Habaswein, in northeastern Kenya, is dry and its inhabitants are poor. There is very little water for anything to grow. Mukhtar Ogle is a son of this land. He is also a Senior Advisor to the President of Kenya.
Far away in India, the organization of Tarun Bharat Sangh, under the leadership of Dr. Rajendra Singh, has worked for decades to restore the watersheds of Rajasthan. Known as ‘the waterman of India’, Dr Singh has helped bring water to thousands of villages. Interestingly, the climate of this part of India and the climate of Habaswein, in Wajir County, Kenya are similar. What worked here could work in Kenya.
In August 2019, Dr. Rajendra Singh from TBS and Sunita Raut from ‘Four Rooms of Change’, met with Rishabh Khanna and Hassan Mohmud from ‘Initiatives for Land, Lives and Peace’, a programme of Initiatives of Change International, in Sweden. Water connected them all. Somewhere deep inside they knew that bringing water to the arid lands of the Horn of Africa is what they all needed to do. At that time, nobody knew how that would happen, but they had hope in their hearts and, more importantly, determination.
In February 2020, Mukhtar Ogle gave a keynote on environment and security at Asia Plateau, the Initiatives of Change conference centre in India. He also visited the pioneering work in watershed management of Grampari, a rural development NGO inspired by Initiatives of Change. And he heard more about Dr Rajendra Singh.
‘Bring this to Kenya,’ said Ogle, ‘and we will transform the region’.
Rishabh, Sunita and Hassan were ready to deliver Dr Singh’s land and life-restoring methodology to northeastern Kenya. But Covid-19 had struck and the prospects of engaging with a remote town in northeastern Kenya seemed dashed.