KENYA: Ten communities from the semi-desert planes of north gathered on the shores of Lake Turkana for a three day festival aimed at transforming the reputation of the drought prone and aid dependent region

Record ID: 362283

  • Title: KENYA: Ten communities from the semi-desert planes of north gathered on the shores of Lake Turkana for a three day festival aimed at transforming the reputation of the drought prone and aid dependent region
  • Date: 21st May 2012
  • Summary: TURKANA, KENYA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF OIL DRILLING SITE.
  • Embargoed: 5th June 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Nature / Environment,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVABTLP1B2N6338WPL9L6D06V0EF
  • Story Text: On the south east edge of the vast Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, lies a cluster of small villages belonging to the El Molo community. The El Molo are the smallest ethnic community in Kenya, and with under 500 people left in the world, they are verging on extinction.
    Unlike most of the other communities living in the semi-arid desert of Turkana and Marsabit who keep livestock, the El Molo are primarily fishermen.
    Even the language is spoken by only a few older members of the community.
    "We El Molo, we need to keep our pride, because we have intermarried with other tribes. So we have lost some of our culture. Nowadays our small children they don't even understand El Molo language. We want our culture to be celebrated again, we want our elders to speak to our young ones so they understand the language and for the culture to be practiced," said forty-year-old Mikela Tamukas.
    Its for these very reasons that the community and nine others in the area came together to stage an annual festival celebrating their disappearing traditions.
    The Lake Turkana Festival 2012 was the fifth edition and the largest of the event with hundreds of people travelling from all over Kenya and abroad to take part in the gathering sponsored by the National Museums of Kenya and the German Embassy in Kenya.
    Also represented were the Samburu, Dassanach, Rendille, Wata, Burji, Gabra, Borana and Konso communities, many of whom have a long history of conflict with each other.
    "The most important thing about these dances is they are all from communities who have traditionally fought each other. It shows our differences, they are all different, yet it requires peace to be here and dance together," said Wati Watuli, a dancer from the Rendille community.
    As well as performances there were demonstrations including camel herding by Samburu youth dressed in traditional costumes.
    Organisers say the festival was aimed at rebranding Turkana as the cultural and resource rich capital of Kenya and tapping into the area's tourism potential and traditional identity -- a different focus from the discussions on newly discovered oil and ongoing wind power generation projects that have shared the headlines with stories of drought, hunger and appeals for aid.
    "Culture is the major resource they have at the moment in addition to other resources that have come, but this is a known quantity. The other one is an unknown quantity. This is managed by the community themselves the others may be managed by other people," said Dr Hassan Wario, director of museums and sites for the National Museums of Kenya.
    While communities so far have little control over the recently discovered oil in the area, they can influence the way their communities are presented to the outside world.
    The event was not just aimed at foreigners but also Kenyans from elsewhere in the country who he says often misunderstand communities from the North.
    Lakalasoi Patwell, a banker from western Kenya told Reuters he was amazed to see the variety on display at the event and said that he hoped it would help counteract negative images of Turkana.
    "Yes, very important because there is no community that only has a negative side to it. There must be a positive side of every community - the Samburu, the Turkana - there must be a positive side as we'll see in the media. Its not only that the poverty is there. There are so many other riches to their cultures," he said.
    As the sun set on the main stage on Saturday (May 19), crowds gathered in the fading light to watch community theatre played out through song.
    Many of those taking part come from areas suffering repeated and increasingly debilitating annual droughts and food shortages.
    It will take more than a festival to overcome these challenges and to address complex and longstanding conflicts between the communities represented.
    But the more the festival grows, the more opportunities for change locals hope they will get. Two new hotels have sprung up in the last year offering jobs to some of the hundreds of unemployed youth in the region.
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