I was born in a small village in southeastern Kenya, where the land was green and generous, and rain came when we expected it.

When I was a child, our river was everything.

It was not a big river. It did not appear on maps. But to us, it was life.  In the mornings, women walked there with yellow jerrycans balanced on their heads. Children splashed in it after school. Cows stood in it, flicking their tails lazily. The river had a sound, a soft, steady song over stones.

I grew up thinking that sound would never stop.

Our soil was dark and generous then. My mother planted maize, beans, cassava and green gram. My father would press seeds into the earth with quiet confidence, as if the land and our family had an agreement: we will care for you and you will care for us.

Then, slowly, the changes began.

The rains started arriving late. When they came, they were short and angry. The sun stayed longer than it should. Trees were cut for charcoal. More land was cleared. The grass thinned. The soil became loose and tired.

I remember the first time I noticed the river was lower than usual. I was still young, but I felt something in my chest. The water no longer covered the stones. It moved in narrow streams instead of a full body.

Each year after that, it shrank.

Women began waking earlier to fetch water before it disappeared into the sand. The cows had to walk farther. Our crops began to fail. The maize stalks stood thin and yellow. We harvested less. Then almost nothing.

One morning, I walked to the river and it was gone.

Not dry in patches. Not low.

Gone.

The riverbed lay open under the sun like a wound. Cracked earth. Dead reeds. Silence.

I stood there for a long time. I had never known that something so alive could simply stop.

After the river dried, hunger followed. Not dramatic hunger like in the pictures you see on television. Just quiet hunger. Smaller plates. One meal instead of two. Mothers pretending they were not hungry so children could eat. Goats growing thin. Arguments starting more easily. Laughter becoming rare.

Land degradation is a big phrase. People use it in meetings and reports. But for us, it meant watching your father stare at a field that no longer answers him. It meant carrying water from miles away. It meant seeing your mother calculate how to stretch a handful of flour for one more day.

It meant losing something you thought was permanent.

As I grew older, I began to understand that what happened to our village was not just “bad luck.” It was soil stripped of trees. It was land overused without rest. The climate was changing. It was neglect. It was decisions made far away that reached us anyway.

But before I understood it with my mind, I understood it with my heart.

I understood it the day the river dried up.

Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still hear it the way it used to sound. Clear. Steady. Alive. And I think about how many other small rivers have fallen silent. How many other children have stood at an empty riverbed not knowing what to call the feeling inside them.

This is why I write.

Because land is not just land. It is a memory. It is food. It is dignity. It is childhood.

And when the land breaks, something inside people breaks too.