Fern Resort - The Song of the Samburu

Little did I think that climate change and water stress would continue to occupy my thoughts. . . . Hippos, zebras, apart from giraffes, seeing the Big Five. . . . This was the African Safari we had been dreaming about. I left on a family holiday to Kenya, soon after the workshop on Climate Change and Water Stress in the Eastern Himalayan River Basins in Kathmandu.

Are warrior nomads often seen tending their livestock and cattle along the dusty trails in the park, cousins to the better known Southern Maasai, the Samburu, the people of Northern Kenya. One can almost see natural selection in action) and the truly majestic Somali ostrich, gerenuk (with its long neck reaching out to the higher branches, oryx, the reticulated giraffe, which include the Grevy's Zebra (delicately patterned), unique to this region are a number of animals. Samburu National Reserve in Northern Kenya lies in a semi arid desert that extends all the way to Ethiopia, our first stop.

He expects all the livestock to die, if the short rains in the end of October do not arrive. " Daniel himself has seen his herd of cattle dwindle from 50 to 10 in the last few months. "we are seeing it happen before our eyes, said Daniel, "I believe it's due to something called global warming". In the last session of long rains (April-May 2009) they had no rain at all; there has not just been less rain. The rains have failed them 5 times, in the last two years. He spoke about climate change and how it is affecting the Samburu lands. Daniel gave us a talk on the region. a.k.a, then a Samburu naturalist. The first couple of sojourns into the reserve left us gasping for breath at the profusion of animals that we saw.

There is also talk of rising tensions between the different communities over scarce resources. Attendance in schools is declining as families move further and further away in search of fodder and access to heath centers. A boy cannot attain manhood if he does not have cattle. Parents cannot marry their children off if they do not have cattle. Milk and meat of their livestock for food, are highly dependent on the blood, as the Samburu, as malnutrition and disease sets in, the decline in cattle population affects the health of the communities. Their cattle is their wealth and the social system is based on exchange of cattle, for the Samburu people.

The giraffes and the gerenuk that we saw will also start to perish if the next round of rains at the year end do not arrive in time, it is expected that the zebras, however. At present the scavengers are doing particularly well with the high rate of death among domesticated livestock, in fact. As they are more adapted to the dry land conditions and occasional drought, some species of wild animals in the reserve are doing slightly better at present.

Making recovery more difficult, they are likely to last for longer, and that while the number of drought periods may not significantly increase; climate change models have predicted that drought in the pastoral lands of Africa will double by the end of this century. Looking at the longer term is also not very encouraging.

Will the Samburu people be able to overcome the current crisis or will the song of the Samburu be silenced forever? But the images of the Samburu lands and its current plight remain deeply etched in my mind. A truly exhilarating experience. . . . Later we did see the Big Five as well. Lake Nakuru National Park in the Rift Valley area to see a multitude of flamingoes, we went on to our next stop.