Water insecurity, water borrowing and psychosocial stress among Daasanach pastoralists in northern Kenya

ABSTRACT

This article quantifies Daasanach water insecurity experiences in northern Kenya, examines how water insecurity is associated with water borrowing and psychosocial stress, and evaluates if water borrowing mitigates the stress from water insecurity. Of 133 households interviewed in seven communities, 94.0% were water insecure and 74.4% borrowed water three or more times in the prior month. Regression analyses demonstrate water-borrowing frequency moderates the relationship between water insecurity and psychosocial stress. Only those who rarely or never borrowed water reported greater stress with higher water insecurity. The coping mechanism of water borrowing may help blunt water insecurity-related stress.

KEYWORDS:

• Water insecurity
• pastoralists
• water borrowing
• psychosocial stress
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

We thank Luke Lomeiku, Samuel Esho and Joshua Koribok, and the community health volunteers who helped with data collection. We thank Purity Kiura, The Koobi Fora Field School and The National Museums of Kenya for facilitation with the project. We thank the Illeret Health clinic, The Illeret Ward administrator Mr Koriye Koriye, and all the Daasanach communities and participants. Finally, we thank research assistants (Jessica Saunders, Shiva Dhanasekar, Celine LaTona, Alysha Kelyman, Kaitlyn Barnhart, and Jason John) for their help in parts of the data collection and/or data cleaning.

Author contributions

AYR and LBF conceptualized the study. AYR, HP, RN, EKN, DRB, and MD obtained funding to collect the data. AYR, HJB, HP, ZSS, RN, and EKN collected the data. HJB cleaned and managed the data. AYR and LBF conducted the analyses. LBF drafted the manuscript with help from AYR. AW, AB, SY, and DMA provided critical feedback on the manuscript. All authors provided feedback, editing, and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2022.2138050

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation [grant numbers NSF ARCH #1624398, NSF REU #1852406 and NSF CNH2-S #1924322]; a Pennsylvania State University (PSU) Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) Human Health and Environment Seed Grant; the Ann Atherton Herzler Early Career Professorship in Global Health; and the College of Health and Human Development. This research was conducted under the permissions granted by PSU, the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and the National Council of Science and Technology [permit number NACOSTI/P/19/869]. It was supported by Penn State’s Population Research Institute [numbers NICHD P2CHD041025 and NICHD 2T32HD007514-21A1].