Country: Kenya
Environment Is Life
My love for environment begun at a tender age of 5 years. Having been brought up in a rural setting I could observe everything my mum used to do in dealing with invasive species in her small forest. I enjoyed each and every moment picking plastic and using them to make other toys that we and my peers could use in playing during our tender age e.g. we could go around picking straws from the different shops and using them in combination with polythene bags to make balls that we could use to play. By doing this I begun to see a sense on importance of wastes plastic bags: instead of burning them we could use them to make other products.
Joining primary school improved my understandings about the environment and gave me a clear definition of environment as we were taught in class 4 with definition environment is the study of everything that surrounds us. With this definition I begun to develop much on what actually environment was all about. At class 7 I now had a clear definition and approached the senior master and we then developed an environmental club in my primary school and I become the first chairman of the club. With this task we could organize general cleanings around school and protecting the trees through weeding them. Later on in class eight we advance to establish a tree nursery that could provide trees seedlings for planting around the school and later on the community could come to buy them. We developed a forest for the school. Through the club we came up with dustbins and made duty roaster just to ensure the environment is clean.
I then had to leave the primary as I was now joining my secondary school that is thurdibuoro secondary school. When I joined thurdibuoro secondary school in Kisumu county Nyakach sub county it was a real challenge as the school was located in a semi-arid. I could observe how the community was suffering with no even a proper shade, soil erosion this led to low production of food as the fertile soil was washed away. At form 2 I joined environmental club in the school where I was given the post of organizing secretary. In the club we came up with a project, operation kivuli thurdi. With this project we enabled to plant numerous trees in the school as can be witnessed to date. We also managed to use our recycling techniques to use the milk plastic packets to produce seedlings in the school. With this achievements I went back home and established my own forest.
With all this contact with the environment I then decided to study environmental science at higher level of education at the university level with the aim of finding solutions as to why some parts of the country are dry others are wet, others receive more rainfall than others.
At the university level masinde muliro University Science and technology I got more interested in some aspects in the environmental problems and how I could find their solutions.
These problems were such as climate change, waste management, deforestation, wetland invasion by human being. With all these problems in mind I had to do both class work and also join clubs and association to help me find solutions to these environmental issues. I joined organization for environmental conservationist must where we could move together to communities to educate them on climate change the causes of climate change, importance of trees and reasons why they should avoid cutting down trees. We partnered with chamas, women groups, Non-governmental organization, the county government of kakamega and other parastatals.
On climate change we enabled them to explain to them the main causes of climate change such as the greenhouse gases that forms a barrier in the atmosphere preventing the reflection of the solar radiation that are from the earth surface back the atmosphere hence leading to global warming. We also explained to them the absorption rate of solar radiation on of each the greenhouse gases and releasing it back to the atmosphere.
We also explained to them the role trees play in reducing rate of carbon in the atmosphere by acting as carbon sink. Through this we enabled to reduce the rate of deforestation and they encouraged planting of new trees.
I then took up as the chair of the club in my final year in campus. This gave me more opportunities I begun joining national associations that had campaigns against climate change and environmental degradation. I joined the Kenya inter university environmental students association where we held campaigns against coal plant in lamu.
I then collaborated with county government of Kisumu where I wrote a project titled, environment is life this enabled us to hold campaigns and awareness creation through sporting activities in collaboration with the county on importance of trees and effects of climate change. This project was in line with the fact Kisumu still lies low in the tree cover percentage as per the vision 2030 10 percent tree cover.
Picture of the last campaigns using sporting activity
The fight continued with the Kisumu County offering me an attachment in the department of environment. This gave me another better opportunity to bring justice to the environment. At the department we did a project on water towers protection, a project that is at it advance stage awaiting just funds from the donor to be implemented.
The fight continued as I came up with another project of environmental education to the primary schools and secondary school on importance of trees and nursery establishment. This picked up in most schools where we did the pilot project.
With Kisumu county deputy governor Dr Owili during world environment day
As I come to the end of this my story mark that if we don’t fight this menace of climate change then it will consume us so let’s put our hands together to fight this menace.