WORKING IN MANDERA

Behind the scenes pic of the cameraman and I with the COOPI official at River Daua- Across the river is Ethiopia

Working a s field producer involves a lot of traveling and for where I work, I get to travel to the most remote places. Early this year, my colleague - a cameraman - and I travelled to Mandera to document an ongoing project for one of our clients. Mandera is a town located at the North Eastern province in Kenya. It is an arid land which is part of the horn of Africa region that is prone to droughts, hence food insecurity. NGO's these days set aside some part of their project funding for visibility- which is to document the project's outcome with videos for the donors, sponsors and other stakeholders including the community and the government.

Livestock production officer setting up the agro-pastoralists to do the bailing of the fodder

This was one such project being coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and being implemented on the ground by the ministry of livestock production and COOPI- Cooperazione Internationale. At the time of the travel, there was a ban by the US embassy to it's citizens in Kenya from traveling to certain areas in the country including Mandera. Security is a main issue there, specifically because of the Somali border...

An agro-pastoralist ready to take her goats out to graze for the day.

Checking that the shot looks great... Love working in the field!

We stayed there for seven days and got to film for 5 days. We got up very early in the mornings to catch the predominantly agro-pastrolists in their homes before they set out for the day to do their chores. Because the residents are agro-pastrolists, their livestock is the main asset. This means that they need food for their livestock assets all year long. The Mandera community receives a lot of food aid but this is only for the human consumption. Through an initiative from the livestock production office and COOPI, FAO accepted a proposed project and subsequently got a funding agency, the European Union, to support the project dubbed, The Regional Initiative in Support of vulnerable Pastoralists and Agropastoralists in the Horn of Africa - RISPA - aims to reduce these communities’ vulnerability to drought by integrating cross cutting approaches that strengthen coping mechanisms on the ground and across the region. They provide fodder seeds to agro-pastoralists, train them on fodder production hence help the whole community in the drought preparedness effort.

Early morning at River Daua, Ethiopian-Kenyan Border line, right at the River(Check it out at the Kenyan map)

One of their beneficiary, Mama Halima has been quite successful and she gets about Ksh. 300,000 (approximately 3,500USD) in profit every 3 months when she sells her fodder, an amount which is more than what most rural households in Kenya get. She has managed to educate her grandchildren in the University and has even constructed a house in Mandera town. Her new venture is a banana plantation which she does with women in her group but all this is possible because of the money she got from the sale of fodder.

An agro-pastoralist heading out to the fodder market to get some animal feed for her livestock.

When in Rome... Thought I should cover myself up as most residents are Muslims in Mandera and we were going to film at the fodder market where there were so many people....

At the fodder market preparing to shoot... Thank God for Mohammed, the Livestock Production officer... The camera caused a little worry but it was all resolved in time.

We had a curfew time of 6pm and so by 6 we had to be back at the COOPI staff residence and back in our rooms. The second night I was there, I heard gunshots and I thought that it was just my paranoia kicking in but it was truly a gunshot from across the Somali border. It was a lovely trip, we filmed all the needed aspects of the project and I look forward to working with FAO on their upcoming projects.

The dry land area - Mandera! It was a pleasure working there thanks to the EU, FAO, COOPI and the Government of Kenya for the successful implementation of the fodder production community project in Mandera.

#MyJobIsTooCool

Nekoye