, but has been able to create this programme through a lot of persuasion and sheer force of will.

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It’s the last day of our trip. Yesterday, we visited the last biogas plants of our trip. These ones took us to Leo, a few kilometres away from the border of Burkina Faso and Ghana. We visited the village of Metio, that’s brimming with old world charm and women in brightly coloured frocks. We’re welcomed by the residents of the village with baobab water. It a chalky looking liquid that is served in large green mugs. The baobab water is sweet and cool and has a vaguely nutty taste. We meet the owners of the household and they repeat just how important the compost has been to them. The owner of the household we’re visiting self financed the construction of his biodigester after he saw what his neighbour had been able to do with his farm after he started composting with bioslurry. Through this word of mouth, the tiny village currently has 8 bio-digesters and are planning to build 15 more.  They show us the rest of the digesters and feed us a delicious lunch of couscous, chicken and some green vegetables that are slightly bitter to the taste and that I’m told are a super-food. We down the lunch with baobab water, and head back to Ouagadogou with a pit stop by the Nununa Shea butter factory to see how they’re extracting shea butter from the shea butter nuts, and their plans for an industrial sized bio-digester. Jan and Gladys from PNB have been experimenting on ways to see how they can use the byproducts from the shea butter extracting process to fuel the bio-digesters. If successful, this would put the Nununa Factory really close to zero waste manufacturing. It’s exciting stuff to see just how invested the team is in making the technology as accessible as possible to the Burkinabe.  

In the evening, the team takes us out for a farewell dinner, and it feels like we’re now amongst old friends. Tomorrow morning we’ll fly back to Nairobi via Addis and I’m looking forward to coming back in April next year to celebrate the commissioning of the 10,000^th Burkina Faso digester.  It will certainly be worth celebrating and I’m already looking forward to the return.