Kenyans battle cattle-raiders and drought

By Tim Cocks
BBC News, Kenya

Kenya's Turkana people have long struggled with poverty and deadly cattle-raids. Now a severe drought threatens them with starvation.

The Turkanas are known for their colourful necklaces

On the shores of Kenya's biggest lake in the north-west, all but a few live a subsistence life, herding goats in one of East Africa's poorest and most neglected places.

Like pastoralists the world over, the Turkana have found themselves increasingly edged out of greener lands by agricultural peoples, leaving them hemmed into an inhospitable environment.

Insecurity plagues the region, with cheap, easily available AK-47s putting a deadly edge on traditional conflicts between the Turkana and neighbouring groups.

Heavily armed cattle-rustlers from Karamoja, on the Ugandan side to the east, and the Pokot, to the south, attack Turkana villages and often leave a trail of dead in their wake. Retaliations are swift and just as brutal.

Jewellery

International aid agencies have launched a massive appeal to save millions across East Africa from famine and emergency relief aid is pouring in.

But aid workers say more can be done in the long term to improve the livelihoods of people in this drought-prone region.

Turkana's drought in pictures

Like their close cousins, the Maasai, the Turkana are a tall, dark and slim people, easily identifiable by their elaborate jewellery, piercings and colourful bead necklaces.

To maintain their traditional lives, they need pasture for their growing herds to graze.

But with drought drying up the already thin vegetation, thousands of livestock whose milk, blood and meat the Turkana depend on for their survival, have died.

"It's never been this bad before," said Chegem Epeyon, from Nandanpal village, who doesn't know his age but thinks he is about 60.

"Livestock and people are dying. People are drinking dirty water from the muddy riverbed and getting sick."

Emaciated

Famine has already claimed human lives. Lea Emathe brought her one-year-old daughter Juma to a hospital in the town of Lodwar after she became sick from malnutrition.

"She started losing weight and coughing all the time. She was really sick," Mrs Emathe said. "We don't have enough food, so I didn't produce enough milk for my baby."

Lea Emathe's daughter Juma died two days after this photo was taken

Emaciated and too weak to move, the nurses put Juma on an emergency drip.

But the help came too late. Two days later, she succumbed to hunger and died on her hospital bed.

"We've seen a lot of these malnourished children coming in like this," said Alice Akalapatan, senior nurse at the hospital.

"There's little we can do once they get this bad. They urgently need more food in their homes."

Thanks to a rush of emergency food aid for east Africa, a widespread famine is likely to be averted.

But aid agencies say they are still short of funds and warn of a catastrophe if the season's rains, expected March-May, fail like last November's did.

As droughts get more severe throughout Africa, some blame global warming.

Dams

On a recent trip to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, United Nations envoy to the Horn of Africa Kjell Bondevik urged rich nations to stick to the Kyoto protocol and take tougher action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, which environmental groups often blame for extreme weather throughout the world.

But most aid workers say Turkana's problem is poverty.

They killed some of my family - my brothers and father - then they left with all the camels and goats Inok Lodeya

A lack of technology for catching water or drilling for it underground means the region is too dependent on waiting for scarce rains to come.

Community water catchment projects are trying to change that.

A number of usually dried out rivers have had dams installed to prevent rains running straight down the river into Lake Turkana, which is too alkaline to drink or use for agriculture.

"Water has always been a problem for the Turkana," said Francis Angole, who supervised the construction of one dam that recently created a reservoir on the river Lokitaung.

"But we don't have to be helpless. Building this dam is going to help us keep the little water we get."

Besides drought, insecurity in this volatile region is something the Turkana want to see addressed. Banditry puts off businesses from investing in Turkana, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.

Raid

Inok Lodeya used to have 100 goats and nearly as many camels. Some died from the drought, but most were stolen by Pokot cattle raiders who attacked her house and murdered several family members.

"They came at night and attacked our village, wielding guns," she said.

"They killed some of my family - my brothers and father - then they left with all the camels and goats."

But, besides curbing the flow of small arms into the Horn of Africa, one thing that might persuade these war-like people to stop fighting - and prevent future famines - is economic development.

"You need to pump money into the arid districts," said Roger Pearson, senior programme officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

"Food aid is a life-saver in the short run but in the long run you need cash in people's pockets."

Mr Pearson said the region could be an exporter of cattle if it had better vetinary services to wipe out cattle diseases like rinde peste and foot and mouth disease that enable rich countries to slap bans on it.