MY JUSTIFIED REASON TO SUPPORT CLIMATE CHANGE JUSTICE.

Whenever I think of the long dry spells I can’t help thinking of how it affected my village. During one the dry seasons many men left their homes and their wives and children. The women were left without anything to feed their families. It was a complete turn of events due to climate change. The women started cutting and burning trees for charcoal to meet their family needs but eventually ended up stopping due to the work load involved in these kind of activities.

One of these women was a wife to one of the men who left the village. Her name was Nantoyie. Nantoyie and their children suffered the consequences of the drought. The few animals they depended on for milk and other necessities were no longer around to provide for them. She didn’t know what to do with the children. She decided that the only way to survive was to walk to a nearby trading center to beg for food. Sometimes she was lucky and at times she will go back empty handed to her crying children.

The family was going through difficult times. Animals had started dying due to the long dry season and the men and their animals kept moving further and further away from home. The further they went the harder it became for them.

One day as Nantoyie sat outside their house with some of the children, she saw five men walk into the homestead. They looked tired and worried. She immediately sensed something wasn’t right. She immediately asked to know of her husband’s where about. The men did not take the chance of waiting they immediately told her that her husband had died of hunger while following the animals in search for grazing grounds. She cried for many days she wished her husband had stayed with her but this was not to happen. Apart from hunger, the village was in a sad mood due to the death of Nantoyies husband. The men could not carry him back home instead they buried him in the wilderness and left. Nantoyie never saw the husband again. Other women worried whether their husbands would ever make it back home. Whenever such dry spells come back she cries at the thought of her husband.

I worked miles away from my village and was in college too. I didn’t visit so many times due to my work, studies and distance.

During one of my visits to my home village I met Nantoyie, a good friend to me and a neighbor. I asked her how her husband and children were doing. No one had shared her family story with me for she was the first person I met on arrival at my village. She narrated the sad story to me amid sorbs and I was so touched by her story. It hurt. Through our church at the village she got support for her children to attend school and get food.

This is just one of many other sad stories contributed by climate change. I have many women like Nantoyie that I would like to help through our organization’s livehood program to empower girls and women to overcome such recurring situations. I want to support climate change to help my community. We should never again have communities suffer like that.

With the natural year –to –year variations and the extremes in temperatures including the events that come with it; such as the long dry spells, have changed the lives of the indigenous communities of Tanzania. These Indigenous communities such as the Datoga, the Hadzabe, the Maasai among others have been very affected by the harsh climatic changes. Maasai people depend on livestock for their living and had lots of them, they were wealthy but due to climate change the poverty levels have risen. The same experience is among other pastoralists communities in Tanzania. Others had around 500 cows and approximately 500- 1000 goats. They were able to meet their families’ daily needs such as food and clothing.

Maasai people depend on livestock for their livelihood. They get food and other necessities from livestock sale. Cowdung / manure from the livestock go to waste so I encouraged a group of women from my community to collect manure and sell to nearby towns/ communities to be used as fertilizer and for biogass production as an alternative to charcoal burning and felling of trees an activity they have been doing to earn a living for their families. Manure can be an alternative energy source for livestock farmers. An anaerobic digester will partially convert manure to energy in the form of biogas which contains methane. Manure is easily collected on dairy farms where cows are routinely confined. I trained a group of women in my community on the importance of manure for biogas production.

Biogas is most efficient when used directly for heating and cooking food. Organic materials decomposing in a warm, airless environment release biogas. This process occurs spontaneously in nature; marsh gas and biogas are virtually the same. Biogas production can be hastened by sealing the organic material inside a heated, airtight tank called a digester. Under certain conditions, biogas production is economical now. It will become even more attractive to livestock farmers as the price of conventional fuel rises, and when mass production lowers the cost of digester system components.

Justice to climate change begins with me. Let us all participate in climate change by training our communities in environmental conservation techniques and methods.