YASHA

With the help of Joseph Soi, the chairman of Lomolo, and Leonard Kipkoren, the Asst-Chief, we recognized a few areas where community development is desperately needed:

1. Although there’s a borehole in Lomolo ‘A’, the people on the outskirts of the village still do not have access to it as it’s too far to walk. They therefore have to make use of public motorbikes ‘pikipiki’ to bring them water and this obviously works out very costly. The borehole also feeds members of neighbouring villages, so we desperately need more solar-powered boreholes in the area as we still don’t have electricity.

2. We have identified 84 vulnerable local farmers who do not have the means to utilise the 2-acre piece of land. For the past two years we’ve been working to establish a farming cooperative scheme where local farmers would be assisted with maize and bean seeds as well as fertiliser and then give back 20% to help recycle the funds. The dream was that they would be self-sufficient within a period of three years. However, this initiative has not been successful due to numerous challenges … during both years late and little rain, army worms and other pests have destroyed most of the crops. Despite the fact that people suffered failed crops, they exceeded all expectations by still paying back the 20%. Although this is a huge sign and testimony of spiritual growth, it is still painful to observe as they only harvested 15% of what they potentially could get.

3. Because of point no 2, we need to think outside of the box for sure and come up with a whole new strategy which can be implemented by the farmers in an arid land such like Lomolo. We see the need for a piece of land where we can experiment with different crops, fish farming, etc while providing work for locals.

4. Due to a lack of water in the arid area people do not have gardens to plant basic vegetables. We have installed several drip-irrigation systems which proved somehow successful and has definitely helped. Families are joyfully building fences and buy buckets to show how they’re taking responsibility, but because they don’t have the means to fix proper fences that can keep out the animals, chickens, goats and sheep regularly break through and destroy their vegetables. We are thankful for lovely relationships that have been formed through this initiative.