Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [21]
The raiders were mostly young men led by a group of older, rougher, seasoned veterans. For both sides, everything was at stake. They were fighting for all that is important in life: honor, status, wealth, love, survival, all of it embodied by cattle, which in turn become money and all that money can buy.
Here, nothing happens without cattle. To marry, a young man must provide a bride price in the form of cattle. And if the cattle are few, or scrawny, or there are no special prize bulls among the lot, the young woman will be insulted. To store wealth, one builds up a herd. Animals are currency: if a child needs medicine or an education, you sell or trade cattle. Tobacco, soap, jewelry, clothes, and weapons are all purchased with cattle or the cash from their sale.
The soothsayers, or emuron, dream of cattle, smear cattle with mud in their rituals, read the entrails of goats, and receive payment for their services in cattle. A man with many cattle is respected; a man with few cattle is not. A good wife takes care of the herds, fending off disease, nursing ill animals, keeping track of stays. Sons become men and honor their fathers by taking the herds far afield to find pasture and water and returning with all animals safe and accounted for. So the battle—brought on in part by drought, which had reduced the herds and is very linked to climate change—was a fight for everything of value.
As the rounds from the Turkana’s guns zipped past all these needs, fears, and passions mixed with a furious will to survive, the Pokot raged forward and straight into the line of Turkana sharpshooters, beyond whom lay the fastness and safety of the Karasuk Hills. For the Turkana it was the same: everything dear to them depended on these cattle now being stolen right in front of them by sworn enemies, thieves, killers who mutilate the dead.
The heavy, tumbling bullets of the Turkana’s guns cut down six Pokot raiders. One or two died quickly; one bled out slowly; a few were wounded and no doubt executed point-blank, like Ekaru had been. Three Turkana, including Ekaru, also died. But most of the cattle were scattered and sent back onto the arid scrubland along the Turkwel River. The raid had been another near miss, a calamity avoided in a land where drought and harsh new weather patterns are pushing the old ways of life to the edge of annihilation.
As the Pokot retreated into the hills, they shouted threats of a prompt and lethal return. Some shorts were missing, though as one angry herder let slip, other Turkana had probably stolen these during the chaos of battle. The next day, the moran were still wired from the fighting and ready for the next raid. The Pokot war party remained close.
“The Pokot said, ‘We did not get enough. Watch out. We’ll be back,’” explained one of the men. “Look, we have no bullets. Each bullet costs fifty shillings. Each of us has only one or two bullets left,” explained another. The men were now showing me their nearly empty clips. “We need bullets.”
For a moment, looking down at Ekaru’s corpse, I almost wished I’d brought them some. All I have to offer is a kilo of raw tobacco, which the Turkana mix with salt and chew, roll up into newsprint cigarettes, or smoke in little brass pipes.
Rain Cloud and Kalashnikov
The raid that killed Ekaru Loruman took place in the heart of “the pastoralist corridor,” a region of mountains, savannas, marshes, and deserts straddling the borderlands of Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Plagued by regular drought and flash flooding, this landscape belongs to well-armed nomadic and seminomadic tribes that live in a delicate balance with each other and their environment. Largely ignored by colonial authorities and modern African states alike, people in this region live much as they always have: cattle are the economic and cultural center of life. The land is generally too dry to farm but can be grazed. The basic socioeconomic unit here is a man,