Good morning from Kisii Kenya.
What is it like to live here without fossil fuels?
Some refer to it as 'Sustainable', I agree, only if its definition changes to 'break your back if you want to eat even though you'll be poor forever'
I am weeding our maize.
š§µ
We had a drought this January, as usual. This one went for a bit longer-over 1 Ā½ months, it is the longest we go without š§ļø.
Our beans died. Most farmers didn't get what they planted as seeds back-zero harvest. Maize died and we had to do gapping when it started raining..
But most farmers did replant afresh. That is costly and most skipped buying fertilizer(DAP) for the second time and planted maize without. We don't top dress our maize over here. No wonder you see 20-30 Kgs of fertilizer per ha compared to 360 China, 250 India, 120 US, 150 EU
We don't plough our lands, we dig using hoes(jembes). This is my bestie digging. The owner planted ā
ha of sugarcane but he couldn't sell. 5 years later, realized losses and decided to uproot it. My bestie is earning $1.50 working from (8-1pm)
Labor costs
5 men dug for 5 days
My village gets water from a spring 1 km away and when that dries up, we do another one about 2 km away. In various regions in Kenya, people walk for half a day for water.
This is my small bro @GetangeIan fetching water.
Nowadays we have motorbikes, a few people can afford them for fetching water. Five 20 litres cans(100 litres of water) for $1. A cow drinks 20l per day during the drought seasons on average. A family of 6 uses about 100l per day during the drought seasons.
Our village spring
Women carry water by placing a 20l Plastic can on their heads. Men usually use their fingers to hold the handles on the cans.
Fetching water for our cattle using a wheelbarrow from a water pan gathering runoff water from our road about a km away. It dried before week 2 ended!
We prefer to walk our cattle to the river because it doesn't cost us money. Plus they will drink to their satisfaction. We can also have a bath and wash our clothes before going home.
We have kids fetching water in the morning before or in the evening after school. Depending on water discharge, they can wait for 3 hours before they can fetch water which means they go back home at 9pm! Oh, walking in the dark!
Our cattle drinking water.
Sustainable living/farming/development as used today is a scam. It is tied to climate change which means living in grass thatched roofs is sustainable but not living in a mansion isn't.
Eating vegetables is sustainable but not meat or drinking milk.
Farming in a tiny garden is sustainable but not 100 Ha. It is all tied down to climate change. The UN promotes its SDGs in our countries without acknowledging the fact that they literally don't want us to develop. If everyone lived as Americans, the world wouldn't be as is.
That's their biggest fear.
Sustainable for you Africans but not for us developed nations. Affluent countries have 70% more food than they require. Most of it ends up as waste. But wait, Africans shouldn't have access to energy-fossil fuels They will be like us.
Africans don't need fossil fuels. That's why we, Europeans, will take their coal(it is more harmful if burnt in Africa).
We, Americans, need more oil. It isn't gonna drill itself. Africans don't need it. They have actually pledged to go slow on it.