Sometimes if you look across at the Athi River plains, you will see the dust begin to rise. It reaches up into the sky and wraps the sun in its redness. Out here every morning begins with talk of rain. People watch the sky in nervous anticipation of a downpour that has long proved elusive. Each day that passes sees the fat and flesh diffuse out of the bodies of once podgy animals and leave only their coat rack skeletons with skins hanging off them. The spring in the step of every herd boys tire bound feet grows slack; loose like the elastic earlobes that dangle from the sides of their heads, too far stretched.

The plains grow quiet as all contemplate, what to do when the savannah turns arid. The reflections are futile though, this year the grasslands will be desert before the sky yields. Before then the carcasses of every herd between Nairobi and the Rift Valley will litter the great highways. They will have walked far to find water and pasture but the earth will remain inflexible. Eventually they will have dropped off one by one. Death from hopelessness and hunger. And the herd boys will flood the beer halls drinking away the last of a legacy. An end to centuries of pastoral life and cultural pride. Those of us who have beautiful lawns will fence and water them dutifully because they are part of “the dream�. We will pay water bills to the council and screen off our ponds so that the cows do not “disturb the gold fish�. Most of all we will be irritated every time a cadaver shows up outside the fence. Some poor animal’s last attempt to reach the grass that might sustain it. Then one day there will be no more herds.

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The future aint black
written by Ole Mepukori , August 11, 2007

As much as things are looking bleak in the maasai villages there is a new crop of young people who are out changing at how the poor pastoralist view their problems. Recently i was doing impact assessment for Maa Community Foundation in Kuku group ranch a few kilometers from Amboselli game reserve and what i saw was an eye opener, a group of young people i met were training women and the youth on business start-ups and a young woman i talked to said that donor dependency and the substitution of aid to wealth was the impediment to meaningful change in arid and semi-arid lands. What will happen if all the young graduates substitute job searches to wealth and job creation?

God bless KENYA

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