Survival in the Sahel: Climatic extremes, from drought to flood, threaten survival
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In some ways Alhaji Bunu Fodio is lucky: at least his house is still standing. Most of Kagara, his dusty village in Nigeria’s far north, was smashed to smithereens during this year’s rainy season when an unexpected deluge burst a nearby dam. Floods destroyed homes and farms in at least a dozen nearby villages. Mr Fodio lost his entire harvest of maize and sorghum.
Kagara lies on the edge of the Sahel, an arid belt of land on the Sahara desert’s southern fringe that spans Africa from Senegal in the west to parts of Ethiopia in the east, and is constantly battling the elements. During the Sahel’s nine-month dry season, roughly from October to June, the subsistence farmers who make up most of its inhabitants eagerly await the rain.
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December 28th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I think the last words in this article says it all, “..Mr Fodio is wondering how to feed his two wives and ten children in the coming months. “We are looking to the donors,” he says…”
The Africa of my youth has gone where the proud moran or shujaa (warrior) would sooner die than beg and where he practised more personal independence under colonial rule than he does today. First we heard the brave shouts of “Uhuru” and “one man one vote” then we saw the likes of Azikiwe, Nkrumah, Kenyatta and Nyerere ushering in a new era of independence across Africa. Today we are left with the new moran waiting for a hand-out. Yes, now he holds himself in subservience to the wazungu by his own pathetic inability to limit the size of his family to the availability of resources. Global warming does have an impact but for centuries farmers and herders across Africa know that flood follows drought and a few good years will end in more drought. You cannot change the vagaries of African weather but smart people can learn to live within their finite resources. When will modern Africans stop their complaining and dependency and find African solutions for African problems? When will they learn to adapt to the reality of today, rather than clinging on to a distorted dream of what was? When will they see that more action is required on their part than the outstretched up-turned hand?