WAJIR, Kenya (IRIN) - When draught animals become weak or sick in drought-prone areas of Kenya, women step in to take their place to haul water, fearing the much-needed animal will die. After trekking up to 40 kilometres or more in 40-degree heat, the women themselves sometimes become too weak to carry the full amount of water back that their families need. If the mother is breast-feeding, her child will go without milk for up to three days while she is gone.

If she is home, she spends 12 to hours a day engaged in labour-intensive work: searching for firewood, cooking, fetching water and herding small stock. Women however, are not allowed to own or even take control of livestock - the family's most important asset. More young girls remain at home to help with chores than young boys who have more educational opportunities.

Studies indicate that women in Kenya are more vulnerable to poverty than men. But women in semi-urban pastoral areas are increasingly becoming the main breadwinners of their families. Some have discovered a way to reduce the burden they have traditionally borne. Through micro-credit schemes, they have found a new sense of empowerment and independence in a culturally and religiously conservative region.

"In our culture women are seen as very low, and we now want to fight for our rights," said Amina Ahmed Hassan, a mother of eight, and one of 230 members of the Gotade Kulmiye Women's Group in Wajir. There are several such groups around Wajir, supported by the Arid Lands Development Focus (ALDEF), a local NGO formed in 1989 and receiving funding from Oxfam-GB and Caritas Italia.

The women's groups are involved in several projects, including buying vulnerable animals from families - known as de-stocking - and using the meat to feed the needy. They also restock families who have lost their animals. But the most lucrative of their activities is turning loans into profit and projects.

"The food aid for a time had come to an end, and we were looking for firewood," said Gotade member Modis Jehow. "When Oxfam came to us, we were asked if we wanted to go back to our pastoral life or stay in town." Those who chose to stay were encouraged to form a group and set up and run a business for six months, which they did successfully. "Then we were trained and learned how to keep records, conduct business. We were given a loan of 10,000 shillings (US $150). We started buying sugar, sweets, cigarettes from wholesalers and began selling. From there, again we got some profit to take our kids to school, pay levies, family maintenance, and paid back the loan and got another loan," Jehow said.

The Gotade group has managed to turn the original loan of 10,000 shillings into 237,000 (US $3,525), which is gathering interest in a bank in Wajir. "Now our status has gone up, and the men recognise us," Amina said. "Before we would be afraid to go into a bank, because there was a soldier out front, but now we're not afraid to go in, or to go to the big wholesalers. We're credit-worthy."

Islam prohibits gathering interest from money sitting in a bank, but it is allowed if the interest goes towards benefiting a community rather than an individual. Managing credit is not new in pastoral areas, where borrowing and entitlement are common, especially when drought, conflict and flooding create unpredictable needs.

"Credit plays a big part in the way people manage to protect their livelihoods," said Emma Taylor of Oxfam in Nairobi. "In an insecure environment, protecting one's asset base is very important. Once that starts eroding, trouble begins."

The Gotade women have used some of their savings to pay contractors to build a small school for the children of their neighbourhood. Bound sticks serve as its walls, as they do for many pastoralist homes. The women said fees for government schools were too expensive, and school uniforms were required. Children at their school, they said, could wear whatever they had. They also plan to hire a part-time teacher.

School drop-out rates throughout the pastoral areas of the Horn of Africa soared this past year because many families could no longer afford the school fees. Wajir District has the highest drop-out rate in Kenya, according to Aden Keynan, a parliamentarian representing the area. When a group of about two dozen women from the Gotade group met recently, most said they had withdrawn their children from secondary school in recent years. One woman, Daara Elmi, said she had kept her child in class eight for a second year, to avoid withdrawing him until she was able to save money to advance him.

Schools, orphanages and hospitals have benefited from the de-stocking programme conducted by ALDEF and the women's groups. Needy families receive cash for animals they would normally have difficulty selling because of the poor livestock market. Eight households can benefit from one goat, receiving about one kilogramme of meat each. School fees are waived for some of the poorest students whose schools have received the meat and class attendance has improved, said Suli Abdi Guhad, who heads ALDEF. Funding for the de-stocking programme, however, ran out in March.

The women's groups elect their own officers and meet twice a month. Some groups have received loans of up to 190,000 shillings (US $2,850) because of their record of success in paying back smaller loans and implementing effective programmes. "Some of them have the dream that they can buy a bus, invest in big business," said Abdi Guhad.

The Gotade women said their husbands did not press them to turn over their money, and that they supported their efforts. Many of the men engage in manual labour such as making whitewash. Others, however, have been unable to adjust to urban life. "So it's the women now who bring the bread to the table and the men are sitting idle," said Fatuma Abdikadir, community development coordinator for the Arid Lands Resource Management Project. "It undermines the dignity of men. They stay together, but in some cases the woman just kicks the man out. Drought is at the bottom of this. It erodes the basic assets."

Although some women, especially the more recent arrivals in Wajir town, would like to return to the pastoralist life, others now prefer urban living. "We are getting a credit from somewhere. We want to continue with that, bring our children to school and make them educated," said Amina Ahmed Hassan, who arrived in Wajir in 1992 after she and her family lost their livestock to drought and clan conflict.

Although there are pastoralist associations that are mainly men, there are no all-male groups yet which receive loans like the women's groups. "We think it's very hard to manage a group of men," said ALDEF's Abdi Guhad.