Light at the Edge of the World (15 page)

The singing and dancing lasted well into the night. With the end of the rains, grass was abundant and milk plentiful. It was a time of great joy, a season of celebrations, and almost every day there was a wedding. Sunrise found us in a cool mist, walking with Sekwa Lesuyai and his best man as they led a bull and eight heifers along a trail that climbed toward the home of his bride, Nantalian Lenure. All night, the men had slept beside the animals, guarding the gifts that would secure the marriage. The bride's mother washed the men's feet with milk. The bull was slaughtered, its meat distributed with ritual precision. The elders brewed tea and then slipped away from the manyatta into the bush to roast and eat their share of the meat. The women stayed by Nantalian and laid branches of fertility across her doorway. “God is big,” they sang, “big as a
mountain; the bride is beautiful, sweet as perfume.” Only in the late afternoon did the warriors arrive, to resume their dancing with an intensity that drove several of them into trance.

Two days later, Jonathan invited us to spend a night in one of the remote encampments, or
fora
, where the warriors live apart with the young lads, managing and protecting the herds, raiding enemy tribes. For ten years, from the time they are circumcised until they are finally permitted by the elders to marry, they spend each night in the open, sleeping on the stony ground, living on soups made of wild herbs, and on fresh milk and blood, drawn each evening from the neck of a heifer. Sitting with the warriors in the moonlight, the sound of cattle bells ringing in the night and the friendly faces of Zebu cows crowding the fire, I came to understand how for the Ariaal these animals are the fulcrum of life.

When men meet on a trail, they ask first of the well-being of the herds, then of the families. Each animal has a mark and a name, a personality setting it apart. Cattle represent a man's wealth and status, and without herds, he cannot marry. But the bond is deeper, even spiritual, rooted in every intuition about the landscape and environment.

“If we lose our cows,” said Jonathan, “we lose our faith in life itself. All our rituals and ceremonies lose their meaning without the animals.”

He reached for a burning stick, snapped off the ember, and dropped it into his empty milk gourd. In the absence of water, it is the way the Ariaal clean their containers. As Jonathan spoke of his tribe, the outline of the culture unfolded in my mind.

Everything is built around the need to manage risk. The larger the herd, the greater the chances that some animals will survive a difficult period. Keeping the herd intact is essential. Thus, with the death of an owner, the eldest son inherits everything. The need to care for hundreds of animals creates an incentive to have many children and wives to help with the work. Polygyny addresses this problem but inevitably creates tensions within the society. With the old men having three and sometimes four wives, there is a shortage of marriageable women for the young men. This dilemma the elders solve by getting rid of the young men, sending them off to warrior encampments. But to make their exile desirable, it is enveloped with prestige.

The highlight of a young man's life is his public circumcision, the moment when he and his peers enter the privileged world of the warrior. The ceremony is held only every fourteen years, and those who endure it together are bonded for life.

“You sit perfectly still,” Jonathan remembered, “legs apart, with your back supported by your closest friend. They pour milk on you. Everyone is singing or yelling,
warning you not to flinch. All your family promises animals, if you are brave. You can build up a herd just with those frantic promises. But you are so intent. You only hope that the blade is sharp. It's over in seconds, but it seems like years.”

Should a boy, his head shaved and blackened with fat and charcoal, reveal the slightest expression of fear or pain as the nine cuts are made to his foreskin, he will shame his clan forever and possibly be beaten to death. Few fail, for the honour is immense.

“God has given us our land,” Jonathan said, “the land that we share. Our traditions we have created and they are our strength. As long as we have land and cattle, and respect for the elders and the past, we will have our culture.”

After ten days on Mount Marsabit, Kevin Smith and I drove to the desert lowlands to visit Lewogoso and Losidan, Ariaal nomadic encampments along the base of the Ndoto Mountains, and then on to the town of Korr, the mission post where so many Rendille have settled. The contrast between the two worlds could not have been greater.

In the Ariaal manyattas, traditions were strong and enduring, embraced consciously by the people. On rocky outcrops, warriors painted in ochre stood like raptors overlooking the narrow traffic of camels and cattle on desert
trails. Elders gathered each night in the
na'abo
, the ritual men's circle, to offer prayers. At Lewogoso, women and children were herding goats and sheep, and drawing blood in the morning from the faces of camels. At Losidan, a death had occurred. The manyatta was deserted, though the cooking fires were still warm. By custom, the people had moved on. Following them into the desert, we met Kanikis Leaduma, a
laibon
, a healer and soothsayer, who reads the future in coloured stones and bones tossed from a gourd onto a green cloth spread out in the shade of an acacia tree. A young man of perhaps twenty-five, he had acquired the gift of clairvoyance from his father and discovered in dreams the secrets of health and well-being. Fighting sorcery with amulets and herbs, he protected livestock and people while providing an anchor of spiritual certainty in a harsh and unforgiving desert.

“If they can control their land and maintain their pastoral economy, the culture will thrive,” Kevin remarked as we drove along the faint outlines of a desert track that led from Lewogoso to Korr. To understand the plight of the desert tribes, he suggested, one had to begin with the nation state, and the convictions and biases of sedentary people for whom nomads are an inconvenience. Highly mobile, straddling international borders, living on the margins of the world, nomads are envied for their freedom
and independence, and hated and feared for these same traits. They pay no taxes, are beholden to no government, move at will across landscapes that mock the arbitrary borders scratched upon the face of post-colonial Africa.

In the 1970 s, drought and famine drew the attention of the world to the sub-Sahara. The development community insisted that the degradation of the Sahel and the impoverishment of the people were the inevitable consequence of a pathology academically described as the “tragedy of the commons.” As long as nomads were free to exploit the desert at will, the argument suggested, individual greed and the desire to maximize personal economic gain would inevitably triumph over the interests of the community, resulting in overgrazing and the erosion of the land. The solution was privatization and the imposition of a model of land tenure, fenced rangelands and all, imported wholesale from the ranches of the American West. The audacity of such an alien prescription was nothing new. Since the arrival of the British in East Africa, the nomadic peoples have been told how to manage their lands by outsiders, missionaries, government officials, foreigners of every colour.

Yet, for thousands of years, the very survival of the nomads had, by definition, depended upon their looking after the land. The desert is their home, a place of freedom and fertility, of good grasses and bad, of protective
trees and hidden springs. Using animals to convert scrub vegetation to protein is not only the most efficient use of the land, it is the only way to live in the desert. Mediating the process, securing the rights of every individual through linkage to the fate of the collective, were complex ties of kinship, relationships too subtle to be readily perceived by outsiders, especially those blinded by hubris. Through generations, the nomads had discovered the art of survival in the desert.

Grazing and the deposit of animal waste returns nitrogen to the ground, enhancing the growth of grass. Lands overgrazed for a short period produce richer fodder in the wake of the herds, as gravel and seeds are crushed by hooves. Different springs have different kinds of water. The mineral content varies. The nomads recognize this and seek the appropriate water for the time of year, releasing nutrients from the deep wells to the surface of the land. Medical surveys reveal that the milk and blood diet of the nomads is far superior to the food available in the missionary towns, and that their children are healthier, despite the lack of Western health care. The problems begin, for the most part, when a people born to move settle down.

As recently as 1975 , Korr was a seasonal watering hole visited by small bands of nomadic Rendille herders. That year, Italian missionaries set up a small camp to distribute
relief. Within a decade, a town grew, complete with shops, schools, and a large stone Roman Catholic church. Today, there are twenty-five hundred houses in walking distance of the mission, a local population of sixteen thousand, and 170 hand-dug wells. Missing are the trees that once provided shelter in a windswept desert. Most have been cut down to produce charcoal to cook maize gruel, the staple subsidy. Those Rendille who still own camels and goats must herd them far from town. Fresh milk is hard to find, and many children go without. In place of sisal, the houses are roofed in cardboard, burlap and metal sheets bearing the names of international relief agencies. A walk around town reveals that almost every Western nation has helped create this oasis of dependency.

For many Rendille, it was not just food but a chance to educate their children that drew them to Korr. In the face of drought, having at least one child in school destined for the cash economy was another means of managing risk. One who made that choice was our host, Kawab Bulyar Lago. Born in the desert but crippled by polio in his teens, Kawab grew up in a mission and became one of the first of his tribe to be educated. Kawab, who had seven children, sold his animals and saddled himself with debt to send his eldest son, Paul, to Catholic school outside Marsabit. Awaiting the results of the national exams that will determine
his fate, Paul hopes to attend university and become a doctor, a civil engineer, a teacher, or even a tour guide. “I'd prefer to be a doctor,” he told me one morning, “but anything would be all right.”

As I listened to his stories of school, with its curriculum dominated by Western religious studies, of the dormitory teasing he endured that led his father to have him circumcised in a hospital before his time, I sensed his anxiety and could not help but recall the calm authority and confidence of Kanikis the healer, a young Ariaal man of similar age so firmly rooted in tradition. In the old days, Paul would have inherited his father's herd. Today, he inherits his hopes and dreams. The family has staked everything on his education. Kawab knows the risks. “For the few who benefit, who get good jobs, they do well,” he said. “But most just suffer. Here, you can survive. People will help you. In the city, they just leave you to die.”

Education, long held out as the key to modernization, has its critics. Father George, the Catholic priest who has run the mission in Korr almost since its inception, told me : “ Schooling has not changed people for the better. This is the pain in my heart. Those educated want nothing to do with their animals. They just want to leave. Education should not be a reason to go away. It's an obligation to come back.”

As we sat together in his modest kitchen, I perceived the old priest's sadness and disappointment. For twenty years or more, he had given everything to this windswept place scratched out of the desert. Hundreds of Rendille children had moved through his school. Many had drifted to the cities and larger settlements to the south. For them, education had been, by definition, a reason to go away, a passport out. Unfortunately, in a nation like Kenya, the destination is too often the bottom rung of an economic ladder that goes nowhere. Unemployment rates in Kenya's cities hover at around 25 per cent. Among those who have attended school in the Marsabit District, well over half are unemployed.

The danger of Western-style education is clear to many Ariaal, including Lenguye, an elderly midwife from Ngurunit, a settlement in the foothills of the Ndoto Mountains. “We send our children to school, and they forget everything. It's the worst thing that ever happened to our people. They only know how to say ‘give me.' They don't know how to say ‘I give to you.' ”

According to Nigel Pavitt, author of several books on the nomadic peoples of Kenya, “Education must be tailored to the needs of the people. They ought to be taught veterinary medicine, subjects useful to a livestock economy. At present the curriculum is designed to produce clerks. The
methods are terrible. Boarding schools for nomads. They should be teaching teachers to be nomads.”

“They must hold onto tradition,” explained Father George as he guided me through the dark streets of Korr. “Ultimately, it is what will save them. It's all they have. They are Rendille and must stay Rendille.”

In the end, the cultures that survive will be those that are willing and able to embrace the new on their own terms while rejecting anything that implies the total violation of their way of life. Seduced by empty promises, the Rendille took a chance and settled, a gamble that largely failed, leaving the bulk of the tribe wasted and abandoned. But at the fringe of the desert the Ariaal, despite droughts and famine and countless other pressures from within and without, have, for the moment, found a way to stay.

 

WHEN WE RETURNED from the lowlands to Mount Marsabit, word reached us of a killing, a Rendille elder shot dead by a raiding party of Boran warriors as he tended his goats. The incident was described in a casual manner, just another flash of violence sparked by the whirlwind of change that has swept northern Kenya in the last generation. At one time the wealthiest pastoralists in the country, rarely in conflict with the Rendille, the Boran were brutally repressed in the early 1960 s when they allied
themselves with the losing side of a civil war. Their herds slaughtered, the men scratched a living making charcoal or gathering firewood and the women were forced to turn to prostitution. By 1971, a once proud people were starving and totally dependent on outside relief for survival. A decade later, their numbers began to grow, as other Boran in neighbouring Ethiopia in turn suffered the ravages of famine and civil strife, and drifted south as refugees. Arriving on the northern flank of Marsabit, the Boran clashed in time with the settled Rendille, most notably those from Songa, an agricultural community established only in 1972 by an American missionary.