The Dry Rustle

Maasai tribes have long believed that all the cattle on earth belong to them (I can see the movie now – Maasai in Texas!), and they have a legacy of cattle rustling that has become nothing short of legendary. Migrants from the southern Nile valley, they currently live in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, almost a million strong. But this tribal affection for raiding cattle has settled down over the years as Maasai have become “better citizens” of their respective countries. These folks live in the southern area of Kenya… but there are desperate troubles – and new cattle rustlers – in the north.

Previously peaceful tribes in northern Kenya and southern Sudan, particularly Samburu and Turkana, were known to raid cattle in times of excessive rains and rapid expansion of the areas herds… big herds simply were too tempting to miss. But those days seem long gone in this time of climate change. Despite the raging debate in the Western world, these Great Rift Valley tribes have witnessed a 5 degree rise in the maximum temperature over the last few decades, and the drought that has plagued the Darfur region of the Sudan has also griped the areas to the south. Scientists predict a further 15% decline in rainfall in the next decades as well. Malaria, once rare in these elevated regions, has spread its deadly cast as temperatures rise.

We all have heard that the ice caps on Africa’s highest peaks, Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mr. Kenya, are disappearing and perhaps that Lake Chad has lost 90% of its water since the 1960s, but the day-to-day existence of the Turkana, Samburu and other tribal peoples in this Sudan/Kenya/ Uganda region has rendered new meaning to the word “harsh.” The barometers of desperation go beyond the rise and fall of mercury in the weather thermometers and pressure gauges; what may have been a small conflict with spears and arrows a few decades ago has turned into a fire fight with AK-47s. To make matters worse, either corrupt officials or misguided regional governmental policies have resulted in official and unofficial supplies of small arms to favored factions. Cattle raids in northern Kenya, once relegated to times of plenty, are now the product of sustained drought and utter desperation.

The United Nations estimates that approximately 400 people have died in this violence in northern Kenya over the past year. The November 28^th Los Angeles Times: “In Kenya, experts say, the violence has become as unpredictable as the weather. Faced with the extinction of their age-old livelihood because of what appear to be permanent changes in rainfall patterns, many of the 4 million Kenyans who survive by raising livestock are embroiled in a fight with one another and with herdsmen from nearby countries for the remaining viable land… ‘The situation is getting out of hand and people are starting to worry about where all this is headed,’ said Mohammed Ahmed, a field officer with the British aid group ActionAid in Isiolo, where scores of people have been killed in recent months… He and others say the violence this year has been more brutal and random than anyone can remember. Women and children have been killed, among them two women slain while collecting firewood in September.”

I am gratified that both the United States and China have made recent commitments to cap carbon emissions. I wish we had all acted a long, long time ago.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder what happened to that small, desperate Samburu village I visited just four years ago.