What can Kenyan herders teach us about living in a volatile world?

The effects of climate change are already being felt by the pastoral peoples of Kenya, so we should try to learn how these people are living with uncertainty, writes Samuel Derbyshire

Lolampa, a Turkana herder, with his goats and sheep (Samuel Derbyshire)

Loura Ekaale sits down on his carved wooden stool. He sips a cup of black instant coffee, a substance he has taken to calling his “medicine” – inexplicably, he claims it helps him fall asleep. I have been making it for him each afternoon, with my small gas cooker. This has become a routine for us; he roams over to my canvas tent as the sun begins to set and I boil the kettle. We sit there talking about the day as one of his sons, Lolampa, wanders in from the hills behind us, driving the family’s sheep and goats back into their enclosure.

I have known Loura for almost two years now, during which time I have regularly set up my research camp beside his family home, close to the Loriu Hills in Turkana, northern Kenya. This 68,000 sq km arid region is one of the most remote areas in Kenya. To the north is South Sudan and a disputed, lawless section of grazing land called the Ilemi Triangle, claimed by both South Sudan and Kenya. To the west is the homeland of the Karamojong in northern Uganda, and to the east is Lake Turkana itself, the world’s largest permanent desert lake.

The Turkana region’s southern boundary is the only one connecting it with the rest of Kenya on land, a fact that has led its population to endure a long history of socio-economic and political marginalisation, spanning both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Its population is largely comprised of highly mobile pastoralists – that is, communities who rely on herds of domesticated livestock, which they graze on communal, open range lands.