THE TURKANA PEOPLE
The Turkana people are Located primarily in the Northwest and around Lake Turkana. According to legend, young men of the Jie tribe went into the Tarash valley in search of an ox that they had lost. While there they met an old Jie woman gathering fruit. Impressed with the area, they talked other young people into joining them and moved with their stock. Since that time, the Turkana and Jie have been allies. Now with a population of somewhere between 250,000 and 340,000, the Nilotic-speaking Turkana are Kenya's third-largest tribe, as well as the country's second-largest group of pastoralists, after the Maasai.

They are divided into the forest people (Nimonia) and the people of the plains (Nocuro). The roughly twenty clans (ategerin) do not form the basis for everyday Turkana society, as they do in many tribes. Turkana communities are based instead on the neighborhood (adakar).

Although there are two major rivers that cut into the district from the south, neither of them flows all year round, and when they do, it often floods with such sudden violence that no one dares live near them. The Turkwel wells up in the Cherangani Hills, over 200km southwest of its mouth on the west shore of the lake, and feeds from a number of seasonal rivers up along the border with Uganda. The Kerio River begins life much further south in the Elgeyo Hills, but is almost always dry by the time it reaches the Turkana. It, too, empties into the mildly alkaline waters of Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake, and the subject of many a traveler’s dream.
The Delta increased by about 380 sq km between 1973 and 1989, due to a drop in the water level. Aquatic vegetation took hold on the emerging delta. Prolonged drought and the damming of three rivers for irrigation near the southern reaches of the lake contributed to the lake's decline.

In spite of the seemingly miraculous anomaly of the lake, this is not - at first glance - a promising place for life, the land for the most part is a parched desert plain, strewn with rusty sun-baked rocks, coarse sand and small outcrops, and some low and equally barren hills. The climate is dry and often blisteringly hot, and the paltry annual rainfall of around 250-300mm prevents any but the hardiest of desert plants from growing: spiny acacia, low thorn bush and seasonal grasses. In any case, rainfall patterns are unreliable and patchy; short rains during April and the long rains from June to early September, but in many years the rainfall is scant or fails altogether.

As a result of their hostile environment, in which drought plays a regular part (a severe drought is reckoned to occur roughly once every ten years). Survival is very much the primary concern. Like the related Maasai, cattle are the primary wealth (although goats and camels are sometimes also kept), providing for almost all the Turkana's material and nutritional needs, as well as being symbols of social standing intricately bound into the tribal fabric. And so the Turkana move, constantly, chasing the clouds in the hope of rain and the small patches of freshly sprouted vegetation that it gives. As rainfall is uneven and unreliable, this can only be accomplished by the tribe fragmenting into small groups, for what there is of pasture is insufficient to feed a large number of livestock, and hence people.

Given the scarcity of grazing lands and cattle pastures, competition with neighboring tribes is fierce and relations are generally volatile, usually verging on warlike. Mutual enmity is especially deeply rooted with the Toposa of Sudan and the Karamojong and Dodoth of Uganda, where conflicts over cattle pasture and cattle raiding have led to a recurring cycle of raids and counter-raids over cattle in which rifles or automatic weapons are now primarily used.

The Turkana's southerly neighbors - the Pokot - have a more ambivalent relationship with the Turkana. A lot of it depends on how the rains have fared and whether they share common enemies across the border in Uganda. The Samburu of the southeast of the lake have gradually been crowded-out of their traditional dry season pastures as the Turkana cross the Suguta Valley into Samburu District in even greater numbers, with predictably bloody consequences. In general, it seems that the Turkana are more often instigators of such raids rather than victims, and as a result are feared by many.

No administration has been able to control the Turkana's territorial expansion, whether in colonial or post-independence times. Yet for the Turkana, cattle-raiding is not so much a 'mere' matter of pride and manliness as it is for the Maasai. Rather, it is the necessity of guaranteeing one's own survival whilst weakening one's competitors, and is equally important in securing the wealth necessary to obtain a wife, for bride wealth payments are made in cattle. As with the Maasai and Samburu, milk mixed with blood is the main food of the Turkana. Cattle are important for a variety of other reasons, with hides providing sleeping mats and material for sandals. Camels are important, as are the sheep and goats herded by the children and used for meat. Donkeys are also present, although used only as pack animals. Dried milk (edodo) is made by boiling fresh milk and allowing it to dry on skins. Easily digestible camel milk is valuable as baby food. Dried meal is made with crushed berries, which are also mixed with blood and made into cakes.

Drought and hunger is a recurrent feature of life, and surviving them is what has made the Turkana who they are today: a proud, self-sufficient people, adept fighters and territorial expansionists, indifferent to the lures of 'progress' and change.

A small minority, dispossessed of their herds in previous droughts, now engage in small-scale agriculture and fishing on Lake Turkana. The vast majority have retained their traditional beliefs. 5-10% of them are Christian, and then mostly only nominal.
Among their other differences, Turkana marriages take place over a three-year period. Marriage is not complete until the first child has reached walking age. The purpose of this extended time is to ensure the ritual, spiritual, and social wellbeing of those involved. The bride price (paid by the bridegroom) usually involves quite a few cattle or camels, which come from the herds of the suitor, his father, his father's and mother's brothers, stock associates, and bond-friends.

Turkana women often wear huge quantities of beads around their necks, along with an aluminum or brass neck ring (alagam). The traditional Turkana weapons, used to protect their herds and possessions from wild animals and other tribes, include an eight foot long spear, a knobkerrie fighting stick, wrist knives, finger hooks, and a shield made from buffalo, giraffe, or hippo hide. The Turkana are skilled at carving wooden water troughs and containers. Other containers are made from hides and decorated with beadwork.

Turkana response towards the dry weather
As a result of the dryness and hot weather, and lack of water, the Turkana people have come up with a series of projects, which originally arose as a response to the highly vulnerable context of famine affecting the herders in northwest Kenya. Being semi-nomadic pastoralists, mainly dependent on their herds of cattle, camels, sheep and goats, their nomadic lifestyle is a way of coping with periodic drought, moving animals to fresh pasture and water sources, but this way of life is increasingly difficult, with less and less natural capital accessible to them.
The Turkana are also using Rainwater harvesting. This is a technique for using runoff water from any catchments, whether natural or artificial for both consumption and productive uses. There was a tradition of using runoff in the wet season for livestock and sorghum gardening among many of the Turkana groups. Large water harvesting structures were modified to suit the size of traditional sorghum gardens.
Food-for-work programs have a patchy record of success in introducing new technology. However, this intervention had the advantage of building on existing knowledge assets and skills.

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