Is drought killing pastoralism?
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] NAIROBI, 8 Mar 2006 (IRIN) – Around the few deep boreholes dotted across Kenya’s arid empty north, villages of thatched huts are growing by the day. Dozens of families arrive, leading camel trains and herding the few bony cattle they have left, pushed by drought to the vast frontier bordering Somalia and Ethiopia. Tribal lore passed down the generations says the only way for these nomads to survive is to keep moving, from watering hole to river, from one pasture to the next, living off the milk and meat of their livestock. But today, there is no pasture, and two years without rain have erased the watering holes and turned rivers to sand, killing animals in the thousands. Now, these wanderers are being forced to settle near the only permanent water sources available, where the precious resource is drawn from deep wells by diesel-driven boreholes and where more and more people struggle to share a dwindling supply
