Credit: Honoré Barka
The climatic variability that has been rampant in recent years (floods, droughts, high heat, etc.) is pushing people to develop resilience systems to deal with food insecurity. Kadjidja and her neighbors have decided to see things differently. Discovery!
During one of my trips to this part of the country, more precisely in the district of Pette in the Far North of Cameroon, I discovered reckless women. With rudimentary means and lean muscles, in the harsh climate, they carry water in the hope of seeing the seeds of tomatoes and other vegetables grow, which they bury in the ground.
This year, rainfall has played a dirty trick on market gardeners across the country. But in this village of Diamaré, at the gates of the Lake Chad basin, the consequences were even worse. The surface water has disappeared, the heat is scorching, the soils are dry and impoverished, the misery of the populations is at its height.
Kadjidja, an unparalleled volunteer!
A woman in her forties decided not to sit idly by. Widow, six children in her care, farmer with no formal education… We met an unparalleled volunteer: Kadjidja. Through her strong sense of mobilization, she succeeded in uniting a good dozen women around her.
These women gathered around Kadjidja are all illiterate, hence the need to instruct them through useful literacy. First, so that they keep pace with globalization, but also to make them resilient to the effects of climate change. It should be noted that literacy could enable them to know how to read and write, to better organize the documentation of their organization, to keep their cash books, to make operating accounts, to write reports or even to set up projects which could transform their whole village.
Despite the difficulties of access to land, they decided to occupy the fields during the dry season (period when men work the land less in this area) to do market gardening. It is known to everyone here that the obstacle to the practice of market gardening is access to water. But Kadjidja and her neighbours, despite the distance to fetch water, do not give up.
It is possible to drill between 7 and 9 meters
According to information collected from drillers met in the locality, it is possible to drill between 7 and 9 meters and have water if only for market gardening. So why not create small irrigated perimeters for the surrounding villages?
These small irrigated perimeters have demonstrated their effectiveness in other parts of the Lake Chad basin and even on the mainland. These small perimeters could allow women to produce without having to struggle too much to fetch water from afar, and provide their crops with water efficiently.
Credit: Honoré Barka
Faced with the growing poverty of populations in rural areas, it is even more difficult for women to have a certain income for obtain the equipment necessary for good production. So why not unite the women around Kadjidja in a cooperative where they could contribute money to buy equipment to irrigate their fields?
The agricultural inputs sold on the market, being derived much more from chemical products contributing to the pollution of water and soil, and not being on the purse of these rural women, why not above all introduce them to the production of compost and bio-pesticides? After speaking with them, I discover that they have ancestral knowledge, which has long made it possible to have healthy food and preserve the ecosystem. But how to reactivate this knowledge so that they implement it? We will come back soon in another article.
To be continued…
Honoré Barka