“Dust people”: Samburu perspectives on disaster, identity, and landscape

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses a Samburu pastoralist landscape idiom, ntoror, that encapsulates ideas about agentive pastoralist landscapes that inherently attract conflict; and passionate, place-based identities forged out of environmental and human-wrought disaster. The paper grows out of a project that experimentally integrated ethnographic self-scrutiny with a bio-archaeological excavation involving human remains, with the aim of encouraging reciprocal knowledge production. The inspiration for exploring ntoror and expanding its metaphorical reach came from our Samburu co-author, Musa Letua, who responded to the challenges the excavation posed by drawing upon the idiom of ntoror, which made sense to him. The overlapping stories of ntoror we narrate follow closely the ways in which Letua explored them in interviews associated with the excavation, and in other interview settings in earlier years. As such, this paper represents the fruits of cross-cultural collaboration and shared knowledge production.

KEYWORDS:

• Pastoralists
• Kenya
• landscape
• environment
• ethnicity
• identity

Acknowledgements

This paper draws its inspiration from archaeological and bio-anthropological research undertaken under Kenya Research Permits MOEST13/014 and MOEST13/001/38c 222, issued to Paul Lane. The cultural research reported here was undertaken under Kenya Research Permit MOEST 13/001/21C 110, issued to Bilinda Straight. Bilinda Straight's individual interview data pre-2006 (and some post-2006) is combined with the project's shared 2006 and 2008 interview data. Thanks are due to Dr Idle Farah (then Director General, NMK), Dr Purity Kiura (then Head of Archaeology, NMK), and Dr Kennedy Mutundu (Mt Kenya University, formerly Kenyatta University) for facilitating the archaeological elements; the BIEA for vehicles, equipment loans and logistical support; the Samburu County Council, the Chief of Baawa, and the Baawa Community for facilitating this research. We would also like to thank the Samburu members of the team (including the cooks and security guards); the BIEA graduate attachment students; and Kenyatta University and University of York undergraduates. Finds from the excavations are undergoing further analysis at the BIEA (Nairobi), prior to deposit with NMK. Copies of the digital archive will be lodged with NMK, the BIEA, and the Archaeology Data Service, University of York. Thanks are also due to Michael Bollig, for his kind invitation to participate in the January 2014 Cologne workshop.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bilinda Straight http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1387-5514

Paul Lane http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9936-1310

Notes

1. Interview, M13-2006. In order to conform to the United States’ federally mandated human subjects protections (approved for this research by Western Michigan University Human Subjects Institutional Review Board) no respondent names are used in this paper. Respondents have each been assigned a code, which identifies gender, respondent number, and year without other individually identifying information. Interviews were conducted in the Samburu highlands, unless otherwise noted in the text.

2. Straight et al., “‘It Was Maendeleo.'”

3. As we note, the framing of our project in terms of this indigenous concept was encouraged by the late Musa Letua.

4. Ntoror is a Maa term (meaning a place that attracts division and fighting), used by contemporary and past Maa speakers, including Samburu, Maasai, and Il Chamu. Hughes, Moving the Maasai, 115–8, comments that some Maasai respondents refer to entorror to describe the ‘sweet’ landscape (Laikipia) from which they were forcibly removed, in comparison to the resource-poor landscape in which they were settled. However, Hughes’ respondents do not use amelok (to taste sweet) or arropil (to smell sweet) but rather, they use sidai, which means beautiful and also ostrich. Beauty, goodness, and sweetness can be metaphorically entangled but the linguistic distinctions are important. We are grateful to the participants of the workshop that led to this edited collection for pointing out that the concept of sweetness as applied to these areas of the landscape also resonates for neighbouring pastoralist groups. In pursuing the possible commonalities, it will be important to distinguish between precise meanings and metaphoric extensions.

5. Waller, “Emutai,” provides a detailed and elegant account of the series of disasters that impacted the Maasai during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The Samburu would have been similarly impacted, and collective memory of these events most likely informs contemporary Samburu understanding of disaster, but their conceptualization of mutai cannot be reduced to these particulars.

6. On identity, ethnicity, and belonging, see for example Broch-Due, “Violence and Belonging”; Fukui and Markakis, Ethnicity and Conflict; Galaty “Being ‘Maasai’”; Schlee, Identities on the Move, “Ethnicity Emblems” and How Enemies Are Made; Turton, “Mursi Political Identity.” Our concern here is about the production and control of knowledge.

7. Galaty, “Pastoral Orbits”; Schlee, Identities on the Move; Sobania, “Historical Tradition”; Turton, “Mursi Political Identity”; Waller “Kidongoi's Kin.”

8. Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging.

9. Following Mannheim and Carreño, “Wak'as: Entifications,” and Lane, “Places and Paths,” we suggest that East African pastoralist landscape agencies warrant rigorous problematisation consistent with pastoralist rather than Eurocentric sensibilities. In what follows, we briefly specify each type of landscape agency to which we refer.

10. In 2012, the Nairobi-Marsabit tarmac road was extended from Archers Post northward in the wake of oil discovered in Turkana, to within an hour from Wamba town.

11. Straight, “Altered Landscapes”; see also Pike et al., “Documenting.” We thank an anonymous reviewer for noting that the popularity of motorcycles has enhanced access to medical services. Nevertheless, the cost is as high as 1000/KES in remote areas, and not every case can be safely transported by motorcycle.

12. Carolyn Lesorogol, Bilinda Straight, and Jon Holtzman.

13. Lane et al., “Excavations at Naakedi.”

14. Straight et al., “‘It Was Maendeleo.’”

15. As described in Straight et al., “‘It Was Maendeleo,'” these elders’ concerns were revealed in 2008 in the course of interviews the team conducted as part of the team's ethnographic self-scrutiny of the archaeological project. One issue was whether or not trees growing from graves were cut – a practice the team had avoided.

16. Spencer, Samburu.

17. Hughes, Moving the Maasai.

18. Fumugalli, “Diachronic Study,” 171–3; Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder.”

19. Fumagalli, “Diachronic Study,” 165–6.

20. Sobania, “Historical Tradition,” 78–83. We corroborate Sobania below with respect to the Samburu ethnonym, but we note that living Samburu trace their path to the present further, self-conscious that they were previously known by other ethnonyms – other names for various clan clusters.

21. Galaty, “Pastoral Orbits”; Kassam, “The People of the Five ‘Drums’”; Little, “Maasai Identity”; Schlee, Identities on the Move; Sobania, “Historical Tradition,” “Herders”; Waller “Lords of East Africa,” “Kidongoi's Kin.”

22. This observation is based on oral histories Straight has collected since 2001.

23. Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder.”

24. Interview, M23-2002.

25. Interview, M11-2006.

26. See Bollig, “Adaptive Cycles,” this volume, for similar themes in Pokot.

27. Interview, M4-2002. Like other generations, Lterito were named for features or historical conditions specific to them. In the aftermath of late nineteenth century disaster, Lterito were deliberately given a name that described disaster and predicted hope. Ltarigarig, remembered as a ‘haughty' generation, were named onomatopoeically for the decorations their girlfriends wore, which tinkled as they walked – garigarig, garigarig.

28. Interview, M11-2006.

29. See Jennings, “Scatterlings,” for a well-researched discussion of the Lokop ethnonym. Whether or not Lokop as all-encompassing ethnonym predates Maasai or the reverse does not concern us here. Rather, we are concerned with contemporary Samburu understandings of the past by which they are survivors of disaster who have successfully amalgamated and consumed earlier clan groups. We note, though, Krapf's (Vocabulary) etymology for Lokop as related to nkop – place, and thus the people of the place. This corroborates Straight's conclusions based on interviews with Samburu. The argument of lokop/nkop versus loikop/killer may never be resolved.

30. Interview, M8-2003.

31. Galaty, “Pastoral Orbits”; Sobania, “Historical Tradition”; see also Berntsen, “Pastoralism”; Jennings “Scatterlings”; Lamphear “People of the Grey Bull”; Waller “Lords of East Africa,” “Kidongoi's Kin.”

32. MacDonald, “Notes on the Ethnology,” 240–1.

33. See also Little, “Maasai Identity,” on the implications of historical Maa identities and traditions for contemporary land issues.

34. Sutton, “Sirikwa Holes.”

35. Lamphere, “People of the Grey Bull”; Galaty, “Pastoral Orbits.”

36. Sutton, “Becoming Maasai,” 42–8.

37. See Little, “Maasai Identity,” whose Il Chamus history corroborates this approximate time period for the divergence at Baringo.

38. This timeline bears comparison to Pokot history: Bollig “Adaptive Cycles,” noting that Pokot describe their ancestors of this period as dressing like Maasai. Correspondingly, Samburu historians mention their ancestors as wearing their hair like Pokot.

39. Von Hohnel, Discovery.

40. New, Life.

41. Krapf, Vocabulary.

42. Baxter, “Boran Age-Sets.”

43. Herren, “Socioeconomic Strategies.”

44. Krapf, Vocabulary.

45. Ibid., 30–1.

46. Interview, M6-2003.

47. Ibid.

48. On the symbolic dimensions of the ntotoi board game, see Straight, “In the Belly of History.”

49. Interview, M6-2003.

50. Ibid.

51. Girls are the most mobile – abducted, sometimes reclaimed and sometimes not, but often visited by the natal kin who lost them.

52. Interview, M16-2006.

53. Sobania, “Feasts.”

54. On the famine of the 1780–1790s, see Herring, “Views from Mount Otuke.”

55. Interview, M16-2006.

56. Interview, M15-2006.

57. Interview, M24-2006.

58. Interview, M15-2006.

59. Straight et al., “‘It Was Maendeleo.'”

60. Straight, “Cutting Time,” “In the Belly of History.”

61. Interview, M6-2003.

62. McCabe, “Cattle Bring Us,” emphasizes the needs of cattle whereas the concept of ntoror emphasizes landscapes as agentive spaces, which, in providing these needs, invite conflict.

63. Greiner, “Unexpected Consequences,” “Guns, Land, and Votes”; Straight, “Violence in the Shadows,” “Making Sense of Violence.”

64. For examples: Anderson, “Stock Theft”; Bollig, Risk Management; Bollig and Österle, “‘We Turned Our Enemies’”; Boye and Kaarhus, “Competing Claims”; Broch-Due, Violence and Belonging; Greiner, “Guns, Land, and Votes”; Lesorogol, Contesting the Commons; McCabe, “Cattle Bring Us”; Pike et al., “Documenting”; Straight, “Violence in the Shadows,” “Making Sense of Violence.”

65. Hughes, “Malice,” Moving the Maasai.

66. Greiner, “Unexpected Consequences.”

67. Bollig, “Adaptive Cycles,” on implications for Pokot of colonial imposition of maps.

68. Interview, M1-2001.

69. Interview, M3-2001. Greiner, “Unexpected Consequences,” cites the National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding & Conflict Management, Pokot/Samburu Naivasha Peace Accord, as providing dates of 1913 and 2001 for the Pokot–Samburu covenant.

70. For Samburu ontology, this suggests the invocation of a divine agency associated with the site where the stone was buried. A more rigorous exegesis would require interviews with both Pokot and Samburu. For Samburu, ancestral agency is associated with burial sites, unique divine agencies are associated with certain sacred sites (multiple aspects of an otherwise unitary divinity), and divine agency can be ritually invoked. Care must be taken to avoid ascribing a general, inchoate agency to pastoralist landscapes.

71. Interview, M11-2006.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), the British Academy and Western Michigan University Faculty Research and Creative Activities Fund. Paul Lane's participation in the Cologne workshop was funded by the Resilience in East African Landscapes Marie Curie ITN [grant number 606879].