Wanton decimating of forest haunts Ngong residents

By Jeckonia Otieno

You can’t miss the churning windmills of Ngong; they swiss as if they are competing to caress the imposing hills.

In the process they produce a lot of energy, which is helping to bridge the gap between available electricity and the total number of consumers in Ngong and its environs.

Braving the cold morning on the slopes of the hills are three young men who are herding sheep and goats in the lush open ground that covers the hills. After the just ended rainy season, the young men are no longer complaining about pasture.

But a few months ago, all the grass was gone and the herders had to delve deeper into the scanty forest that patches sections of the hills for pasture.

Rivers flowed

Yet Ngong Forest did not always have scanty vegetation. Once upon a time, the forest’s slopes were thickly forested. Rivers flowed from the slopes and provided water to many along their winding paths.

Ngong Hills dwellers and the wider community that enjoyed the flowing rivers lived in plenty and life was good, for water is life. But now, that part of the people’s life seems to be told only in text books or fairy tales, for the streams are no more and there is nothing to show that there was a dense forest in the area.

Simon Ting’a, one of the young herders, says he has seen the great change over the years his family has been living in the hills. His family used to own countless livestock but with the dwindling of the forest and hence the drying of the rivers, conflict over pasture land, which was hitherto unknown, arose. Sometimes, even the forest’s wild animals and pastoralists’ domestic animals are in conflict over pasture and water. In fact, one of the rivers that has been affected is Mbagathi which supplies the animals at Nairobi National Park.

“When there is drought we take our animals into the forest to graze yet the buffaloes in there can harm us,” says Ting’a.

He says that before, his parents would graze down to the valley beyond but this cannot happen now because of the massive changes that have been experienced with the erratic weather patterns.

Intense Rainy Season

The unpredictable weather also brings death of livestock — Ting’a has lost livestock in drought and also in the rainy season. When the rain is torrential, flooding too kills animals.

Says Ting’a: “The last rainy season was intense. We have never seen anything like it in many years. If there is a similar rainy season, all our livestock could die due to the sharp fluctuations which make it hard for them to quickly adapt.”

Also herding cattle on the hills is Mama Mary Nalamai who says the open field with no trees was once a forest but has since been cut down.

“I am only thankful that there is grass because a few months ago our cattle were dying,” says Nalamai who says she is too old to drive her cattle down into the valley to graze.

Nalamai says she lost many of her cattle to drought early this year.

She knows that the more people are born the more the pressure on resources and this has led to need to clear more vegetation for settlement of grazing.

Yawning gully

Downhill, near Ngong town, a huge gully yawns at Gichagi. Residents say it has been increasing over the years. But its present extra ordinary size has been caused by the recent heavy rains that pounded Ngong and other parts of the country.

This gully is a reminder of what humans have done to their environment — destroyed vegetation leading to unpredictable rainfall patterns and rise in temperatures.

The effects are far reaching and those living in a small non-formal residential beside the gully are feeling the impact. Caleb Ochieng’ says sometimes the water overflows and destroys property but there is not they can do so they leave it to nature to decide what happens next.

No foresight

To restore the forest, the National Environmental Authority (Nema) planted trees along the slopes. Unfortunately. the seedlings did not have a chance — goats chewed them up.

This effort is a little bit too late — unless, residents say, Nema has foresight in planting of the trees.

An elderly resident, Caleb Ntoiya, observes that Nema should have fenced off where the trees were planted rather than just leave them for the browsing livestock.

“This is just clear public relations and a waste of public money because this is where we graze and the animals will not spare the seedlings,” says Ntoiya sadly.

Nema’s principal wetlands officer, Baraza Wangwe, notes that the major problem facing Ngong is that the landscape has been modified through the various development projects that have been undertaken in the area — the haphazard development should be stopped through proper zoning which should strictly be implemented, he says.