Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya

In the drylands of Africa, pastoralists have been facing new challenges, including those related to environmental shocks and stresses. In northern Kenya, under conditions of reduced rainfall and more frequent droughts, one response has been for pastoralists to focus increasingly on camel herding. Camels have started to be kept at higher altitudes and by people who rarely kept camels before. The development has been understood as a climate change adaptation strategy and as a means to improve climate resilience. Since 2003, development organizations have started to further the trend by distributing camels in the region. Up to now, little has been known about the nature of, reasons for, or ramifications of the increased reliance on camels. The paper addresses these questions and concludes that camels improve resilience in this dryland region, but only under certain climate change scenarios, and only for some groups.This study was funded by The Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers Thesiger-Oman Fellowship

The Symbolism of Gada in Local Political Campaign Songs among the Boran of Marsabit County in Northern Kenya

This chapter looks at how the Boran of northern Kenya use their traditional institution of gada to make dialogue with and make sense of the Kenyan political system. Despite its historical ubiquity and importance in the socio-political life of the Boran of Marsabit, the system has however been on the decline in recent decades; however, here I argue that gada has come to be memorialized in popular culture like songs and continues to influence the way in which the Boran navigate new social and political realities. Drawing on earlier ethnographies on the Boran and colonial archives reports, the first part of the chapter discusses the ethnographic background of the Marsabit Boran and locating the historical centrality of gada and its associated rituals and ceremonies in their socio-political life. The second part looks at how this system is remembered in contemporary Boran political campaign songs by analyzing the lyrics of the music and teasing out the imagery of gada contained therein. This part also puts the songs in their longue durée and expounds on their contemporary usefulness for the Boran in making sense of the Kenyan political system. The analysis reveals that despite having ‘practically’ declined, the Boran socio-political institution of gada and its associated ritual site of ardha gadamojji in Marsabit are symbolically useful resources for imagining and making sense of the Kenyan political system. Finally the chapter argues that despite having been presented as existing on the periphery of the Kenyan nation and at times portrayed as anti-national, – the Boran have in their own ways syncretized the Kenyan experience as can be discerned from their popular culture

Music and Dance in Eastern Africa

This collection of articles cuts across the Eastern African region, with authors interrogating varying themes in different historical periods that speak not only to the practice of music and dance but also to the performances that characterize these practices. The book dedicates itself to research in music and dance, while engaging with colonial and contemporary political and historical realities within the Eastern African region. Inevitably, themes that grapple with urbanization and the emergence of urban spaces for entertainment, as well as the imagination of culture by the colonialist form a key window into the research and understanding of music and dance. The ever-present performance of ethnic identities that shape most of our socio-political contexts adds to the overall texture of this book. At the same time, the debate and question of gender in music and dance is also comprehensively covered, in an attempt to delineate gender relations in the region. Articles that employ a cross-genre approach to music and dance have enriched the wide perspective of understanding African societies and the realities that emanate from everyday lives in Eastern Africa. A useful addition to the growing literature of popular culture in Africa, this book takes a multidisciplinary angle and can easily fit within the disciplines of political science, urban studies, literature, sociology and media studies. The book contributes to the recurrent dialogue towards emphasizing the relevance of the study of songs and dances in a larger context within humanities and social sciences