Visiting the Pokot People by Binyavanga Wainaina

Everything around me is a memory of water. The dry riverbeds, the millions of dried petrified trees, the camels taunting us all. The hot dry wind, the water carved gullies, the large flat depressions that become marshland when it rains. The stone dams look silly and useless. Bridges soaring over dust, and rock.

I am told that every few years, when the rain comes, this is a green place - wooded, and impassable. Bridges, homes, cars, people, cattle and camels get washed away.

A few years ago, a hundred kilometres away from here, in a place much similar to this, we were riding down an escarpment on a tractor. It was dusty, hot and uncomfortable. While we were talking we heard a huge gurgling roar. I cannot remember what got us to jump, who or what warned us. We jumped off the tractor and into the bushes by the side of the road. An hour later, there was no tractor. There was no road, just a gully and mounds of wet sand, and bushes and broken branches. It took us the rest of the day to find the tractor. We searched for many miles, before some young Masai boys lead us back to the place we had abandoned the tractor. They had found it right there, buried under the debris, five feet under the surface. When it was all dug up and cleaned, it worked fine.

I am not worried about anything like this today. We are at least two months away from the rains. Pokot is AID worker territory. I am here, in fact, as a translator for a group of French-speaking Senegalese water engineers who are here to see a funded de-fluoridation plant. Most underground water in the Rift Valley has far more than the recommended amounts of fluoride in it. An excess of fluoride over time turns teeth brown, then black. More than this it makes the bones brittle deformed, and finally utterly immobile. I often wonder about this. The Rift Valley is where man evolved, where man and his cousin hominids drank this water. I wonder what sort of effect this had on our evolution. It could not have been insignificant. All the areas where the most important fossils have been found have a very high fluoride content in the water. I wonder whether some of the bones archaeologists find here were deformed by fluoride. I keep promising myself to ask the experts about this. Maybe I am keeping it in me because I want it to be my very own eureka.

We stop at a small Village Centre to buy cigarettes, and consult with the chief. The Pokot Elders congregate around the car. They all burst out laughing when they see me. They are convinced I am a woman, even though I have a beard: only Pokot women dreadlock their hair. I am astounded at how well they look. Not a sign of sickness, or malnutrition. They are all clean, and lean and beautiful. No pimple I can see, not roll of fat. The women are well oiled and gleaming, with twisted locks, and the married ones have enormous disks of beadwork around their necks. Some wear old leather smocks, beaded and earth coloured. One older man has a round disk of beads woven into his the top of his head. The rest of his scalp is bare. I see another man with a plug below his lower lip. This I know was traditionally meant as an emergency entry for food in case of lockjaw. I can see no flies, or open wounds. The children have no roundworms on their heads.

I ask Steven, The Water Programme Social worker about this. He says that part of it is that the community here is very donor dependent. They get a lot of food supplements from various International donors. He says, also that the Pokot have been much less affected by modern life than their distant cousins the Masai, and that the Pokot have remained away from the usual tourist beat.

The sub-chief will be our guide. He looks very young, no more than 16, and is long and lean. In this place his age is difficult to read. He could be thirty. I ask him about the state of people's health. He says they do have many health problems, but that donors have been generous to the, though the World Food Programme is soon to leave this part of Pokot. He does say the biggest problem he faces is getting women to participate in Self-Help groups. Women here remain submissive to their husbands, and reluctant to participate in anything outside their cultural responsibilities. Female Genital Mutilation is the norm.

We drive past a change in vegetation. Succulents straight out of some undersea documentary, cacti and the desert rose, a short stumpy baobab tree with pink and white flowers. This plant is being stolen by overseas plant collectors, I am told. This is one of the last places in Kenya where it is abundant.

The sub-chief tells me that they eat the leaves of the cacti as greens when there is a drought. He goes on to say that his people, the Pokot are a contrary and stubborn people, resentful of change. He says that the Pokot kids who go to school excel there, but many opt to come back to this harsh and old way of life.

Another young man tells me that in the nineteen fifties, during the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya, a young Kalenjin woman started to preach Christianity. Her version of it accommodated ancestral worship, and she quickly acquired thousands of supporters. The Pokot for once released themselves, and joined this sect in their thousands. So she led them on some pilgrimage to worship, and the local English Administrator thought they were engaging in Politics. There was a skirmish, and he was killed. The Colonial government decided to teach them a lesson, and around a thousand of the sect members were shot dead. The Pokot have lost interest in foreign religions since then.

In the distance I see an enormous range of mountains, the Mau Escarpment of the Rift Valley, where the Mountain Pokot live, where the Elgeyo and Marakwet live. Those mountains have produced most of Kenya's long distance runners.

There are many in Kenya who resent communities like this. I have been guilty of this.

The Pokot, the Masai, the Turkana seem to the rest of us to kept afloat by donor money and government subsidies. Also they remain incapable of participating in mainstream economic activity. Most of us Kenyans feel that we have taken the painful step of allying with the West: cutting, or amending significantly their ties to the past, often with much regret. So many Kenyans hate having to subsidise communities like the Pokot. The rest of us are poor too.

The thing is, there is no real way for them to go to school, start exporting something or other, build roads and bridges and optic fibre networks, and not lose their entire way of life. There is no dignified way out of this. They could become a tourist attraction, and become professional beggars, like many Masai have become. There have been some success stories, various game ranches and so on, but mostly things have been getting worse for these tribes.

I ask the chief what he thinks is the way out, and he hedges. He is torn. He tells me he has been posted to many places, but can't see himself living anywhere but here. He gives me works like "sustainable development" "grassroots development" - but they are just words. Based on what? I want to ask.

He is silent for a while, and then says, " We are cursed by a culture that is too strong, we do not want to go forward and change. Many people go to school, and are clever in school. But most Pokot leave all that to come back and live their culture. When I finished at University they sent me to Masailand, but I couldn't live there. Then they sent me to Kericho, but eventually I came back home. I can only live here.”

We stop under a dry riverbed, in the shade of enormous acacias, to eat watermelon and icebox mango. The wind outside is fierce, and so dry my lips are on fire when the watermelon touches them. There is a group of children playing nearby, and they congregate to get a share of the fruit. We chat with them in Swahili. I ask them whether they are afraid of snakes. They laugh. Do you play outside like this at night? Oh yes, they say, we go out at all hours. Night time is better because it is not so hot. If we find a snake, we kill it.

We climb out of this dried oasis, and we are back on a plain of dust, an enormous rock runs alongside us. The sub-chief shows me an enormous circle of stones. Around 100 feet in diameter. He tells me that this was the last gathering place of the Masai in this area. They had faced years of drought, and after they had been defeated by the Pokot, they had a great meeting in this circle. Then, they gathered up their cattle and moved on to Laikipia. This was the beginning of the end of their influence over the interior of Kenya.

We get them to stop the car. Even the Senegalese have heard of the Masai. In this desiccated place it is easy to conjure in my mind what that day was like. To imagine the stones piled like a wall, woven with branches of thorn.

Another surround of thorns where the young cattle were kept. The large tree to the left, the only tree around a lookout point. The recently circumcised warriors, bellies swollen from stuffing themselves with meat, eyes ready for war. Sullen that the elders have said they must give in and move. Eager to blood. Prove themselves. Young boys and girls restless and excited, sensing something without precedent for them was about to take place. That this is the beginning of a new history; that they will tell the last stories of this place. Night was cold, and they sang till dawn. The Masai are immaculate campers. In the morning, there was no trace of them here, except for the rocks, and dung from the cattle.

Some things I can't picture. I can't imagine how the Masai retreat. Would their ears burn as they walked through what was their land? Would the elders have any trouble restraining the Moran (warriors)? Did the Pokot warriors follow them, or line alongside jeering?

So much we are told about the Masai is about their pride, the courage. Yet the past hundred and thirty years have been about retreat, surrender, humiliation. Nobody I have read has told this story, given it a human face. In 1870 there was a terrible drought, and many Masai gave themselves up to the Kikuyu in central province. Many shed their arms, their culture and offered themselves to the Kikuyu, who they detested. Many became Kikuyu.

Now that I think about this, I realise that I have seen this retreat many times. In 1984, during the drought, many Masai descended on towns and cities. Cattle looked for soft grass in middle-class suburbs. Young Masai had running battles with Council Askaris. Their cattle walked into people's ranches, and gardens and fields of maize. The whole country complained about this.

At the time, we lived in Milimani, a leafy suburb in Nakuru Town. It is situated on the slopes of Menengai Crater (actually a caldera). A few hundred years ago, the Masais had their most divisive civil war here, and thousands of them were thrown off the cliff of the crater to their deaths. Coming back from school one day, I saw them carry out a running battle with the Council Police. They were chased away, and they ran. In the newspapers were horrifying stories, whole herds of cattle dead from hunger.

Just a year ago, they came back to Milimani, another drought. My father's new house borders the forest. They set up camp in less than an hour. An immaculate Camp, no litter, everything organised. Weeks later, when they left, there wasn't any sign they had been there except cattle dung. Pride is a funny thing. The neighbours all complained about the smell of cow urine, about the idea that Foot and Mouth would be left behind. But, every morning, we all paused for a bit, and watched them take their cattle out. Lean and fit, and relaxed in a way that irritates us. Dressed simply, elegant always. Making us feel like loosening our ties. It annoyed us that they asked for nothing. We hate most that a Masai will walk away from things we would love to walk away from, but are afraid to. Many Moran work as security guards in Nairobi and Nakuru. They will give their life often to keep you safe, but will walk away from the job and starve if they feel they are not treated right.

It occurs to me that this may be the missing element. Many lovers of Masai culture, many people who agitate that the Masai are left as proud and free as they choose forget to include the fact that the Masai are proud and free because they were once wealthy, one powerful. This wealth and power is not longer there, and so they are bound to remain as bit-players in their country's future, surviving by the grace of the government, by the grace of AID donors and coffee table book writers.

By the grace of a pride we all admire.

The car gets us to the borehole. This is the teenager's hangout. Anywhere else in Kenya, I feel embarrassed arriving in some big-wheeled four -by- four, wielding expensive gear, and water bottles. Here, people are mostly disinterested; there isn't the sense that these are things they want. I feel fat, hot and overburdened by things. The young men lounge about laughing, and looking lean and sinewy, and doing each other's hair. They wear a small crown with blue and white beads to show they have been circumcised. The young woman are doing all the work, heaving the large jerry cans of water, and pumping the hand pump. It occurs to me that it will be a long time before NGO dollars manage to persuade this lot that they need "empowerment".

Is it that we see our way of living as life itself?

Is this is man's greatest gift? His most devastating curse? That we will not relinquish our way, whatever our intelligence tells us? We will live our way, and walk free across fenced land with our herds of cattle; or build ever-larger buildings, and guns and optic fibre networks. Not even a wall of fate in front of us will make us give up our way. We will crash into it at full pace, convinced our culture will push us through. Yet somehow, we thrive.