On Earth Day – Urgent Drought News From Kenya

“Elijah was a man just like us… he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops…”
James 5:17-18

As we celebrate Earth Day this week, we do have much to celebrate.  It is entirely appropriate to look back 39 years and to rejoice in the real progress that has been made in many areas.  Just this morning I was having breakfast with an older friend who remembers well the state of the Nashua River in Fitchburg, MA, before the Earth Day-inspired legislative reforms like the Clean Water Act caused the local paper industry to change the way it did business.  That river is clean today (read about it in Our Father’s World, p 28-29), and is but one example of the very real difference that the Earth Day movement of 1970 kicked off.
Unfortunately, such observations only make some of today’s environmental problems seem even more serious.  Problems continue to escalate, on the local, regional and global levels around the world.  Kenya is just one example of a country suffering locally from what is both a local and a global phenomenon:  changed weather patterns.  Just this morning I received the following front-line report on what is becoming an extremely serious drought situation in Kenya.
Here’s what our Kenya Director Craig Sorley is reporting:

—–

I want to ask for continued prayer on several fronts, namely regarding the situation facing the people of Kenya and our ministry.   Here’s how one of our missionary friends recently described things.

“Persistence is usually a good quality, but not when it refers to drought. Today’s Daily Nation reports:  “‘Poor rains to persist, say experts’ … More people will be famished and increase the hungry to more than 10m Kenyans … although April is the rainfall peak period for the March to May long rains season, Nairobi and most parts of the country will continue to receive deficient rainfall … The forecast spells doom for farmers, who have received poor rains in the last four consecutive farming seasons.  Pastoralists, whose animals have been dying in their hundreds due to lack of water and pasture, will also be devastated.”  The “GLOOMY OUTLOOK” of this article continues as it reports that the drought will also lead to increased charges for fresh produce and electricity, water rationing to homes, as well as outbreaks of illnesses such as cholera due to the resulting poor sanitation.”

To give you a bit more detail on the drought, while some rains have come to Kenya, many places are still dry as a bone.  Here at Brackenhurst we normally get 60-70 inches of rain per year.  So far in 2009 we’ve only had 4.5 inches.  Keep in mind that we happen to be located in one of the wettest parts of the country, and most of the long rainy season should be over by now.  Francis has done quite a bit of work with farmers in the Ndeiya area this year, and once again, they planted their seed which started to germinate when some brief rains started, but then the rains stopped, and the young plants died.  This has happened to farmers in many parts of the country now.  So in the midst of poverty and impending famine, farmers have to dig again into their already shallow pockets to buy new seed, in the hopes that rains will still come, and that crops can still be grown to some degree.

While the drought accelerates hunger, it also accelerates deforestation…..a good way to make some fast cash to buy food.  Francis and I just returned from a weekend trip to the Mau Escarpment, the single largest remaining block of intact forest in East Africa.  We spent time driving along the edge of the forest and walking for hours into the forest itself, being guided by a friend.  What you see in the pictures is what we found right in the middle of the forest.  I stand next to a huge cedar tree that has been felled.

Everywhere we went we saw stark evidence of how quickly things are happening.  The sad part of this situation is that as this forest comes down, the rainfall needed on surrounding farmland declines, and the rivers that come from this forest are also dwindling.  One side of this forested escarpment feeds the Mara River, and the Maasai Mara game reserve, recently ranked as one of the wonders of the world.  On the other side of the escarpment streams flow into Nakuru National Park, but they are so small these days that the Kenya Wildlife Service has to spend more than $1 million a month to pump fresh water into the lake…..to keep the park ecosystem functional.  These two game parks are the most commonly visited parks in East Africa, which employ tens of thousands of people thru the tourist industry and bring in millions in revenue each year.  The third picture you see here is our truck on what used to be the healthy grasslands of the Rift Valley close to where I went to boarding school (Lake Naivasha can be seen far off in the background).  You can understand what this means for those who graze animals for a living.

So on behalf of the team here in Kenya, we ask all of you to pray.  Watching these things take place weighs very heavily on our hearts, because we know what it means for the future.

1) Pray diligently that God will bless Kenya with ample rainfall across all parts of the country.

2) Pray that God will strengthen us in challenging times and use our seemingly small efforts to help transform many people across this nation towards a biblical vision for creation that brings healing to the land and glory to Christ.

3) And last but not least, please pray that God will provide the finances and wisdom needed to expand and carry on our work.  Right now we only have 3 months of funding left in our accounts, and so we have started a prayer campaign here, much like we did last fall.  Please join us in this effort.  [Donate to Care of Creation-Kenya or any of our projects here.]

——

We will very likely take up Craig’s challenge and issue another world-wide call to prayer on behalf of the work of Care of Creation generally, and for the people of Kenya and the other East African countries caught in this terrible situation right now.  Stay tuned for that in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, we thank you for your ongoing partnership and prayers.  It has been fun meeting new people during our current tour of Massachusetts (check our website for the schedule of events in case you are in the area and would like to meet us – events continue each evening in various parts of the state through Saturday…)

In Him,

Ed Brown for the Care of Creation Family