When the coronavirus pandemic closed the private school where she taught, “I was left jobless,” she said. “When it became apparent that hunger would kill us instead of the virus, we turned to our people back in the village.”As coronavirus-related restrictions and economic downturns make bringing in an income harder, many urban families in Kenya - and in other countries around the world - are looking to their rural families for help. The added burden on rural families - some of them struggling to feed themselves as more extreme weather linked to climate change hurts harvests - has been substantial, they and farm experts say. “Most (rural) families have been constrained as the little they had was sent to Nairobi to sustain their relatives,” said Phillip Oketch, a dairy expert with the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project. “By the time the COVID pandemic struck, much of the food at the farms was already ruined,” Chabari said.

Source: The Star August 11, 2020 06:22 UTC