THE CONTEXT OF A FAMINE, 1979–84

TURKANA IN CRISIS

This book is about a people in Africa who live by herding animals – cattle, sheep, goats, and more recently camels. They depend on their animals for milk (a major part of the diet), also for meat and blood. They eat wild fruits in season, small game and also some cereals. The latter are bought or bartered or else are grown in sorghum gardens planted mostly by women during the rainy season.

These people, the Turkana, occupy an arid region in the north-west corner of Kenya, bounded by the frontiers of Sudan and Ethiopia to the north, Uganda to the west, and Lake Turkana to the east (see Figure 1). Turkana District covers an area of about 64 000 square kilometres, with a population of 177 000 recorded in 1984 as pastoralists or herders, keeping large numbers of livestock. An additional 70 000 people lived in small towns and other permanent settlements. Until recently, poor communications have isolated the area physically, psychologically and culturally from the rest of Kenya.

In the north of Turkana District, the worst crisis in living memory struck in 1980 when an epidemic of contagious caprine pleuro-pneumonia (CCPP) and rinderpest wiped out large numbers of animals. At the same time, there was a national cereal shortage and much-needed grain could not be moved into the area. Although this is a drought-prone region, drought was not a factor in the disaster, at least in northern Turkana. Rainfall at Lokitaung was 578mm in 1979 and 402mm in 1980, which was above average for both years and the rain was well distributed through the seasons, as Table 1 demonstrates.

As in the rest of the African Sahel region, nomadic pastoralism has evolved as a lifestyle adapted to the problems of coping with sparse and erratic rainfall. The rains come mainly in April and May, but there is a less reliable secondary peak in November (Table 1). At Lokitaung, the November rains failed between 1975 and 1987, giving less than 20mm precipitation in eight years out of the thirteen. Not surprisingly, a cycle of periodic drought and recovery is a significant part of the lives of the Turkana people. It is important to be clear therefore, that the 1979–80 famine was not part of that cycle but something exceptional.

It seems likely, indeed, that the Turkana brought this crisis on themselves. In 1979 Turkana warriors obtained large numbers of automatic weapons as a result of the anarchy in Uganda, following the collapse of Idi Amin's regime. Armed with these weapons, the warriors then raided traditional enemies in southern Sudan and north-east Uganda, capturing large numbers of cattle and other animals. It appears that some of this livestock carried infectious diseases into Turkana District, across 'buffer' areas which would normally have separated the herds belonging to different ethnic groups. The raiding also led to deteriorating relations with neighbouring peoples, so that large areas of the borderlands became insecure and much of the vital dry-season grazing land was unusable that year. As a result, there was widespread famine in the northern part of the District, and following the intervention of the government and international aid agencies, a massive relief operation was mounted. This was followed by a 'rehabilitation' project executed by expatriate development workers who had little opportunity to enquire into the nature of the crisis or into local needs and indigenous institutions.

This study is about the questions of food security and development raised by the improvised programme and longer-term projects which followed. While many details quoted here are relevant only to Turkana District in the 1980s, the basic issues discussed may be relevant to other famine relief operations and to development workers in other pastoral communities. For example, the assumption behind many famine relief programmes is that once immediate needs are met, a rehabilitation or development programme will be necessary to help people restructure 'outmoded' ways of living to make them more productive. Seen at its worst, this has included the widely-held belief that nomadic pastoralists can only join the modern world if they cease their wandering lifestyle and become 'settled'. The purpose of such measures is usually conceived as making poor people richer, but wholesale destruction of their traditional institutions may well leave them less confident and with fewer coping mechanisms for dealing with adversity.

One further point concerns the role of technology in offering solutions to problems of food security and poverty. Later chapters have a good deal to say about one particular technique – rainwater harvesting – which is arguably an 'appropriate technology' for improving food production in an area with the climate, soils and human needs experienced in Turkana District. It is important to recognize, however, that technology cannot be considered separately from the institutional or organizational arrangements necessary for its application. One therefore needs to question whether a new technology can be dealt with through existing institutions even after some evolution, or whether it also presupposes radical changes in lifestyle or organization.

THE TURKANA ENVIRONMENT

Much of central Turkana is a landscape of plains with gentle undulations but there are also mountain ranges running north-south. These mountains are formed predominantly of volcanic lavas, and are associated with the east African Rift Valley fault lines. Most of the ranges are from 600 to 900m above sea level, but the highest peak rises to about 1750m. Gulliver (1955) has suggested that above 1400m rainfall totals of as much as 750mm are common, an estimate which is supported by more recent studies of variation of rainfall with altitude (Norconsult, 1978). Rainfall is lowest near the lake shore (Figure 2), with annual averages of 400--500mm on the plains in the centre of the District.

Rainfall in the April/May peak often comes in short but very intensive storms which cannot be all absorbed by the soil. In mountains, in particular, there are considerable volumes of runoff in the form of short-lived streams. In Lokitaung itself, a threshold rainfall intensity of about 8mm per hour has been found in the hills, beyond which an increasing proportion of the rainfall enters the drainage channels (Hillman, 1980). Sometimes there are spectacular flash floods in which water levels in drainage flows may rise to above a metre in less than two or three minutes. Flash floods usually subside as quickly as they rise, and it is seldom that even the larger drainage channels flow strongly for more than five or six hours. However, in most years, floods in the rainy season sweep away an occasional homestead, and people are sometimes drowned attempting to ford swollen...