Every day before sunset, the sound of cows mooing, sheep and goats bleating would fill the air in Bondhei village just like many other villages in Garissa county, young and old men would stand at the entrance of harello — the livestock shed, to count and make sure none is lost in the grazing field.
One evening on the 10th day of February 1996, Mzee Amin was counting his goats as he always did, when he heard a baby crying. He knew the baby they had all been waiting for had arrived. His family had been blessed with a baby girl. Mama Khadija and Mzee Amin named the baby girl Medina after the holy city of prayer in Saudi Arabia. The green from the trees stood out in Bondhei like the beautiful green dome in the city of Medina.
Baby Medina loved the outdoors and when it was time for her to go to school, chasing butterflies and catching grasshoppers made the journey to school so much fun and shorter.
She loved walking under the acacia trees, the umbrella trees, she called them. She would touch the hard shells of tortoises crossing the footpath and they would hide their heads under the shells.
One day when Medina was going to school, she noticed that the umbrella trees she loved had been cut down, the green shrubs started disappearing too, so did the butterflies, the bees and the flowers that were as colourful as her dresses.
When she returned home from school, she went straight to the harello, and asked her dad, “papa, who is cutting down our umbrellas”, her father told her, “my daughter, some people believe that God grows trees for us and so the trees just grow by themselves, and our work is to use them and so they cut the trees to make chairs, tables, beds, charcoal and even build houses. But this is not true, we need to tell them that it is our duty to take care of the trees and plant more.”
Medina was so sad, she wanted more answers, she asked her mother, “mama, what can I do to stop this?”They tried to talk to the people in her village to stop cutting down the trees, but they did not listen to little Medina and her mother. People from far away came to the village to buy wood and charcoal from the umbrella trees until there were no more trees to cut. The village became so dusty, there were no green leaves anymore for the goats and the rain also stopped for many months.
When Medina completed secondary school she decided to collect seeds of the umbrella trees from other villages then she brought them and made a nursery bed using soft soil and goat manure from the Harello.
She soaked and planted 6,000 seeds. It took 28 days for the seeds to germinate. It was very hard work. More and more people in her village joined her. Together they created the biggest tree nursery.
They want to plant five million trees to make Bhondei green again and colourful with butterflies, bees, tortoises and flowers blooming.
Story as told by Medina.A Hussein. She is the founder of Global Nature conservation.
