Drought Threatens Turkana Way of Life in Kenya
August 31, 2011
Kenya's Turkana region shows effects of severe drought affecting Horn of Africa (file photo)
The Turkana region of Kenya is one of the areas hit hardest by drought in the Horn of Africa. A relief organization says while indigenous people are receiving emergency supplies to survive, their traditional way of life may be dying.
Livestock are at the heart of the Turkana culture. It’s been that way since ancient times. Pastoralists tend their animals in a region that was already dry and hot even before the severe drought took hold.
But the drought has changed their way of life, according to Don Golden of World relief, a Christian-based aid organization.
“That’s the story of an indigenous people group that has managed to resist dominance from the Brits and now from the Kenyans and to maintain their pastoral, nomadic, sort of, individualistic way of life. But through many factors, that way of life if fading. And so you have really the demise, not only of women and children in the immediate, but the whole culture. And aid is actually accelerating the process of demise for the Turkana,” he said.
No choice
He said it takes something drastic for the Turkana people to give up their pastoralist ways and move into settled communities.
“When their animals are dying and then their people start dying, and they see that one of the major aid agencies or the World Food Program is handing out food somewhere, they can give up - give up their whole way of life and basically just become beggars in these little IDP [internally displaced people] camps. And that’s unfortunately what we saw,” he said.
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