Selling Water to Buy Hydrologic Drought in the Rangelands: A Conspiracy between Covid-19 and Education

In March 2020, the Kenyan government indefinitely closed teaching and learning institutions in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, disrupting nearly 17 million learners countrywide, and resulting in limited learning. In the country’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs), the closure offered a fair share of the deleterious consequences as it not only affected the learners and teachers but also brought forth numerous economic and social crises, including water environmental challenges, increase in teenage pregnancies, and amplified financial costs at households. The nucleus of this study was therefore to explore the influence of the pandemic restrictions and the consequent suspension of face-to-face primary schools’ operations. A case study of Kajiado County was taken, with the specific objectives being to establish the drivers of the pupils’ engagement in sand harvesting, and examining the likely contribution to the local hydrology. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data, targeting teachers, pupils, parents and sand loaders. Descriptive statistical analysis was applied to the collected data. The study found that boys immersed in sand harvesting essentially to earn an income, levitating the quantities of water trucked out of the seasonal rivers. As a result, it is recommended that education stakeholders have an integrated intervention to evaluate the pastoral education system to establish and actualize measures that can allow pupils appropriately access learning in case of crises, and lowering their involvement in social and economic activities that exploit their energies and moral beings.

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