USE OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE IN ADAPTATION 2

Household Food Security
Each prudent woman had a permanent pot of fermented vegetables (Atuago) that could last weeks and was preserved using constant reheating each time adding sour/fresh milk and ghee.
Women freely borrowed vegetables and salt from one another.
During abundance fish and meat smoked and stored for future use.
During rainy seasons white ants (termites) and mushrooms were collected preserved by drying and stored for future use.
As a rule each household also had hunger crops like cassava and sweet potatoes.


In a polygamous home, food security for orphaned children was guaranteed through communal feeding and all women had to take their food to the main hut from where boys and orphaned children had their meals.
Food left over were never returned to the house but centrally stored for those members of the extended households with no steady means of earning.
Women blanched and sun-dried cowpea leaves (manyonyo) that was reconstituted by soaking before cooking during drought when green vegetables were scarce and the only source was wetland farming.
Occasionally men slaughtered a cow/bull during the time of harvest and some of the meat was smoked meat (Muranda in Luhya) and (Aliya in Luo) for later use even for over a year.
Fish caught during the April rains were smoked i.e. Mumi and Ningu. As for “Ningu” the eggs (caviar) would be removed and preserved by drying.
Omena came in handy during dry season when there was little or no green vegetables was also sun died and batter-traded.
The caviar was stored in dried potions that would be reconstituted and cooked during the low fishing seasons.
Each married woman was given a cow apart from the shamba for milk and for ensuring land fertility conservation through use of farmyard manure.
Food harvest even in short rains was ensured by planting strains of hardy cereals and legumes that did not require a lot of rain and matured quickly.

Communal Food Security

Fuel conservation was observed by restricting the felling of trees to men only although women were the core users of wood fuel.
As a rule the man of the home had his own land that was communally cultivated by his wives and children and the harvest was stored after preservation “Mondo”.
“Mondo” is synonymous to the current silos that the men used to rescue the households incase food shortage occurred before the next harvest supplying food to needy neighbors.
In times of food scarcity, neighboring clans and tribes borrowed food staples from each other (KUSUMA”.
Kusuma was a well-respected word that had a common connotation among the Luo, Luhya and Kalenjins and once a person said that they were going for “Kusuma” they were allowed between boarders.

Food Security And Conservation
Traditionally it is the women who ensured that there was food security at household level because they are the ones who were involved more in the farming activities.
Men would only step into controlling food when the spouse was selling her food stock. The man would stop her from selling food because this would bring hunger in the home.
Crops grown included maize, millet, sorghum were being kept in granaries and beans, cowpeas, pounded and dried cassava, sweet potatoes and bananas were kept in big storage pots.
Each household had a granary made out of reeds, papyrus and sticks controlled by the woman. Harvest preservation was done through sun-drying supplemented with special ash before storing in granary.
While climate scientists are performing a commendable job of predicting and disseminating weather and climate information for facilitating sustainable food security, most rural communities still rely more on indigenous techniques of food production.
The current mitigation strategies need to recognize this and integrate indigenous methods of food production alongside modern scientific methods.
This will facilitate partnership arrangements between traditional communities and modern climate scientists in sustainable environmental management for food security.


Yazan