# Turkana: pastoral resistance, lake heritage, oil and drought Turkana ties Kenya to the northern drylands: early herding, Turkana expansion, El Molo lake survival, colonial disarmament, school neglect, World Heritage fossil landscapes, oil politics, drought and water insecurity. *This story part of: Kenya: from the Swahili coast to the republic* *This story parallel: The colonial map of Kenya: neglected regions and regional inequality* *This story continues: Kenya's Nilotes: Luo, Maasai, Kalenjin, and Turkana* *This story parallel: The peoples Kenya forgot: Taita, the Tana, the foragers, and the Nubians* ## c. 3001 BCE — Early herders spread through the northern drylands Pastoral Neolithic herders keeping cattle, sheep, and goats spread around Lake Turkana and the Rift from roughly five thousand years ago, well before the camel arrived. Linguists tie the earliest of these herders to Southern Cushitic speakers, which would make them the first Cushitic presence in the region. The herding sites are firmly dated, but the Cushitic label rests on language reconstruction and stays debated. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 3001 BCE — The First Herders Reach Lake Turkana The earliest domesticated animals in this part of Africa show up around Lake Turkana at the start of the Pastoral Neolithic. The people who brought cattle, sheep and goats also built the stone-pillar cemeteries that still stand near the lake. Archaeology dates the arrival of herding here to roughly 5,000 years ago, and later ancient-DNA work tied it to a population with northeast African, Afroasiatic-related ancestry. This is the physical trace of the first of the migration streams that oral history and language already described. *Source: Ancient DNA reveals a multistep spread of the first herders into sub-Saharan Africa* *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1001 BCE — El Molo settle Lake Turkana as fisher-foragers The El Molo are held to have reached the Turkana Basin from the north around 1000 BCE, speaking a Cushitic language related to those of Ethiopia and Somalia. In the arid lakeshore country they turned from herding or farming to fishing and hunting hippo, crocodile, and turtle. Whether they were always foragers or specialised into fishing after arriving is not settled. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1750 — The Turkana split from the Jie and enter the basin The Turkana are among the most recent Nilotic arrivals in Kenya, an Eastern Nilotic people of the Ateker cluster who broke away from the Jie and Karamojong of northeastern Uganda. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they expanded into the harsh arid basin west of the lake that now bears their name. The exact timing is reconstructed from tradition and language and remains debated. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1800 — Generation-sets and age-sets among the Turkana Turkana men belonged to age-sets grouped under two alternating generational divisions, commonly named the Stones and the Leopards, each marked by its own colors and ornament. A son entered the division opposite his father's, so the two rotated across the generations. The system ordered seniority, ritual duty, and the sharing of authority in a society with no chiefs. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1810 — Camel and cattle pastoralism in the arid basin To survive the dry Turkana basin the people kept a wide mix of stock, camels alongside cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys, spreading risk across animals suited to different conditions. Cattle grazed the wetter hills while camels endured the driest plains and gave milk through the hardest months. Constant movement in search of water and pasture became the core discipline of Turkana life. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1820 — The adakar and the ere Turkana families lived in the ere, or ereet, the homestead of a man, his wives, and their herds, which broke apart and regrouped as grazing demanded. For defense and better use of scattered pasture, homesteads joined into an adakar, a mobile cluster that camped and moved together under a respected senior man. This flexible, herd-driven organization let the Turkana hold and use one of Kenya's harshest lands. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* > Colonial rule enters Turkana as disarmament and control, not development. ## c. 1918 — The disarmament and pacification of Turkana A series of military patrols through the late 1910s and 1920s broke Turkana resistance, seized firearms and huge numbers of livestock, and left the community disarmed among armed and raiding neighbours. The campaigns treated the Turkana as a problem to be subdued rather than a people to be governed and served. Turkana was then left largely without schools, roads, or administration for decades. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1930 — The pastoralists bypassed by schools and development Missionaries and the government concentrated schools, clinics, and cash-crop projects in the farming highlands and around the lake, leaving the pastoralist districts almost untouched. Herders entered independence with the lowest literacy and the fewest services in the country. The gap was less about distance than about a choice to invest where returns for the colony looked highest. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 1934 — The El Molo population falls to a few dozen A 1934 count recorded only about 84 El Molo, a low point for one of Africa's smallest peoples. Long isolation and marriage within a tiny group are linked by researchers to health problems and disease vulnerability. A narrow, fish-heavy diet in a harsh setting compounded the strain. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## c. 1970 — El Molo intermarriage and the shift to Samburu speech Through the twentieth century the El Molo increasingly married Samburu, Turkana, and Rendille neighbours and took up the Samburu language in daily life. As numbers recovered, distinct El Molo ancestry grew rarer and the community absorbed the customs of surrounding pastoralists. The old Cushitic tongue slipped out of everyday use. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 1997 — Lake Turkana National Parks enter the World Heritage list UNESCO listed Lake Turkana National Parks as World Heritage for fossil deposits, ecological importance and the lake landscape. The listing made Turkana globally visible as natural and human-origins heritage, while local people still faced marginalisation in services, water and development. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 1999 — The El Molo language falls silent Linguists date the death of the El Molo language to about 1999, when its last fluent speaker, Kaayo, died, leaving only a few people who remember fragments. The tongue is now classed as dormant or extinct, replaced by Samburu. Efforts to record surviving words aim to keep some of it alive. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 2012 — Oil discovery pulls Turkana into Kenya's resource frontier Commercial oil discoveries in Turkana turned a long-neglected pastoral region into a resource frontier. The promise of extraction brought roads, security, revenue politics and fears that the county would repeat older Kenyan patterns: wealth removed from land without changing local power. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 2018 — Lake Turkana National Parks are listed as World Heritage in Danger UNESCO placed Lake Turkana National Parks on the List of World Heritage in Danger as upstream projects and basin pressures threatened the lake system. The decision tied Turkana's local survival to cross-border water, energy and development politics. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County* ## 2019 — El Molo counted as Kenya's smallest people amid a stressed lake Kenya's 2019 census recorded about 1,100 El Molo, the country's smallest officially counted ethnic group. Rising and increasingly saline waters of Lake Turkana, driven by upstream dams and climate stress, threaten the fishing grounds that sustain them. The community fights to hold on to its identity as its language and lakeside base erode. *Source: The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule* *Source: Lake Turkana National Parks* *Source: Climate, cattle and oil in Turkana* *Source: Navigating drought, governance and vulnerability in Turkana County* *Source: From drought to hope: advancing water, sanitation and hygiene in Turkana County*