- Title: KENYA: Fishing promoted in far north as an antedote to drought
- Date: 2nd September 2011
- Summary: VILLAGERS LOOKING ON
- Embargoed: 17th September 2011 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Kenya, Kenya
- Country: Kenya
- Topics: Business,Environment,Industry
- Reuters ID: LVA6LCNXYN06NZCFNDSKRR5JWT77
- Story Text: On the shores of Lake Turkana in the very north of Kenya, a collection of battered fishing boats represent fresh hope for a community decimated by drought.
Turkana's vast and beautiful desert planes have long been an inhospitable place to live. Turkana people, traditionally nomadic herders, are used to coping in extreme conditions, walking long distances to find water and food.
But successive years of failed rains and desperate food shortages have worn down their resilience to cope when times are hard. As much as 90 percent of livestock, the primary source of income for herders, have died leaving thousands dependent on food aid.
Now a scheme set up by the British charity Oxfam hopes to offer families an alternative to herding.
Lake Turkana is one of the biggest fresh water lakes on the continent and is rich with over 40 species of fish. While herders are not traditionally fish eaters, many like Moses Ethuron have turned to fishing as an alternative means to earn a living and keep his family alive.
"I would have been dead because right now I survive on fish. Its like I catch one like this and I go sell it and get some food, that's why if the project were to end right now I would die as I would not have anything to survive on," says 35-year-old Ethuron, who has three children and has been fishing now for several years.
Ethuron sells the fish he catches to a shop in the local village where recipients of food aid from Oxfam exchange vouchers for food.
"We put the fish out in the sun to dry, like this big one we have put over here, once its laid out it dries and after it dries we take it to the store then we wait when people need food we give it to them," explains Mark Emira, a shop owner.
Food aid tokens can then be cashed in for money by shop owners, that can be used to buy more stock.
"This project has really helped us because, even when the food aid that people are getting from the government doesn't make it here, we always receive the fish. So this is helping us, we get rations every month. Had it not been there we would have been affected by the drought like everybody else," said Nancy Atanbo, a Turkana resident. She has five children and gets 12.6 kilos of food per month for the family in food aid, including now, fish bought in the local shop.
The idea, says Oxfam, is to encourage the exchange of money and goods in Turkana rather than simply handing out free food.
"The whole idea is to stimulate markets in this place where we have fishermen getting a ready market for their fish and then the trader making some profit from the fish. He distributes the fish to the community and the community gets high value protein, compared to the pulses, that take a shorter time to prepare unlike pulses that may require longer time and more firewood to cook," Oxfam's deputy programme coordinator Joseph Akure told Reuters.
Akure says fish stocks are likely to last a lot longer than food shipped in by aid agencies giving communities something tangible to work with to rebuild security for the future and help them prepare for future drought. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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