Elephants don't like chili peppers

2010 is an incredible time to be in Kenya because the 47 year-old constitution was recently replaced with a new constitution that has potential to generate extraordinary changes for Kenya. Innovation is waiting at the Kenya’s doorstep, but everyone seems a little skeptical to see if power will actually be dispersed and if the new policies will really benefit the people. The first four weeks here I spent the majority of my time in classes, trying to take in as much information as possible about the new political system in Kenya, the ecology of the semi-arid ecosystem surrounding me, religious influences, the wildlife, and most of all, the problems that need to be addressed that encompass all of these things.
Now that I have a decent understanding of my surroundings I have started to conduct small research projects with my professors that involve environmental preservation in the area. I have become extremely interested in the change in land use practices – which is mostly a shift from a pastoral livelihood to agriculture - and the sustainability predicaments that come along with trying to farm on such desiccated land. About a decade ago the Kenyan government decided that pastoralism was primitive and needed to be replaced with more “efficient” livelihoods such as beef industry and agriculture. There was obviously no thought put into this change because it has created an environmental disaster in the area.
I was recently able to go out with a translator to dozens of Maasai villages and interview families about the problems they were having with their livelihoods. Most of the people I talked to had to travel three hours by foot for all of their domestic water! Furthermore, many people are in the process of trying to grow corn and tomatoes in gardens or fields around their houses and are doing everything possible to get enough water. People who have installed pipes or wells are only allowed to have 1 hour of water everyday, which is seriously limiting the amount they can grow. Also, the farming practices are seriously degrading the soil to the point where it can no longer be used after 2 years. On several other occasions I went and interviewed farmers about the human wildlife conflicts they are having on their farms. Almost everyone said that elephants had destroyed their crops at least once and that the Kenya Wildlife Service was failing to help them or compensate them for their loses. In defense of the elephants, all the farms are right where they migrate and feed each year. There have been several efforts to build fences around the crops that have proven to be useless because elephants are too strong and extremely smart.
After condensing the information collected, we write up reports and work with the Kenya Wildlife Service to figure out ways to manage the elephants so that their migration patterns are not disrupted, while making sure that farms are not destroyed. We recently proposed giving farmers chili pepper seeds to grow around their crops because chilies seem to be one thing that elephants won’t go near. As for water, we are currently looking at ways to replace dirt furrows with cement channels to reduce infiltration as water gets to the farms. Our professors have two million Kenya shillings from a variety grants to do this over a five year time period. In my opinion people should be educated about all the negative impacts of agricultural farming and be shown that there are other land use practices that are better for the environment (and more prosperous). It seems like it would be so much more beneficial to research and implement new livelihoods that work instead of fixing the never-ending problems from agriculture.