The Olng’arua community also now has it’s own Facebook page where updates about the school, and life in this remote Laikipiak Maasai community, can be found. So, if you are a Facebook user please ‘like’ their page and you can be notified about their latest news at the Olng’arua Facebook Page

You can find out more about Olng’arua School and DARE’s involvment with this community project here…

People and livestock are making their way back from the grazing areas to the south and west. It will be some weeks yet though before there is much milk, and food prices are still very high. Many people will continue to need help with food for another few months

The heavy rain is not without its problems. Many of the roads in the north cut across normally dry river beds; when they are in flood you many have to wait for hours before the water reduces enough to allow you to cross. The Isiolo River has flooded twice in the last two weeks but so far both the main bridges that cross it have survived.

Often these floods come with no warning. It may not have been raining in the flood area for many days so it can be quite a surprise when a wall of water roars down the river channel, fanning out on both sides and sweeping away any unwary people or animals.

However despite these problems everyone is greatly relieved that the rains have come and that they seem set to give the area good pasture for the first time in more than two years.

This is an appalling incident that will do a lot of damage to the tourism industry in Kenya. One friend of mine expressed the feelings of many when she made an angry post on Twitter.

“Thanks to the useless brainless thug who attacked the tour van in Shaba. U have single handedly under-minded all good efforts in this area.”

I feel the same frustration she does. DARE Foundation spends so much time with groups of people desperate to make a living in northern Kenya, many of them through tourism, and this incident will be a severe blow to their fragile enterprises. However, I also know that the ‘useless brainless thug’ (or ‘thugs’) who did this would not understand my friends words, whatever local language there were spoken in.

The north of Kenya is not just the poor relative of the south, it is practically another country. There is a severe shortage of essentials such as food, water, electricity, hospitals, doctors, schools, teachers and roads. It lacks the fundamental infrastructure to enable people to live any but the most basic kind of lives or do any but the most basic kind of business. In the main what infrastructure there is here is of such poor quality, or so old and decrepit, that it is worst than useless. Because of this very few tourists travel independently here; tourism in the north is almost entirely run by big tour operators and exclusive, expensive, tourist lodges. Only a very small percentage of the local population benefit from this kind of tourism in any way. Often they are actually penalised by it as the wildlife reserves have taken over the best grazing land and the best water sources (the springs in Shaba are a good example). The north of Kenya has just been through one of the worst droughts in living memory. Large numbers of the livestock that people depend upon have died; many are left without a single animal. The young men who used to look after the animals now have nothing to do, except watch as the women of the family wait in line for hours for food aid from a foreign charity.

For many people living near Shaba the only active interventions by the government in the last two years of drought have been the security operations carried out in the area. On the ground these translate as squads of armed police arriving in villages looking for illegal guns and there are regular reports from local communities of beatings, rape and even extra judicial killings. Despite all this there has been no end to violent livestock theft and many have had their last few surviving animals stolen from them by armed raiders.

I don’t think that the men involved in the shooting will have any comprehension or concern about the damage they have done to an industry that has no noticeable benefit to them or their community. It has often been said (but it is rarely successfully implemented) that if you want people to support wildlife conservation and tourism in northern Kenya it is essential that they benefit from it in some way. It is not enough that one or two people from a community get employed in the local tourist lodge, or that occasionally visitors to the national park donate money to a local school. This has negligible impact on most peoples lives. The north needs the kind of basic infrastructure that most Kenyans take for granted so that the people here can start to develop businesses and industries of their own. Only then will they feel any concern about what such incidents will have on the economy of the country.

Raanye Sorting Rice

On Friday Kitonga distributed food to the community near the Olng’arua School. The food was bought with the support of Katrin and Jochen Heeskens and their friends in Germany and elsewhere who had raised money to help with the food crisis.

The community themselves decided how the money should be spent, who needed help and what kind of help that should be. Maize is the most common food delivered here during a food crisis because it is relatively cheap, but it has little nutritional value. It also uses a lot of energy to cook. Dried maize, especially if its is of poor quality, can take 3 to 4 hours boiling before it is edible, that requires a lot of firewood, a commodity which is in increasingly short supply.

Mindful of these issues the community members decided to purchase rice, beans and fat as the bulk of the food aid. This would mean that they probably wouldn’t be able to feed quite as many people but they wanted to give good nutritious food to those most in need, the old, ill, pregnant and women with young children. The rice, beans and fat were purchased from local traders so that the money benefited more than just the recipients; it was also injected much needed funds into the local economy.

The delivery day was cold and wet with what many hope is the start of the rains. The coming of the rains won’t make everything better immediately, in fact it is likely to make things worse for a while, but it allows us all to hope that in a few months the land will be greener and the people who live in it will be healthier and happier.

On behalf of the whole community we would like to thank Katrin, Jochen and all their friends for their support and generosity.

Distributing Food at Olng'arua School

Beaded Girl

In Samburu culture a warrior can ‘bead’ a girl who is not yet circumcised in order to have sex with her. The girl has no choice in the matter. So long as her brothers agree, and it is regarded as a great insult to the warrior if they don’t, she must comply. If she doesn’t she will be beaten. Samburu elders will tell you this tradition helps to reduce promiscuity because once a girl is beaded only that warrior may have sex with her. In reality it is little more than community sanctioned rape of a minor. The young girl who arrived at Kipsing Primary school that night didn’t talk about being beaded, about being the sexual property of a man when she was only ten years old, she didn’t have to, she came wearing his beads around her neck, all 3kg of them.

Samburu girls are circumcised at around fifteen or sixteen years of age and the family will arrange their marriage soon after. Before circumcision warriors may bead girls to have sex with them but a warrior will not marry a girl he has beaded. It is also strictly prohibited for the girl to get pregnant. However warriors do not wear condoms and are not held responsible for a pregnancy should it occur. As nobody gives family planning advice to ten to fifteen year old girls in remote parts of northern Kenya pregnancies occur all too frequently.

It is believed that should an uncircumcised girl have a child the whole family will be cursed and individuals may even die. If the family suspects the girl is pregnant they will attempt to abort the baby. First with a mix of local herbs but if that fails they will push repeatedly down on the girls stomach to force a miscarriage. Some girls will suffer this kind of abortion two or three times before being circumcised. If the abortion fails and the girl gives birth the family must get rid of the baby to avoid being cursed, traditionally it is killed within an hour of birth.

Kipsing School

Nobody doubted, that the little girl who turned up that night, needed more than education, she needed protection. This school, like so many others in the north of Kenya, serves a wide spread and remote community. Many of the children who go to these schools have to board as they live too far away to walk to school each day. The Catholic Church at Kipsing provides boarding accommodation for girls but it costs 3000ksh (£20) per term. This is a lot of money for a family here to raise and it is an impossible sum for this girl. Beaded girls cannot be taken care of by a local family because according to tradition the warrior has the right to come and take the girl by force. It is simply too dangerous to ask a family to protect a girl from a group of armed men. The teachers at Kipsing School understand all this; most are from the Samburu community or have worked here for long enough to know. But without the funds to support these girls there is very little they can do.

By chance we arrived in Kipsing the following day to see some of the groups we work with in the area. We arranged to pay for the girl’s accommodation at the catholic boarding house and for her to get the school uniform and other basics she needed to attend school. This young girl was lucky, the school she turned up at has understanding and supportive staff and we happened to be there just in time to provide financial assistance. Many girls in her situation are not so lucky. That is why we are setting up an emergency fund to ensure that girls like this never need to be turned away. The fund will enable teachers and other support workers to say yes, straight away, without worrying about where the money will come from to support the girls. So please help us to give these young girls the safety and security that they need.

Donations can be made by through PayPal on the donation page of this site or by cheque made out to DARE Foundation and sent to:

The Chairman
DARE Foundation
7 Fort Rd
Helen’s Bay
County Down
BT 19 1LD UK

Jonny and the Sphinx

Today Jonny leaves Cairo to start the African leg of his cycling journey from Edinburgh to Isiolo. He had the opportunity to get to know Cairo while he waited 3 weeks for his Sudanese visa. “I think I must have been ‘profiled’” said Jonny “because I met a Dutch family who received their visa in just 3 days”. However he feels the rest has done him good and he is now ready to tackle the heat of the desert as he heads south through Eygpt and Sudan. “I think some of the toughest challenges of this stage of the journey will be in Ethiopia where there are a lot of really big hills” says Jonny.  Though of course he will have all those lovely descents to make up for it. He is particularly curious about the Blue Nile Gorge, over 1000m down, and then more than 1000m back up again! But at least it will all be on tarmac. Once he reaches the Kenyan border he will be tackling most of his final miles on one of the worst road surfaces known to man, the corrugated dirt road! The final stretch coming down through northern Kenya is also one of the most dangerous as bandits are unfortunately fairly common. However the DARE team will be meeting him at the Ethiopian border to provide security support and back up for the last push to Isiolo and a cold Tusker.

Elephant Drinking from a Sand Well

Elephants will travel great distances to the right kind of dry sandy riverbed where they can dig holes and extract water from deep in the sand. As we drove past one such dry river earlier in the day we saw an unusual sight. There was a huge amount of elephant dung covering a short stretch of river bed, so much that it made it look like an elephant farmyard. We realised that this must be one of the few places for miles and miles around that the elephants could come to drink. Kitonga is a passionate and experienced elephant watcher so, as it was getting late, we decided to make camp on the river bank right next to the elephant farm yard.

None of the animals came to dig for water till after dark despite the whole area being empty of people. The elephants didn’t start arriving until 9pm, which backed up our suspicion that the area has been a haunt of poachers in the recent past. The first elephants to come smelt our camp and they didn’t like it. There was trumpeting and a lot of disgruntled rumbling before they settled enough to dig into the sand for water. The peace didn’t last long, another family came and this obviously annoyed the first family. Competition for the best place to dig water holes resulted in an angry stand off between the two families. The screaming and trumpeting told us that one of the elephants was chasing others down the river away from the prime site. An elephant trumpeting in anger is an awe inspiring sound. The pattern continued into the night and as each new group arrived to drink competition with the current group would result in rumblings and trumpeting as priority was decided.

Elephant Striping Bark

One group, after they had finished drinking, moved to browse around our tents. It sounded like trees were coming down all around us, though in most cases it was just branches. There was no moon and only the faint light of the stars to see by but at one point a large shape separated itself from the bushes not two metres from my tent. Elephants are large animals but when you are sitting on the ground, with only a sheet of nylon mesh between you and it, an elephant becomes enormous. After a few heart stopping moments the elephant tore at an overhead branch and moved on. When another came too close behind the tents Kitonga shone his torch at it. It was obviously very startled because we heard it crashing away through the bushes at quite a speed. At one point some hyenas came right up to the tents making the strange laughing calls they are famous for. This call lets others in the pack know that they have found food. Perhaps it was the smell of the sausages we’d had for supper, perhaps it was us, luckily they moved on. In time tiredness overcame the sounds of crashing bushes and elephant rumbling and I fell asleep, but even exhausted I was woken regularly by the fights that happened throughout the night. The screaming and bellowing of elephants fighting only a few metres away was just impossible to sleep through.

By dawn all was quiet again. The elephants had left for safer areas to browse amongst the dry bushes. As we drank tea we watched a troop of baboons come down to drink from the holes that the elephants had dug, before they too went off in search of food. Tired from our eventful night we broke camp and drove off to find out what had happened to the people who used to live here but had left in search of survival.

Sunrise over Elephant River

Q. Do you have drought where you are?

A. Yes northern Kenya is suffering from the same long running drought conditions that are affecting Somalia and parts of Ethiopia. However much of the southern half of Kenya, especially the south west is completely unaffected and food production in these areas is continuing.

Q. Is it bad?

A. Yes it’s bad, in many areas it’s been going on for more than 2 years. It also comes hard on the heals of a very bad drought 6 years ago.

Q. Why don’t we hear anything about famine in Kenya?

A. Our area is classified by the UN as ‘emergency’ which is the stage before famine, currently only areas in neighbouring Somalia are in famine. However the only thing standing between ‘emergency’ and ‘famine’ is the delivery of food aid.

Q. Explain that please?

A. In Somalia they can’t deliver food aid to the people who need it because of the conflict. Mostly in Kenya they can deliver food to the people who need it; however there have been some problems getting food to people due to impassable roads (or no roads) and insecurity. In Kenya the focus has to be on overcoming these problems and getting food to the people who need it.

Q. Surely this area is always suffering droughts why is it so bad now?

A. People here are in trouble partly because the last drought wiped out nearly all their livestock and they haven’t had time to build their stocks back up. Almost all of their money is invested in livestock so this leaves them in a very bad position. On top of this the global rise in food prices has hit these areas especially hard. Transport cost for food here are high anyway. Many people were already spending 80% of their income on food and now prices have double, or trebled in some cases, people simply have no way to feed their families.

Q. What are you doing about it?

A. Most of the groups we work with have so far managed because they have some other source of income, not just livestock, but as the drought continues and food prices rise even further, more and more people are running out of resources to cope.

By and large the World Food Programme and its associates are doing a good job of getting food aid out to large numbers of people but as with any large scale operation there are always people who fall through the net. We are concentrating on using our local knowledge and experience to find those who need aid but are not receiving it. Then, in conjunction other small local organisations we are delivering food aid and other essentials to these people.

Q. Do you need anything?

A. Of course we need money! We need to buy food and essentials for the people we are helping. One of the great benefits we have of being local is that where ever possible we buy our goods from local businesses so that we don’t undermine the local economy (an unfortunate side effect of mass food relief operations) and those with small businesses here can also continue to feed their families themselves.

Thunderstorm in the Drought

This afternoon a large thunderstorm developed over Isiolo and the surrounding area. The land is bone dry from months of drought, the soil is dust and the sudden downpour carries it away depositing it elsewhere. Deep channels are cut a spontaneous rivers appear.

People watch as the water washes through their houses, grabbing at possessions that float away. The road outside my house is a river within minutes, more than 2ft deep, I can’t cross it because the current is too strong.

Flash Flood

Animals are swept away as dry riverbeds become raging  torrents. The wet and sudden cold that has come with the storm could mean death to many of the remaining livestock that are weak from the long drought.

Yet, despite the drama and destruction a few hours of heavy rain can cause it won’t break the drought, the water has gone as quickly as it came.

Making Elephant Dung Paper

This is one of the reasons we are always so keen to support any group of women who have projects or enterprises that provide them with a source of income. They normally rely heavily on traditional skills such as making beaded jewellery and preserving animal skins, however recently we came across a group of women from Oldonyiro with a new and very appropriate project, making paper from elephant dung.

The Oldonyiro women’s group is called Naserian Noltome (Peace Elephant). DARE Foundation is helping the group to improve their product and to find markets for it. We are also taking women from Naserian Noltome to teach their skills to other pastoralist women’s groups in the area .

Elephant Dung Paper

Increasing the number of women who make elephant dung paper is good for everyone, including the elephants. By forming a co-operative the women’s groups can reach much wider markets because they can ensure a greater and more reliable supply of paper. It also provides a larger number of families with an alternative income, something to fall back on in times of drought and need but also something to build for their future and the future of their children. Lastly, but not least, by becoming the source of a valuable resource for the local people the elephants are more tolerated and seen as less of a threat. This leads to greater protection for this remarkable animal.