My disability did not stop me from farming

Lucy Nkatha says every hurdle she went through reinforced her resolve to never become a beggar.

If you visit Mpakani village in Meru County and ask for Lucy Nkatha, people will ask you: “Do you mean Mama Yao?” That is what they call her – mother of people. If you meet a young person and ask them about Nkatha, chances are they will say: “That is our mother!”

At 42, Nkatha says she has ‘mothered’ many children, especially orphans and vulnerable children. She is a biological mother of three, but has hosted several children and brought them up as her own.

“I grew up with a disability. I was always among children condemned by society. All the tears and hopelessness that I saw as a child made me passionate about mentoring young people,” she says.

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She got polio at the age of three, and says she cannot describe the struggles she went through without breaking down. She had to live in an orphanage when her parents could not get a school to accommodate her special needs. She says every hurdle she went through reinforced her resolve to never become a beggar.

“I would see many people with disability like mine reduced to beggars in the streets because nobody saw potential in them. I wanted my story to be different,” she says.

When she finished school, she formed Kiengu Disability CBO which brought together people with different disabilities to share the challenges facing them, and find sustainable solutions to the issues they confronted every day.

“Sometimes, all you need is someone to hear your story. I felt people with disabilities needed a space where they could freely talk about the things that worried them, their dreams, expectations and all the things they want to say but nobody gives them a chance,” she says.

Top among their agenda also included sustainable development projects they could engage in. As a team leader, she wanted to show that people with disability can also engage in income generating activities so she got into farming.

How she started

She started with keeping free range chicken, and rearing goats. It did not take long before she started getting proceeds from her farming activities.

“I was not only selling and getting money, but also farming reinforced my voice when I was talking to other people with disability. I was a real example that having a disability does not stop you from achieving what you put your mind to do,” she says.

She now has 50 chicken and 14 goats. Her involvement in advocating rights of children and vulnerable groups, coupled with the fact that she was an active farmer made her an ideal candidate for a training programme organised by JKUAT in collaboration with the gender department in 2012.

Prof Mary Abukutsa, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research, Production and Extension (RPE) says they were looking for women and vulnerable groups who need to be empowered in different fields. “We were teaching them on different sectors including value addition, agribusiness, leadership and writing proposals,” says Prof Abukutsa.

Life skills

Nkatha says she got training on leadership and became a trainer of trainers. The two-week intensive training exposed them to mentors from the university, and they also got practical skills such as writing proposals, how to identify funding opportunities, skills on growing quality crops and animal rearing. She says the training not only made her confident in questioning things she felt were not right, but it also gave her skills she needed to grow her farm.

“I was battling things like diseases that would kill my animals and I was making a lot of losses. From the training, I was able to identify signs of diseases in chicken and use traditionally available resources to treat them,” she says.

Her husband Bariu Gatobu says he has seen his wife getting courage and self-confidence with every training she goes for.

“She is a strong woman and she just needed the reminder that she can succeed, and skills to show her how to achieve her dreams,” says Gatobu while helping her feed the young chicken she is breeding.

Angela Karambu who suffers from epilepsy, says the leadership skills that Nkatha got from the training has made it easier for her to champion for social change.

“I used to have many epileptic fists until she came, held my hand and took me to hospital and has been following up to see that I do not fail to go,” says Karambu.

On farming, Nkatha says with every coin she makes from it, she is determined to keep moving. She says there are challenges such as access to feeds especially during the dry season.

“It has been hard, especially the last three years when I had to keep buying feeds for my goats. We have had persistent drought and there are farmers who have lost their animals,” she says.

Another challenge which she says is unique to people with disabilities is that they are a target for thieves. A few years ago, when their group started a goat keeping project and planting sukuma wiki, they fell victims to robbers who raided the compound of one of the members where the project was and made away with everything.

“We take every challenge that comes our way as an inspiration to do more and never give up,” she says.

She has future plans, and she says in the next few years, she wants to invest in land and add more chicken and goats to her stock.  

Until then, she tries to find the balance between farming and social work and continues to enjoy both.  

[email protected]    

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