The Samburu
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The Samburu

A Study in Geocentracy

Paul Spencer

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The Samburu

A Study in Geocentracy

Paul Spencer

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About This Book

Samburu society is a gerontocracy in which power rests with the older men; men under thirty may not marry or otherwise assert their personal independence. This nomadic tribe from the arid regions of northern Kenya cling to their traditional way of life despite the rapid change throughout Africa. The author spent more than two years during the 1960's amongst the Samburu, and as an adopted member of one of their clans, he perceived how their values and attitudes are closely interwoven with a social system that resists change.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2004
ISBN
9781134371525

Chapter One
THE PASTORAL ECONOMY

THE Samburu live in an area of some 11,000 square miles between Lake Rudolf and the Uaso Ngiro river. The southwestern region of this country is open savannah lying on a plateau, the Leroghi Plateau, which geographically at least is a part of the Kenya Highlands inhabited formerly by the Masai before it was taken over by European settlers earlier this century. Maralal, the administrative headquarters of ‘Samburu District’, is situated on this plateau. To the north and the east the land drops away sharply to less hospitable scrub desert with large patches of thick thorn bush and frequent rocky outcrops and it is here that most of the tribe live. This scrub desert, or low country as it is called, is broken up by intermittent hills and forested mountains. In the north-eastern parts of the country, conditions are rougher, water is scarcer and the land is strewn with lava boulders; here the Samburu live interspersed with their traditional allies, the Rendille, and they come under the administration in Marsabit. By the term Samburu, I understand all those who regard themselves as such—about 30,000 people—and not merely those who belong to the ‘Samburu District’ for administrative purposes.
The rainfall on the Leroghi Plateau is of the order of 20 inches a year, but in the low country it is probably less than 10 inches and is far more unpredictable: it is never certain when or where or if the rain will fall: occasionally there may be floods, but it is more usual for the wet season to fail completely leading to a serious drought in the area. When the rain does come, it is very often the wrong sort of rain: showers are generally heavy and only a fraction of the water falling may be regarded as effective rainfall: the remainder is not retained by the eroded soil and it rapidly flows out of the country taking more soil with it. Soil erosion and a general scarcity of water are the two harshest limitations affecting Samburu economy. The people themselves do not view these as problems which increase with the years as more top-soil is washed away and less water is retained, but as problems which have always been with them and which are to be accepted as basic features of their environment.
The rainfall and the condition of the soil do not allow the Samburu to practise any form of agriculture in the low country, and even on the plateau where they might conceivably attempt it, it is absent. They live mainly off the products of their herds, occasionally adding certain roots and barks to their soups, and occasionally selling stock at government sales and auctions in order to supplement their diet with small supplies of grain bought from the handful of shop owners in the district. The larger part of their money obtained at these sales, however, is spent in paying government fees, taxes and fines, and with what remains of it they also buy such luxury commodities as loincloths, blankets, tobacco, sugar, tea and beads.

Livestock

The livestock of the Samburu consist of cattle, small stock (sheep and goats) and donkeys. Of these, it is the cattle that give most in return for the time and energy put into their care. Sheep and goats are very useful for their meat at the height of the dry season when the cattle no longer give adequate supplies of milk. While the donkeys are only used as pack-animals.
On average each homestead has a herd of about 80 cattle (i.e. 11 or 12 per person). But the range is considerable: one herd in five is less than half this size, and one in 15 is more than double. The poorer homesteads must inevitably rely on the richer ones for some of their food, depending on the size of the family and the number of cattle actually in milk.
Milk is the main diet of the Samburu. Only when it becomes scarce in the dry season will blood taken from living cattle be added to it or stock be slaughtered for meat. This stock will normally be sheep or goats. Oxen are saved for ceremonial occasions or when the dry season absolutely demands a substantial supply of meat; they are regarded as the final security against severe drought. Any cow that dies naturally is eaten without delay.
The emphasis in social values is placed on cattle, at times almost to the exclusion of small stock. ‘A man who has cattle is important,’ they say. ‘He can have many wives and many sons to look after his herds. When he wants small stock he can easily exchange an ox for many sheep or goats. But if he has only small stock, then he is like a Dorobo1 and it is hard for him to become rich.’
Despite this emphasis on cattle, the combination of the two types of stock is a happy one. The low country, where dry seasons are harsher and small stock are more important for their meat, is also the area where they thrive best. On the whole, goats are better adapted than sheep because they prefer browse which is abundant in the low country, whereas sheep prefer grass which is scarce. At the same time sheep breed rather more quickly than goats and there are more of them.
Strangely enough, the cattle also thrive best in the lower more arid altitudes, partly because salt is more plentiful. Those living on the plateau suffered more in the drought of 1959 to 1961; and when it was over, they generally gave less milk and were in poorer condition than those in the hotter drier areas of the low country. Thus, while it is sometimes said that the Samburu lived in a harsher, dryer area than the Masai because they were a weaker tribe, unable to assert themselves enough to live on the rich pastures of the Kenya Highlands; it is also true to say that they are better adapted to the low country with the stock they have, and that in some ways this may have been a mixed blessing, helping them to survive The Disaster of the 1880s (and incidentally, the recent drought).
The breed of their cattle is generally known to Europeans as Boran, and it has—or has acquired—a high resistance to many of the diseases endemic in the area. Mortality among the Samburu herds is high at times; but this also means that the surviving cattle can be given more individual attention, that there is more grass available per head, and that the hardiness of the breed is maintained and even improved by natural selection. With patience and skill, a man who has lost many of his cattle in this way can rebuild his herds over the years.
The economic and social value of having large numbers of cattle is unquestioningly accepted by most Samburu. It is this principle which determines their total number of stock and not the more sophisticated one put forward by the administration that controlled numbers of cattle and small stock would ultimately yield more milk, meat and (today) money. The Samburu argue that with large herds of cattle, they can afford to lose considerable numbers in a drought or an epidemic, whereas with small herds such losses could be catastrophic. They are very sensitive to their own poverty and to the slender margin which separates them from utter starvation. Compared with many other Kenya tribes, they may be rich, having in their stock a nourishing source of food and a valuable commodity for trade. Yet the severity of recurrent misfortune has left an indelible scar on the minds of most of them resulting in an inflexible attitude towards the problem. Between the years of 1939 and 1961, there was nothing that did more to impair the generally cordial relations between the Samburu and the British administration than the question of limiting the total number of stock and restricting grazing in certain areas. With the administration this control was a major issue of policy in order to reclaim the land and improve the quality of the herds. With the Samburu it was the main issue of resistance and non-co-operation. The drought of 1959 to 1961 did more to solve the problem of over-stocking than 20 years of spasmodic control by the administrators, and it left the Samburu more convinced than ever of the logic of their own point of view.
It is the present carrying capacity of the land, the endemic cattle diseases, and the limitations in Samburu techniques of cattle husbandry which control the sizes of their herds. If a stock owner has too small a family to be able to manage his stock adequately, or if he is personally too lazy then his herd will only increase gradually, if at all. If he has too large a family and allows his wife to take too much milk from the cattle to feed her own children, leaving too little milk for the calves, then again his herd is likely to suffer and may actually decrease in size. It is the man who rates the well-being of his herd almost as highly as that of his own family who ultimately has the large herd, which in turn is the basis of negotiation for more wives and the foundation of a larger family. A point to be stressed in this chapter is that family and herd are essentially dependent on each other and have what may be described as a symbiotic relationship.

The Ownership of Land and Water

There is no explicit ownership of land among the Samburu. In theory any stock owner has a right to live with whom he pleases where he pleases. Certain areas may be associated with certain clans which are well represented there, but any person is free to migrate to these places: ‘This is our land,’ they say, ‘it belongs to us all.’ This ideal is modified only slightly in practice. If a man wishes to migrate to an area where he has not been before and where he has no close friends or kinsmen, then the other inhabitants will accept him without question provided that grazing is not too scarce. If it is scarce, but he approaches the other inhabitants first to put his case to them, then they can hardly object. It is only when he ignores such social conventions at the height of the dry season that his action is liable to lead to bad feeling. A man whose stock has certain contagious diseases should warn his neighbours and take care to restrict his cattle to certain tracts of land and water points, preferably not leading them through areas where others are likely to herd their own cattle.
In discussing the ownership of land, then, it is more relevant to speak of the duties the individual stock owner is expected to observe towards other local inhabitants, than of rights he can claim.
At certain places in many dried up river beds, water can be be obtained by digging a few feet. Such places are referred to here as water points, and the wells dug in the sand at these points are referred to as water holes.
By digging a water hole and maintaining it, a man exerts an explicit right to use it as he pleases. He can make any arrangement he likes to share it with another stock owner who waters his stock on different days and helps in its upkeep. Any casual user should try to get his permission before watering his stock, and if he misuses it a fierce quarrel and even fighting may ensue. On the other hand, a quarrel may also break out if the original digger of the hole tries to refuse permission. Examples of both types of quarrel are relevant to later chapters, and they show how even the work of digging a water hole does not give the digger exclusive rights of ownership; rather, it gives him certain privileges. Once the hole is neglected, perhaps after being fouled by a wild animal, or after it has been destroyed by a spate of the river, the spot is open to anyone who cares to start digging.

The Pattern of Nomadism

The Samburu live in small settlements which typically contain between four and ten stock owners, and their families and herds. A herd is taken to the water point daily in the wet season, every second day in the dry season, or even every third day in the really dry parts of the country; and then it is driven to areas which afford as good grazing as can be obtained. The spread of the settlements over a wide area ensures that all those herds which are centred on one water point compete as little as possible for grazing.
Each man manages his own cattle as he thinks best, although there may be some difference of opinion as to what is best. The grazing close to a water point is inevitably exhausted before other areas, and the stock owner must choose between living close to the water point so that his cattle can have water every day and living some distance from it so that they can exploit the less heavily grazed areas. Regular salt is an asset to cattle and essential to small stock, but again the salt licks have become the most heavily grazed parts of the country and the stock owner must decide for himself whether his cattle would benefit more if he lived near to the salt lick or in some other part of the country. At some point, when the area he is in has been exhausted of grazing, he must migrate and has to choose for himself which area he will move to.
The irregular and unpredictable rainfall results in migrations of large parts of the population in similarly irregular and unpredictable ways. Dispersed clusters of settlements form as people group and regroup themselves at various points over the countryside. An independent stock owner generally confines himself to certain areas and migratory tracts which he knows well. When possible he will move to a site close to the ones he previously used where he knows many of the advantages which the countryside has to offer: grasses, browse, water points, paths, dangerous places to be avoided and so on. His nomadic pattern is affected by the size of his herds and the labour force at his disposal. In theory the Samburu are free to move as they please; in practice their freedom is limited to several choices.
In so far as any broad pattern of nomadism is discernible for the tribe as a whole, it may be said that as the dry season advances, there is progressive migration towards those water points which have not yet dried up. And the settlements already around these points tend to move outwards in search of better grazing. With the onset of the rains there is a wider choice for nomadism and the population tends to disperse more evenly over the countryside.
In order to give greatest benefit to the stock, it is often advisable for the homestead to split seasonally into two, or very occasionally three, parts. Three herds which emerge from this division of the stock are the flock (of sheep and goats), the subsistence herd (of cattle) and the surplus herd (of cattle). The subsistence herd is a herd which is just sufficient to sustain the less active members of the family, especially old people and young children; this herd consists almost entirely of milch cattle. The remaining cattle form the surplus herd, and this is driven at certain times by some of the more active members to a more rigorous area where it is likely to benefit considerably. The flock, unless it too is taken to a separate area, generally remains in the same settlement as the subsistence herd.
A common arrangement is for the young males of the homestead (the moran and older boys) to look after the surplus herd and build a camp, a stock enclosure with no huts. The advantages of this arrangement are that those who live in the camp are physically active and the whole unit is mobile; in wet periods they can migrate to an area where a shower has just fallen and in dry periods they can put up with considerable hardship in order that the cattle shall benefit. It is inevitably in the rougher parts of the country farther away from the water points that good grazing is available for anyone willing to live there, and it takes the more energetic young men to exploit these under-grazed areas.
A settlement is less mobile. Moving entails considerable hard work for the women; old and sick people inevitably cause delays; and owing to the limitations of donkeys loaded with movable belongings, the distance a settlement can travel in one day is generally less than 15 miles. Some active women, unencumbered by small children, may also accompany the surplus herd and put up their huts converting what would otherwise have been a camp into a partial settlement. Mobility is inevitably impaired by this, but it is the course often adopted when the herd is divided.
By choosing different cattle at different times to go with the surplus herd, the stock owner can ensure that they all obtain adequate supplies of salt and equal chances of good grazing. Whether he chooses to live near a salt lick and to send his surplus herd away to the better grazing areas, or to live in the better grazing areas and send his surplus cattle to the salt lick periodically will largely depend on whether he has a large flock of small stock which require regular salt or not. Distant migrations towards permanent water points in the dry season and away from them in the wet season tend to involve cattle rather than people and camps rather than settlements.
The division of the herd in the dry season strains the available labour force to its extreme: there are two herds of cattle to be herded, watered, milked etc. The settlement with the subsistence herd does not move too far from the water point, and the cattle of this herd, often tended by a rather small boy, are not driven too far away. The future prosperity of the homestead ultimately depends on the surplus herd being well looked after during the dry season and it is as important not to waste valuable labour on the subsistence herd as it is to keep as many people as possible with the surplus herd, so long as their presence does not impair its mobility. While the more active males are run-ning the camp, the stock owner generally spends most of his time with the settlement and uses his skill and experience to look after the subsistence herd. Because of the close interdependence between homesteads at such times, those who live together in one settlement during the dry season tend to have formed close bonds of friendship in the past and are frequently quite closely related. In the dry season there is a greater emphasis on the purely economic aspects of social life, ceremonial activity is rare, and only really pressing visits are made to distant parts of the country.
The individual stock owner may solve other problems in his own way. He may prefer sparser open country which makes herding easy, or he may prefer bushy country where he himself has to help his sons to protect the herd and look out for strays. He may prefer to keep his cattle in a heavily over-grazed area which is free of disease instead of feeding them elsewhere. He may prefer to bel...

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