As crop failures persist, scientists turn to rainmakers

For Mama Kanario, that grim future may already be here, although this proud woman hesitates to admit that she is now unable to feed her large family.

Although adaptation to climate change is one of the hottest topics at global climate forums, millions of smallholders in developing countries do not have the wherewithal to mitigate against its gravest effects.

“The crops you see are all I have. Farming is all I know,” Mama Kanario says brusquely. Deeply religious, she hopes for divine intervention: “I know God cannot let us die… He will do something.”

The farmers have also realised the strength of forging a common front against recurrent droughts, with most joining informal savings schemes. Mama Kanario is a member of Kibureni Women’s Group and has been saving what she can spare with an informal microfinance institution run by the local Methodist church, which she attends.

“It is now possible for me to borrow as much as Ksh20,000 ($250),” she says, her face lighting up for the first time during the interview. With the soft loans she buys food and seeds.

She could tap water from the Kathita, one of the many tributaries of Kenya’s biggest river, the Tana, to raise crops. But although the river marks one boundary of her farm, she has been unable to buy a water pump, which is necessary for a micro-irrigation scheme.

But could relief from the gravest consequences of climate change be found in African traditions? My question takes Mama Kanario aback; maybe it’s too much to ask a woman who was taught all her life that embracing “modernity” and adopting Christianity meant, among other things, regarding rainmaking as “backward” and bordering on black magic or mysticism.

However, the practice is yet to die among some communities, where it continues to be held in high esteem.

The rainmakers are said to possess a special ability to perceive and feel forthcoming changes in the atmosphere.

And now, a study by researchers from local universities, the Kenya Meteorological Department, the Kenya Industrial Property Institute and the National Museums of Kenya is under way to record and interpret scientifically how traditional weather and climate prediction systems operated.

The researchers are working with the legendary rainmaking Nganyi people of western Kenya to record how they predict the weather by observing changes in air currents, the flowering and shedding of leaves of certain trees, and changes in the behaviour of safari ants and listening to bird songs and the croaking of frogs and toads.

The two-year, Ksh18.8 million ($235,000) venture is funded by the International Development Research Centre and will result in the setting up of a disaster management institution and a museum.

Science, it seems, is ready to embrace rainmakers. Dr Anthony Nyong, of the International Development Research Centre, told the media last year that the project would help shatter the myth that everything from traditional Africa was bad and improve local communities’ disaster preparedness. He hoped the project would be rolled out all over the continent.