Why we should brace ourselves for hard times

The government has assured the country of food sufficiency for the next eight months. But as if to belie the assurance, legislators from northern Kenya were at the same time asking the State to speed up food relief to the region which is already facing shortages.

Official statistics indicate that the price of essential food commodities has gone down significantly or stabilised in most parts of the country.

The shortages being experienced in the north are partially attributable to poor food distribution, which has, for years, seen parts of the country go hungry while food was going to waste elsewhere.

Other people who may take the government’s assurance with a pinch of salt are the internally displaced persons and the urban poor, who perpetually suffer shortages because they have little money.

So far, predictions from weather forecasters have being uncannily precise. Three months ago, they predicted depressed short rains due to the effects of an unfolding La Nina. This has come to pass.

This is the main reason the northern part of the country is facing a shortage of water and pasture now being manifested in increasing cases of armed conflict. Further, the forecasters have predicted that La Nina may continue well into the New Year, compromising the quantity and distribution of the long rains.

If this happens, and we must assume it will, then we could very easily slide back to the hard times of hunger, water and electricity rationing, declining economic growth and poverty-related crimes.

The fact that we face hardships after the relatively good rains this year underlines how little we have learned to apply modern technology to improve our survival. This means that this year’s good fortune from Mother Nature was greatly wasted.