Kacha Imeri seems like a good place to begin living with Turkana families as a medical anthropologist for British health care NGO Merlin. For decades aid agencies have been working all over Turkana – an arid area the size of Belgium in Kenya’s north-western tip – yet problems of drought, hunger and disease outbreaks seem to cycle and recycle endlessly in spite of this. Many areas now seem dependent on aid and in the humanitarian and donor community a fatigue is setting in. At the same time climates, environments and pastoralist ways of life are changing, vulnerabilities are acute and needs are real. I will live with three families in different parts of this huge, hot and dusty district. The idea is to better understand the lives and health issues of Turkana people; there will be hot and hungry days ahead…
The chief of tiny town Turkwell guided me to the Kacha Imeri home of headman Erot, who lives in a traditional ada karin (homestead) of five round thatched huts with pointed roofs around a big circular animal pen. His three wives and their children have a hut each – he moves between them – and the other two huts are for the wives of his second eldest son and their children. Since one of these son’s wives has not yet moved in with them I have her hut, which Erot pointed out to me a week earlier when we first visited to discuss my stay. It is still an unthatched skeleton made from tied together branches because they didn’t actually believe I was coming.
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| My hut |
Kacha Imeri bakes in the sun on a scrubby plain crossed with dry riverbeds. I sat with my translator Lokale in the shade of a big acacia tree and got to know him, a shy but brilliantly bright school graduate from another part of Turkana. The women were at the river getting water and Erot was off somewhere so we had all afternoon to wait for them to discover their cuckoo and her translator. Some children and a herdsboy sat with us and were followed by the homestead dog Emzungu, ‘White Man’, named after a local Irish missionary.
When they’d recovered from staring at me the children played games in the sand with sticks and a skipping rope made of tied together strands of palm fronds. They were the school-going children, all dressed in scruffy western clothes and very playful; completely different to the more reserved but very dignified herdsboys who wear traditional purple sheets and a circular wrist-knife and carry sticks and cleverly made bows and arrows. The smarter children are picked for herding because they will keep the animals together without losing any, protecting the family’s lifeline. They grow up fast but seem happy to roam around like little men, clucking behind the animals to keep them in line, eating wild fruits and catching the odd squirrel or dik-dik (tiny antelope) for a snack. Erot is keen on school for his children and talks of the way nurses and teachers are able to provide for their parents but is balancing the value of education with their older way of life; the biggest girl, around nine, will leave soon because if she continues and becomes ‘educated’ then she will only marry an educated or town-based man who won’t pay the family a proper dowry of camels, cattle and goats.
As the sun got lower the goats were brought home in a noisy rush hour scene, women carefully sorting them in and out of the thorn-fenced enclosure using logics that were a complete mystery to me. Out of the scrum each mother-kid pair was eventually reunited in a heart-warming display where after much bleating and wandering they finally recognised the correct call and sprinted towards each other. I helped Erot’s first and second wife with milking, holding an enamel cup under the teat which the baby goat wasn’t drinking from and moving from pair to pair until the women felt they had enough. There was the odd tragic orphan who was still wandering and calling out after all the pairs had been matched and for these the women held another milking goat still to let them drink. Finally the nasty looking he-goats were finally brought in, bleating and groaning like old drunk men in pain. It was such a beautiful scene and such a perfect dusk light that I would have loved to take a picture but I am here so long I think it might be better to tread lightly until I build more trust. When the dust had settled I saw a small boy had been stretched flat out in the middle of it all, fast asleep.
It was dark when a group of men came over from a neighbouring ada karin and began to quiz me mercilessly about who I was and why I was here. With their backs to the moon their faces were darkened and mine, opposite, was as bright as the moon itself. I did my best to explain my purpose and say that I thought without respect and understanding for the Turkana proper support and services could not be given. They were obviously drunk and quite confrontational. One asked me to buy tyre-sandals for him. One accused me of being a doctor that was refusing to admit it so I wouldn’t have to help them. They talked of sick people nearby and of many problems, and it got heated as they all pitched in with raised voices. I looked at Lokale and realised how much rested on the accuracy and integrity of his translation. Getting nervous and feeling raw from eating nothing for the last 14 hours I imagined that over a misunderstanding these men might feel free to kill me in the night as I slept alone in my hut on the outskirts of the ada karin in the middle of the bush… I later found out from Lokale that they’d said something along the lines of, “Tell this Oxfam person to bring relief food to this area, and if you don’t tell her we’ll come in the night and chase you out of this place and make sure one of our people does the translating work for her”. So it was he that was threatened, and I was no doubt picking up on his fear. Eventually I thought they were starting to understand, and hopefully the laughter that I left behind when I went to my tent to fetch maize meal to cook was a good sign. Certainly I know that they don’t expect me to last here, which makes me determined to do so.
As I cooked the epocho (ugali/stiff maize porridge) over the three-stone hearth out in the open some women did a fairly aggressive dance around me in their goat hide skirts, ululating and spinning to almost hit me in the face with the stiff hems. It was a relief to feel the day drawing to a close and to sit and eat the bulky meal on a mat; tasteless starch with some pilau spice that had seemed indulgent in Lodwar’s only supermarket but which now made the difference between almost inedible and bearable. Meanwhile the delightfully happy children continued to twirl and skip and sing in the dry riverbed. I excused myself after trying the tasty githeri (bean stew) of Aipa, a lovely girl about my age from neighbouring ada karin who’d been asked by the chief to keep an eye on me. Since everything is filthy and their only water is from a muddy hole dug next to the river I expect I’ll have dystentery in days if I keep accepting such delightful invitations… (But I brought my own drinking water in jerry cans so that should keep me alive and strong).
