Marsabit, Kenya – As the sun approaches its scorching zenith, Dukano Kelle heads out from the desolate settlement of Kambinye in northern Kenya, urging her family’s reluctant donkey forward by whipping it with an acacia branch.
Though the oppressive heat is energy-sapping – and despite not having eaten since the previous morning – Dukano, a 34-year-old mother of five, has no option but to walk for several hours to the nearest borehole, a journey that will likely end in disappointment as water levels are critically low.
Ever since she was married off by her family at the age of 15, this dispiriting ritual has been a twice-weekly chore for Dukano.
Her toil is like that experienced by thousands of women who live in stick-framed nomadic shelters pitched between black volcanic boulders on the arid plains of northern Kenya, where an existence that was already precarious has become a daily battle for survival.
Aid groups say climate change is not only making droughts more devastating and frequent but also deepening inequality in insidious ways.
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The toll of more severe dry spells on human lives is often unforeseen.
One of the most disturbing developments has been a surge in the rate of child marriage, noticeably in communities in which there has been no rain for nine months.
The livestock that people depend on in these areas are dying from starvation and dehydration as the land becomes more sterile.
As a result, desperate families feel forced to offer up their daughters for marriage in exchange for a camel and a few goats – an arrangement that may provide the girl’s family with sustenance for a few more months.
During a journey on bumpy, barely passable tracks through the desert north of the regional capital, Marsabit, near Kenya’s border with Ethiopia, stories like Dukano’s are familiar.
Many girls are forced into marriage while they are still children and soon have to shoulder the burden of feeding their own children.
‘Drought made us much poorer’
Nearly two hours after leaving the village, Dukano finally arrives at the well on which the local population is so dependent.
The donkey is loaded up with six yellow jerry cans strapped across its back with ropes.
Here, other women squat in the shade of a single skeletal acacia tree, waiting for their turn.
There are no men present; unlike their wives, they have stayed in the isolated village, relieved of the day’s most onerous task.
Gazing down into the three-metre-deep (10-foot-deep) concrete tank in which the water is stored, one can see that the supply is only about 10 centimetres (four inches) deep. This water was trucked in using a loan which, the villagers explain, was paid off in exchange for goats – the only currency they have.
One of the women explains that the remaining water will probably be just about enough to last into the following week.
An hour after her arrival, Dukano finally gets her turn.
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Using a rope to lower the cut-off plastic jerry cans into the well, she brings up the water patiently, scoop by agonising scoop, ensuring not a drop is spilled: a painfully slow process.
Once full, the cans are strapped back on her donkey for the long journey home.
“The last drought took all of our animals,” says Dukano. “My youngest son also became very sick from malnutrition. He was weak and vomiting all of the time, and his hair started falling out. I was so worried that he would die.
“It made us much poorer, and now we are in another one which looks like it could be even worse.”
With three boys and two girls aged between 14 years and nine months to keep alive, Dukano bears a heavy responsibility, for which she has little assistance. With no means of transport, getting to Marsabit would take her several days.
“The scarcity of water is becoming more of a problem all of the time,” she continues. “I am really scared that we will not be able to feed the children, and we will never be able to afford medicine if they become sick. We have no money; we rely completely on goats and bartering.”
‘Completely defenceless’
As well as increasing rates of child marriage, the local charity Indigenous Resource Management Organization (IREMO) believes climate change may have contributed to the increase in the accounts of rape and sexual assault they have received in Marsabit County. As the vegetation becomes sparser, female herders are forced to take their animals to more remote locations to graze, which makes them more vulnerable to men who prey on them.
In the ramshackle village of Bubisa, Wato Gato, now in her early 20s, describes how she was left alone in the harsh landscape to tend to the animals when she was only 15.
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Her family instructed her to find pasture for their precious goat herd – their only source of income during the droughts – and to stay there until the rains came.
“I ended up in a nomadic camp with other herders,” recalls Wato. “I was forced to take the animals very far because the drought was so bad. There was a man there, and many days he ended up grazing his goats near mine. No one else was around.
“One day, he came up to me, and even though I tried to push him off, telling him I wasn’t interested, he assaulted me. I screamed, but because I was alone, my screams went unheard.
“In the following weeks he raped me three times. There was nothing I could do to prevent it; I was completely defenceless.”
It was months before the first drops of rain fell, by which time Wato knew she was pregnant.
When she reached her siblings, she expected their support; instead, she was shunned. Her brother informed her she had to leave for bringing shame upon the family.
Asked what happened to her assailant, Wato just shrugs. “He disappeared into the desert,” she sighs. “I had no way of accusing him.”
Today, she lives next to the main road to the Ethiopian border, trying to earn enough to feed her two children by selling phone credits and camel milk to passing drivers.
‘It was not a choice’
“As primary caregivers and providers, women and girls in one of Kenya’s driest regions are facing the greatest impacts of climate change,” said Elise Nalbandian, advocacy advisor at Oxfam in Africa, which works with local partners in the Marsabit region like IREMO to help families affected by the drought by providing emergency nutrition and sanitation.
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This deepens existing gender inequalities and threatens women’s incomes, health and safety, Nalbandian explained.
“Women and girls must walk further to collect water and fuel – and are often the last to eat.
“Many are forced into taking on insecure jobs or migrating, placing them at higher risk, especially of gender-based violence.”
Though women of all ages bear the burden of a worsening climate and a lack of money and food, younger girls are often the least protected and most at risk.
When she was only 15, Boke Mollu’s parents told her that she was to be married to a stranger.
They were blunt about their motivation: their animals had perished, and therefore, a bride price of three camels and three goats represented an exchange that they considered more valuable than their daughter.
“Of course, I blamed my parents,” Boke, now 19, laments, “but at the same time, I know they would not have done it if the drought had not been so bad. For them, it was not a choice.
Married life was bearable at first, she says. “Then, he became very abusive towards me.”
“He raped me many times, but I stayed with him. What else could I do?” Boke says.
“My own family would not have me back because the man had paid the dowry.”
In the background of accounts like Boke’s is the hardship forged by the worst drought period in 40 years.
This is perhaps best symbolised by the towering cairns outside the desert settlement of Kambinye.
In the harsh sunlight, the heaps look like shimmering stones. Only close up does it become apparent that the landmarks are mounds of animal bones – each skull a camel, cow or goat upon which the nomadic herders who roamed the plains once depended.
