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Members of the Dhanawe women’s group tend to their kitchen garden

The small plane carrying me to Hudur town starts its descent into the once lush green cropland surrounding the capital of the Bakol region in south Somalia. Instead of thriving fields of millet and vegetables, though, I see scraggly, water-starved vegetation poking up through patches of sand. Scattered water wells and a few boreholes dot the ground below. The plane lands, and I step onto the Hudur airstrip. “Welcome to dry Bakol,” my colleague John Ndezwa says in welcome.

John, the project coordinator for ADRA’s Emergency Water and Livelihood Support Program (EWLSP), tells me that chronic drought conditions in southern Somalia have devastated the Bakol region and have greatly affected the ability of the agro-pastoralist communities to produce food. “Many wells are dry and those that are functioning yield water that is 50 percent below normal capacity. The locals’ dependence on water for their survival and livelihoods has threatened their ability to recover,” John explains. He adds that increased movement of livestock and people in the region has put existing water and food sources under persistent pressure, thus straining resources and creating competition and the potential for conflict at already crowded water points.

EWLSP is ADRA’s latest project in Somalia, promoting the establishment of ten kitchen gardens by women’s groups who are trained to manage the gardens. With 34,000 beneficiaries throughout Somalia to its credit, the EWLSP has brought hope to local women determined to increase their household income and diet diversity.

I set out with John and the rest of the ADRA team to explore the Bakol countryside and see how the EWLSP project is helping people in the dry, vast lands of south Somalia. We travel east from Hudur town and after a few kilometers we arrive in Dhanawe village.

A group of about 30 women—members of the Dhanawe Women’s Group—have braved the scorching sun to meet the ADRA team. With assistance from ADRA’s EWLSP project, the women have set up a kitchen garden and they are eager to tell us how the garden has changed their lives. Fifty-year-old Amino Muqtar Gudow, one of the most active members of Dhanawe women’s group, is especially anxious to share her story. “I am very grateful for this project because I now see hope of harvesting my vegetables, selling them in the market, and making enough money to fix my teeth,” says Amino, who though self-conscious about her imperfect smile, grins widely as the other women tease her good naturedly. “I have to look good to find a husband and this is a perfect opportunity for me to improve on my beauty,” she adds.

Amino Muqtar Gudow

From Dhanawe, the ADRA team travels to visit three other villages participating in the garden project: Farak, Garasweyne, and Tawakal. The gardens provide ample evidence that EWLSP is fulfilling its objective to strengthen and diversify livelihoods of households and communities in Bakol. More than 100 women have been trained on seed selection, soil fertility, and irrigation techniques, along with how to prepare land and plant seeds properly. Hundreds more will benefit once the additional six planned kitchen gardens are fully operational.

“ADRA has provided us with good training on how to manage this kitchen garden and has also given us farm tools and implements, including wheelbarrows, shovels, forks, rakes, irrigation drip kits and seeds for planting,” says an elated Habiibo Aden Mumin, the chair of the Garasweyne women’s group. “We are now prepared to turn our shambas [gardens] green.”

In each of the four kitchen gardens I visited, the vegetables planted and nurtured by the women are doing well. Mano Sheikh Hussen, one of ADRA’s EWLSP community trainers, ensures the women know how to make the best use of their homegrown bounty. “The women are trained on how to cook these vegetables and taught the importance of such a diet to the family,” notes Mano, adding that the women also learn some basic principles on how to market their produce.

In Bakol, where ADRA has implemented water projects for the last six years, it was easy to see the kitchen garden project has helped to bring about another “green” revolution. With the women inspired by their garden’s success and the increased diversity in their families’ diets, hope has replaced despair.

Vegetables in Dhanawe kitchen garden

“I am very optimistic that once I sell the vegetables and make money to fix my teeth, I will be able to get myself a husband. Men do not like me because of my teeth, but I am now optimistic that things will be better,” concludes a joyful Amino, as she reaches for a jembe [garden hoe] and begins tending her garden.

As I hop onto the plane bound for my home base of Nairobi, the words of Amino still linger in my mind, and I smile as I think how her life is changing because of ADRA’s kitchen garden project.

Jason Nyantino is the public relations officer for ADRA Somalia.

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Looking down from the relative comfort of my airplane seat as I pass over the vast, arid country of southern Somalia, I notice that the water holes are downright dry. Blame it on Gu and Deyr—the seasonal rains that have been largely avoiding the Horn of Africa for the better part of a decade.

In general, one would remark, the region is in trouble. Slowly keeling over. The two consecutive failed rainy seasons are giving the residents of the districts of Huddur, Elberde, Rabdure, Tieglow, and Wajid, in the Bakool region, a reason to consider the worst. The last dry spell arrived in 2005 between April and June, when the Gu rain was supposed to soak the grazing areas and give farmers enough moisture for their fi elds. But when the water didn’t come again in October, and the fodder and the water holes became critically low, livestock carcasses began turning up all over the place. That’s troubling news when your way of life depends on the health— and size—of the herd.

In the Bakool region alone, more than 1.4 million people are beginning to feel the effects of the drought. Water prices are already jumping. But the water itself is increasingly going to fewer people—that is, to people who can afford, and are ready to pay, 35 to 40 Somali shillings for each 52-gallon drum, nearly US $3. In a country where the yearly income for an average person is $600—when there are no droughts, of course— that kind of spending will cut a hole in your pocket. If the situation worsens, the United Nations fears that there will be more than just dead animals. The magnitude of the situation then would be like shutting the faucet off in, say, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, Honolulu, and Tulsa at the same time—indefi nitely.

Elberde district is the most affected by the lack of rain, and the problem is stretched to an almost unbearable level by the ongoing clan confl icts. Only two hand-dug wells and one borehole—from a total of 18 wells—are functioning. The rest have simply dried up.

Many herders up and down the Somali-Ethiopian border are not waiting for the water to come to them. Instead, they are pushing their flocks, and their families, to the south across an area the size of New Jersey toward more fertile areas in Garas Weyne, Morogavi, Dhil Siji, Xuddur, El-Lahelay, and various Tieglow villages where they are likely to fi nd a river. The move, in humanitarian lingo, has turned them into IDPs— internally displaced persons. This means that thousands of people are now strangers in their own country. And that, most likely, means that someone else will decide whose bucket dips into the water fi rst.

Although ADRA rehabilitated several wells and boreholes in the area, the infl ux of 12,000 IDPs and their camel and goat herds has reduced water levels by half. That’s worrisome, if not alarming, when you consider that the next rain— the Gu seasonal rain—is not due for another two months. However, no one should have to wait around that long for water.

But some do. In Falanfay, a small village near the Bakool regional capital, Xuddur, people waited four years to see the water in their well. Nevertheless, after all that time, Ibrahim Golbow is thankful. He is 98 years old, a former shoemaker and a village elder. He has a good reason to be happy about the water. That’s because over the years he has become the father of 20 children— 14 boys and six girls. And he wants to see them live a long life, as he has. He says, “ADRA is the sun of our village. It has brought us water, which had been a problem for ages. I see hope on the way, and this is a good thing, you know.” Finding water when you need it most is in some ways an exercise in patience and stubbornness.

Take the plan of ADRA, for example. It’s a struggle against the harsh Somali landscape: picking a collapsed borehole, removing the silt from the inside, digging deeper into the earth, and restoring water yields to normal levels—all of this before moving on to the other 69 holes. One by one.

While other relief agencies are trucking in the water from the Juba River, a steady drink that meanders across the most droughtprone region in Africa, ADRA’s plan—funded by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)—is entirely set up to give towns and villages in the Bakool region—Garas Weyne, Elberde, El Dhun, Xuddur—a permanent way to get their water. Already, the UN Water, Environment and Sanitation (WES) committee is on the ground, so work can start immediately.

Soon, ADRA will carry out a geophysical survey and drill a borehole in Abal, a town east of Xuddur. Also, because that kind of assistance most likely won’t be enough, ADRA hopes to partner with Médecins Sans Frontières- Belgium to pump and pipe water from the El Dhun borehole to Xuddur, then build latrines in some of the most overcrowded villages, chlorinate water sources, and produce kitchen gardens at some of the rehabilitated wells to increase food production and give people better choices of food.

For now, however, the attention is on the holes. No one is celebrating yet.

Perhaps, if the people of Bakool fi nd the water before the water fi nds them, they will have time later, one hopes, for everything else.

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The hard-packed dirt floor, mud walls and dark shadows bore no resemblance to the way I’d imagined a room like this to be. Steady moans came from the young woman lying in the corner and only the traditional supplies of a cloth, razor blade, and wood shavings lay on the shelf nearby. It was hard to imagine that here a new life would be welcomed ... hopefully.

Will you help mothers like these?

Compared with the sterile, doctorand nurse-fi lled delivery rooms in my world, the two scenes couldn’t be more different. With the exception of one significant similarity. It’s embedded in the hearts of new mothers everywhere: the hope that their child will be healthy. The dream that their child’s life will be better than theirs. The desire to see their every aspiration met, their every dream come true and the wish that opportunity will meet their every ambition.

Stepping into that mud-walled world, life’s unfairness became painfully clear when I realized that for these woman—and for you and me—where we’re born heavily determines how or if we will live. The same is true of our children. And although it shouldn’t be, in Malawi and other developing countries, a healthy, opportunity-filled future remains unattainable for most.

You can help change that by partnering with ADRA!

More than 500,000 women die each year of pregnancy-related causes, Every Mother’s Wish 99 percent of them in the developing world. Malawi has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world—1,100 per 100,000 births. In the United States, that number is eight per 100,000. The infant mortality rate in Malawi is 120 deaths per 1,000 live births versus seven deaths per 1,000 live births here in the United States.

And even if an infant survives the birth, more than 10 percent of children born in Malawi will die before their first birthday, and about 19 percent will die before their fifth birthday-many from preventable causes, such as malnutrition and HIV and AIDS, including mother-to-child transmission.

Also severely encumbering a mother’s potential is the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Malawi. Of the 800,000 people living with HIV and AIDS in Malawi, more than half are women, and 40,000 of them are their children. Mothers have also had to leave behind an estimated cumulative number of 390,000 AIDS orphans.

I couldn’t help but see the conditions of their world juxtaposed against mine and felt their undoubted frustration as most of their dreams, and the opportunities every human being deserves, remained out of reach. Fortunately, they don’t stand alone.

Change this by partnering with ADRA’s ministry.

Will you?

Part of ADRA’s mission statement acknowledges the mutual dreams it shares with mothers by asserting that it will, "Facilitate the right and ability of all children to attain their full potential, and assist in assuring the child’s survival to achieve that potential." With that mission, ADRA could not stand idly by in Malawi.

Since 1991, ADRA’s comprehensive programs for men, women, and children in Malawi, funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), have targeted family planning, birth spacing, home-based care, HIV and AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in 22 of the 29 districts in Malawi. They provide training to community health workers and traditional birth attendants to promote healthy children and safe pregnancies.

For the scene I described earlier to happen to fewer women, ADRA trains health workers to refer high-risk pregnancies to clinics, to use gloves during delivery, and for each woman to provide their own razor blade to prevent the spread of AIDS during the delivery process. The most recent phase of this project, from 2001-2003, benefited 1.2 million people.

In Malawi, the HIV and AIDS epidemic can be overwhelming, but hope lies in that country’s children. ADRA’s Anti-AIDS clubs provide recreational activities, focus-group discussions, and materials about AIDS. ADRA also targets youth out-of-school with brochures, drama, small business skills training, and small loans for entrepreneurs who complete the training.

ADRA’s daily 15-minute radio program and weekly TV show, both titled, Why Are We Dying? address the cultural practices that spread the disease, reaching more people than our projects or staff could personally touch.

Malawians, like the 19 community health volunteers I met at the Chilipa Health Center, are working hard for their own future and their communities. Since 1996, ADRA has been here in the Zomba district where ADRA community health volunteers teach their neighbors about family planning, HIV and AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. They’re proud to announce that their infant mortality rate is dropping.

They also think of women differently now as they’ve learned that a healthy mother means a healthy child and a healthy community. “Our community can develop only if we are healthy,” recognized one health volunteer.

ADRA, in partnership with each community, is fighting valiantly to enable and preserve the health of children and youth as well as strengthen the rights and health of mothers in Malawi. But the task ahead remains heavy.

That’s where your donation makes the most impact.

Will you donate a generous gift today for mothers in Malawi and other developing countries where the promise of life is tenuous, at best?

Your gift will help provide the medical help and training needed to empower women to deliver healthy babies, and to make appropriate lifestyle choices to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS.

At this time of year as we celebrate “Mother’s Day” worldwide, remember the mothers of kindred spirits in Malawi. As you watch each step of your child’s or grandchild’s journey through life, and your dreams fulfilled as your children grow, eat bountifully, head off to school or walk down the aisle in marriage, remember that those dreams are dreams of the women in Malawi, too.

With your help, ADRA can continue fighting for every mother’s wish. How many mothers and children will you help today?