Omieri the snake !!

Well this is different !    (And something I'd never heard of ....)

"After three decades of anxious waiting, Kisumu residents will finally have a glimpse of the legendary snake, Omieri, which has been associated with several cultural beliefs in Nyanza.  The snake, which died on July 9, 1987, will be the highlight of the 3rd edition of the Kenya National Cultural Celebration for Unesco (Knatcom), which will take place in Kisumu beginning Wednesday to Sunday.

HUGE CROWDS

On Tuesday, a team of workers from the Nairobi National Museum, that has been the 'resting' place of the snake since it died, were busy installing a grass-thatched mud hut at the Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground for viewing by the locals, attracting a huge crowd.

Residents could not hide the joy of finally seeing the snake that they had all heard mysterious stories about, since most of them were born after the snake had died.  "We hear it was the biggest snake to have ever been seen in this (western) region, I was born when it had died so I never saw it. I am happy it has been brought back home and we will see it," beamed Mr Erick Omondi, a local.

An autopsy done on the reptile revealed that it had died of a gastro-intestinal tract infection. Prior to its death, National Wildlife Conservation, the now Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) did all they could in attempts to keep it alive.  It is reported that in February 27, 1987, some villagers in Nyakach set fire at Omieri’s abode causing the snake severe burns, before KWS  moved to its rescue.

With the help of Kisumu National Museum, KWS immediately took the snake to Nairobi National Museum for treatment and special care then returned it  in May 21, 1987, with the hope that its condition would improve due to the warm climate in the region.  At Kisumu National Museum, Omieri was occasionally fed on chicken before it developed an oral infection and was unable to feed, which saw the snake quarantined for close observation but was attacked by a fungal infection that led to mouth rot.  Animal experts says that if snakes are held captive for a long time, they suffer fungal infection and many usually die of mouth rot.

Dr Purity Kiora, the Director of Antiquity Sites and Monuments at the Kenya National Museums, told reporters in Kisumu that the snake might not be kept for long at the exhibitions due to complications in preserving it.  "We can only have the public view it for just a short period of time because to preserve it for people to see, it has to be in a conducive environment. It has to be in a place with little light and air tight,” said Dr Kiora.

She said the snake will be at the site till Sunday after which they will take it to Kisumu Museum where it will stay for about a month, then its homeland Nyakach and back to the laboratory in Nairobi.  A ceremony will be held for the snake with Nyakach elders invited to tell its story. The snake measured 5.3m and weighed 58kg and was always associated with long rains in Nyanza region.

Other activities at the festival themed “Enhancing National Cohesion, Identity and Pridewill” include multicultural performances from different counties, a food fair dubbed “Fish-fiesta”, performances by Benga musicians, public talks and a fashion show.  There will also be excursions at Kit Mikayi shrine, Weeping Stone, Kisumu Museum, Got Ramogi Hills, Hippo Point, Dunga and Lwanga Beaches.

Kisumu Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o lauded Knatcom and the National Museums of Kenya for staging the event in the lakeside town and promised the visitors  a good time during their stay.  On her part, the Kenya National Commission for Unesco, Dr Angeline Njoka, heaped praises on Kisumu County for the great partnership towards staging of the celebration.  "We are grateful to Governor Nyong'o for agreeing to host us in Kisumu, the county boasts of a rich cultural heritage that we wanted to plug into, we expect great performances,” she said.

(News from The Daily Nation)

I know all the places mentioned towards the end of this article, but not the Weeping Stone - this is obviously something I have to find out more about.

Watch this space !

Birds, bugs, and bats that go bump in the night !

I think in reading back over the first letters we wrote home I tended to exaggerate and go for the startling, like stories about cockroaches, and how the chickens we bought to eat arrive live, with one leg tied to string, which is then tied to a bush ... "... we have to buy chickens live as they keep fresh that way !"

The cockroaches, which I'd never seen before, were enormous ... nearly two inches in length, and they scurried out from under the cupboard and stove in the kitchen at night .... not one or two or them, but dozens !   

By the end of our first week, we were employing Joseph Adhiambo (photo on right) as a 'house-boy'.  I had thought not to have 'staff' but it was soon obvious that he would be useful for doing our market shopping, as he could bargain in the local language.   He arrived one day, brought along to us by a (white) missionary who explained that Joseph had no father and an elderly mother, and needed to earn money to save for school fees.  He assured us Joseph would work hard and as a mission boy, was honest.   He was about 14 or 15 (he didn't know how old he was) and dressed in ragged clothes, with patches and tears.  He had on his feet a pair of cut down wellies, which had had pieces of rubber sewn over the holes.  He was to be paid two shillings for five hours work, which was more than the government rate, and 'perks' .... usually spare food.  In 1968, an English pound, was 17 Kenya shillings, so about half a crown or so for his wages ?  

The house we lived in at first, was about 30 or 40 years old, with a corrugated iron roof.  The ceilings were nailed directly onto the roof rafters, and were made of some sort of compressed straw board, which mice (rats ?) had gnawed in places.   Electricity for lighting from dusk (about 6.30) until 9.30, when the school generator was switched off and we had to use a paraffin lamp.  It was often easier to go to bed early and get up just before dawn.  One night there was a terrific storm, with wind blowing and whistling through under the mabati (iron sheets) and there was a tremendous crash, and half the bedroom ceiling descended onto us in our beds .... complete with years of bat droppings, dead mice, and goodness knows what else !  The bats which were in the roof sheltering from the storm, fluttered around us in the dark; then by the light of our torches and ultimately the paraffin lamp, we could see what a mess there was !   I didn't write about it in the letters home, but seem to remember we spent the remainder of the night dozing in the sitting room chairs, flapping at the mozzies .... and the bats !

"The view from the house, on a slight hill, is wonderful, looking west towards Uganda, 20 miles away.  We look out over African farms, which at first glance look like scrub land, but I suppose are more like English small-holdings or allotments, with strange crops growing all mixed up in small plots.  There are banana and paw-paw trees, cassava plants, maize and millet.  And mango trees ... which reminds me; can you find a recipe for mango chutney please ?  

The people in this area mostly don't speak Swahili, but Dholuo, which is totally different to Swahili, so we are having to learn another language, as well as continuing with Swahili, which is used in town and the country further east."

We spent most of our spare time bird watching, and had taken out mist nets in order to catch and ring the birds we captured.  Catching them helped us to identify all the many new and wonderful birds we were seeing; having the bird in the hand and the books on the table, made an impossible task a little easier, but at first we had to let birds go that we couldn't identify, but it got easier.   This is the first ever bird we caught at Ng'iya ... the incredibly coloured pygmy kingfisher.   

This is the wildlife we had come to Kenya hoping to see !!

Being moved around !

"13th September, 1968   

Dear Mum .... we reached Kisumu today about 2 p.m., only to be told we weren't going to be posted to Maseno School (which the Min of Ed. had told us yesterday) but to Maranda Secondary School (which had been the second school they offered yesterday) but that the house being built for us wasn't finished, SO we are to live at this school (Ng'iya Girls School) and teach here temporarily .... note the latest address on the back !  IF we are moved again, the head-mistress here will know where we are and will forward any mail !  "

We were obviously thrown into what we were to become used to during the next eleven years .... chaos in governmental organisation !   Welcome to Africa !!

"The house we have been given to live in has sitting room, 2 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen of sorts, outside earth toilet  ***   and a wood store (wood for the kitchen stove).  Its about 30 years old, bungalow type with corrugated iron roof, so it has rather a lot of cockroaches which appear after dark, and also 3" long centipedes, but we have found some geckos and brought them into the house as we believe they eat cockroaches.  We've also got bats in the roof, and monkeys and parrots in the trees just outside.  Poinsettia's grow like weeds here and there are jacaranda trees and bougainvillea's everywhere." 


 ***      http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2017/06/only-in-africa-2.html

12th September, 1968 .... fifty years ago today !!

Today (actually typing this on 12th September, 2018 !) is the fifty year anniversary of when I first arrived in Kenya. 

I've found two letters describing our journey;  "... we left from Norwich station and took the train to Liverpool Street, where we took a taxi all the way to Heathrow ... "   (must have cost a fortune !) ... "we had about 90 lbs of luggage each, so really the bus and tube were out of the question ..."   We met up with two friends, fellow bird enthusiasts, who were also going out to the Kisumu area, and saw that they too, were each carrying a volume of Praed and Grant for their 'light' reading on the plane !  Each volume weighed in at around 4 lbs, so couldn't be packed when we considered they weighed as much as two pairs of shoes, the iron and a transistor radio !

"We left Heathrow on time, in a Super VC10, no less !  Its a very sumptuous plane"   (Notice my excitement in this letter to my mother I started writing from Entebbe !)  "We came down in Rome for re-fuelling at 10.30 at night, and then flew on above the clouds, through the night, passing over a fantastic thunderstorm with lightning flashes below us, and landed at Entebbe in Uganda at dawn for breakfast.  It was a bit humid at Entebbe which is near Lake Victoria, but only 68⁰F.  Some passengers left the plane at Entebbe, while the rest of us flew on to Nairobi."

" Just at the moment" (I continued the letter to my mother on the plane) ".. we can look down and see, through the gaps in the clouds, the Kavirondo Gulf, which is the bit of Lake Victoria near where we are being posted.   We have picked out the town of Homa Bay, but the clouds are drifting about, and we can't see more."

"(Later) ... we have now arrived at Embakasi, the Nairobi airport.   We had a long wait for our luggage to be taken off the plane; one handle had been ripped off a case, but nothing was lost, and there were no problems with the customs or health people.  We were met by an African from the Ministry of Education, who has now dumped us on seats and said we are to wait for a mini-bus, which will take us to Kisumu, we think, but that's not certain yet; we may have to stay in Nairobi for a day or so to get work permits, etc. sorted out.

"Must post this now at the airport, having bought some beautiful Kenyan stamps.  I'm sending your letter with an elephant stamp !"

(Posted 10.30 a.m., Nairobi time, 12th September)

~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

(Continuing from a letter sent to parents-in-law):   "We were whisked off with our 90 lbs each of luggage, into town and taken to Brunners Hotel, on Muindu Mbingu Street, just off Kenyatta Avenue (do you know it ?)  (They has stayed in Nairobi a few times when on holiday from Aden).  There we had baths and lunch, and then the men were taken to the Ministry of Education for three hours.  We were booked in for the night at Brunners, which I would describe as a rather faded colonial sort of hotel.  High rooms, with lazily turning ceiling fans, and wide verandas opening onto an inner courtyard."

I remember that I went with H. (the other wife) for a walk along Kenyatta Avenue after lunch; a lovely wide avenue with very little traffic, and not many people about either.   Some Maasai strolled past, wearing just a red blanket (nothing else at all !) and carrying spears.  (Not a sight to be seen since the late1960's).   There were several 'colonial' type elderly European men, wearing those wide legged baggy khaki shorts, and veldskoen with no socks.   

This is Africa, I thought !    I'm HERE !!  

10th September, 1968 .... fifty years back.

"Only a day to go before we leave for Kenya.   We've said goodbye to my mother, and I feel a little sad at leaving her so soon after my fathers death just a few months ago.

All our luggage is packed; tomorrow we travel to Heathrow for the flight in the evening.  Quite exciting ... only the third flight in my life .... the first two having been to and back from Aden in 1966 in a DC-7-C, a propellor plane.  (Father-in-law was posted there, seconded to the R.A.F.)   Tomorrow we fly on a VC-10 .... the modern Jumbo Jet.   

I wonder what it will be like to set foot in Africa ?   It has been my ambition since a child, when my grandfather used to tell me about the early explorers in the 'dark' continent.   I'd read Livingstone, Elspeth Huxley, Gerald Durrell and of course, 'Out of Africa', and seen the 'Born Free' film recently ....as well as reading Joy Adamsons books.  I don't suppose for a minute it'll be like any of those books .... but one can hope."

September, 1968 ....yes, sixty-eight !

This is the month I had hoped to return to Kenya for a 'swan song' visit, but that's not to be.  It would have marked the fifty year anniversary of my first setting foot in Africa on 12th September 1968.

So what were we doing in the weeks before we left what a friend of mine so charmingly calls 'Blighty' ?   Well, we had been living in a two roomed rented flat on the second floor in a tower block in Selly Oak, Birmingham.   

   

(Goodness me, what a dreary looking building it was !)

We had given up our teaching jobs and were ready to go off on an adventure !!  Teaching contracts with the Kenyan Government were organised through the Ministry of Overseas Development; I vaguely remember that they organised a sort of induction weekend for new ex-pat teachers going out to Africa, somewhere in Surrey ?   We didn't go on it as we had already booked a camping trip to France before we left for Africa.

We had furniture, books, kitchen equipment, etc. etc. to dispose of before we left.  Some things we sold, and then took our furniture and 'stuff' to my mothers for her to store in a spare room in her Norfolk cottage, assuming we'd be back in 21 months and would need furniture, etc.  Then, we never assumed it would be nearly 11 years before we were back living in the UK.  We packed various things we thought would be useful to have in Kenya, to be shipped out.   (Here I need to check the archive of letters I've mentioned before, to see if we sent sea luggage in advance .... those letters are proving to be very useful !)   I know some things went air freight.  

During our last six weeks in Birmingham we had masses of 'jabs', against yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis of two types, tetanus, polio, typhoid, etc.   And then ordered anti-malarial tablets; we started our time in Kenya taking paludrine every day, but after a few years, it was thought to be no longer effective, so we switched to another anti-malarial.   

The UK government provided ex-pats going to the tropics with a little book called 'The Preservation of Personal Health in Warm Climates' .... with enough gory details to put anyone off actually going !   It came complete with photographs of tse-tse flies, anopheles mosquitoes, bed-bugs, jigger sores, head lice and ticks ... and diagrams as to the correct and incorrect way of hanging a mosquito net.    We read up on sleeping sickness, typhus, bilharzia and plague; leprosy, rabies and syphilis ... snake bites .... scorpions .......... 

But we went ...........  read on .........

Kisumu shopping in 1969

Remember my box of letters home 'from the front' (Nyanza, actually) ??     Looking through some of them, I found this shopping list from June 1969, which I had sent home for my mother to see .... think I was trying to impress her !

We were living at Maranda Secondary School at the time, a few miles from Bondo, west of Kisumu and only a mile or two from the lake.  Shopping meant a drive of about 40 miles over an appalling road, and usually took about two hours, to allow for punctures or broken exhaust pipe or some other car disaster.  So shopping was done about once every three to four weeks, and meant an all day trip, leaving about 7 a.m., and getting back after dark ... we usually met up with friends in town for lunch, and had a swim at the club !

      So it would seem we bought 25 lbs white sugar (actually the gritty, 'dirty' sugar which nowadays is clean and sold here as 'golden granulated' cane sugar);  3 lbs brown sugar; 20 lbs flour; tin baking powder (no self raising flour available).   

      12 packets biscuits, 10 pkts cream crackers.  

       32 pints UHT milk, 3 lbs milk powder, 2 lbs tea, 32 shillings worth of coffee (no idea what quantity that would be ... maybe a large tin of instant Nescafe ?) and 2 lbs ground coffee.

      12 tins fruit, 12 tins baked beans, 12 tins green beans, 12 tins carrots, 12 tins peas.  (We could buy some fresh veg in Bondo market [3 miles away] but usually only tomatoes, onions and sukuma weki - a type of strongly flavoured kale.)

       20 tins meat, (Spam, corned beef, tinned stewing beef) 6 tins soup, 2 packet soups.  Meat was available in Bondo on a Friday, but often meant waiting until the butcher had finished killing the cow.

       12 jellies, 6 tins jam, 6 chocolate puddings (Instant Whip type).

       Bottle HP sauce, jar pickle, salt, 6 squash base (this was a concentrated squash that had to be mixed with sugar and water to make 4 bottles of ordinary squash.)

       Tin of yeast; tin of cocoa; 3 large packs corn flakes.

       6 x 1lb. tins Blue Band (margarine); 2 tins Kimbo (a sort of lard cooking fat).

       12 Fanta lemon (fizzy pop)

      36 eggs; 2 packs porridge oats, 2 packs spaghetti, 2 lbs rice (the weevils were not charged for .... nor those in the flour).  1 lb sultanas.

       24 boxes matches, 12 loo rolls, 6 packs OMO, 3 cans IT  (pyrethrum insect spray), 3 tubs VIM, 1 Zal (absolutely no idea now what that was), 2 Colgate tooth paste, 2 bottles shampoo, 8 bars soap.   

(An email from a friend today suggests Zal might be Izal .... that hard nasty toilet paper, but I don't think so, as we already had 12 loo rolls on the list).

(Another email [I've stirred up interest here !] suggests that it IS Izal .... which apart from a nasty scratchy loo paper, 50 years ago was also a disinfectant, in a bottle .... a bit like Savlon or Dettol .... this sounds much more likely !)

       1 lb Cheddar cheese, 1 round cheese (maybe Edam ??) 2 lbs butter, 2 loaves bread (I was making bread every two days), 1 lb bacon, 1 lb sausages.

Living by myself now, I am staggered at the quantity of food two of us consumed in a month, plus any visitors, plus small rations for the 'staff' (usually sugar, tea and soap).   We bought all this in Kisumu Grocers, and then went on to the town market for fresh vegetables and fruit, and perhaps fresh fish.   We carried a cold box with ice packs in for the butter, cheese and any fresh meat or fish we bought; even so, the meat and fish was warm by the time we got it home to the fridge (paraffin powered), so had to be eaten quickly.

Kisumu Grocers to the right of the clock tower in 1970.   

Run by a lovely Asian family, the daughter of whom I met many years later on a train in Canada !!

More on the Lothagam burial site

I found a slightly different report; basically saying a lot of the same details, but with interesting interpretations and comparisons .... and gerbils !

About 5,000 years ago, a tribe of roving herders paused by a lake in what is now Kenya to bury their dead. Their undertaking (no pun intended) evolved into one of the most massive and monumental construction projects Africa had ever seen.

After more than 450 years of digging into bedrock, piling up sandstone slabs and ritually burying generation after generation of the deceased, the tribe completed what researchers now consider the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in eastern Africa: a sprawling field of rocky rings, stone columns and burial mounds known as the Lothagam North Pillar Site.

At only a few feet high apiece, the site's eponymous pillars might not stand as tall or as opulent as other burial monuments of antiquity, like the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt or the Mausoleum of Maussollos in what is now Turkey — and that's what makes them remarkable. According to a new study published in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lothagam North was a monument built for the people, by the people. Here, the honored dead are not merely emperors and elites, but rather tribe members of every age and gender, buried side by side without discrimination.

The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the earliest known monumental site in eastern Africa, built by the region's first herders," lead study author Elisabeth Hildebrand, an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York, said in a statement. "This finding makes us reconsider how we define social complexity and the kinds of motives that lead groups of people to create public architecture."

The first herders in east Africa

The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the oldest of six known monument sites built near Lake Turkana, in Kenya, between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago — a time when diminished rainfall led to retreating shore-lines that revealed new, fertile plains for herbivores to feed on.

In the midst of this environmental shift, culture changed as well. The first herding tribes had just begun spreading into eastern Africa, the researchers wrote in the study. Here, the tribes were forced to develop new technologies, new strategies for survival and new forms of cultural expression.

The construction of the Lothagam North Pillar Site — essentially a public cemetery — was likely one form that expression took. The centerpiece of the site is a raised stone platform roughly 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter, capped with monolithic basalt and sandstone columns hauled from nearly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away. Within this platform is a burial chamber that may have once held up to 580 individuals in tightly packed graves, the researchers wrote.

Under the stones

Lothagam North has been studied as an archaeological wonder since the 1960s, but this new study marks the first time researchers have taken an in-depth look at the social hierarchy (or lack thereof) of the site's dead.

According to the researchers, the deceased at Lothagam North were not buried according to any apparent class or caste system. Elders were buried alongside infants, women were buried alongside men and no individual remains were given special treatment that signified them as greater than their deceased peers. Nearly all of the skeletons found in the burial pit were ornamented with colorful jewelry. Many of the dead wore stone beads or jewelry made of ostrich eggshells. Some wore rings and bangles made of hippo ivory, while others wore headdresses made of animal incisors. One corpse wore a headpiece made of 405 gerbil teeth sourced from more than 100 individual gerbils.

Arrayed around the platform, a cluster of large stone circles and cairns(rough burial mounds made of rocks) gave the whole site a monumental footprint that encompassed more than 15,000 square feet (1,400 square meters) of terrain. Radiocarbon dating of the stones in the central platform revealed that the monument took anywhere from 450 to 900 years to complete.

During those centuries of construction, countless friends and neighbors would have gathered at Lothagam North to witness hundreds of ritual burial ceremonies, the researchers wrote.

"The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate, renew social ties, and reinforce community identity," study co-author Anneke Janzen, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said in the statement. "Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical landscape."

According to the researchers, Kenya's herder monuments could help reshape historical perceptions of social change and the emergence of complex societies. Lothagam North may be proof that the construction of massive, long-lasting public monuments do not require the crack of a whip or crowning of a king to carve out a foothold in history, they said. Perhaps all that is required is a strong communal will … and a few hundred gerbil teeth.

Originally published on Live Science.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

I love the idea of gerbils teeth being used to make jewelery !   

The latest 'Old Africa' magazines:

I had thought the current issue was lost in the post from Naivasha, but it has just arrived !  

Now to make a cup of coffee and settle down for a browse !   I note I didn't read the article in the previous issue about Ionides, the Greek snake catcher who lived in Kenya.   I remember reading books about him some years ago ... 'Life with Ionides', by Margaret Lane, which on  taking it from my shelves I see I bought in 1964, when I was newly qualified as a teacher with thoughts of visiting Africa sometime in the future; and another 'Mambas and Man-Eaters' by the man himself.  I see I bought that for six shillings and 30 cents in 1969, in Kenya !!  

~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

Hey ho !    "Old men will dream dreams ..." 

.... women too !!

Ancient Kenyan burial site

I've mentioned Lake Turkana (previously Lake Rudolf) several times in recent posts, so was really interested to read this article from 'The Star', quoting the Daily Mail, published in Kenya, about recent work done on the western side of the lake, near Eliye springs:-

The 5,000 year old cemetery built by Eastern Africa's earliest herders has been discovered in Kenya.

Traditional views of how early societies were formed have been called into question by the discovery of a cemetery dating back 5,000 years.  Experts say it was built by an egalitarian group of 'mobile pastoralists' - without a social hierarchy.  It was previously believed that a stratified social structure was necessary to enable the construction of large public buildings or monuments.

At least 580 people - men, women and children - were buried at the site in Eastern Africa millennia ago, according to archaeologists.  The cemetery - near Lake Turkana, in modern day Kenya - is the earliest and largest monumental cemetery.  The construction of such a big project contradicts long-standing beliefs about early complex societies. 

The international research team, which included experts from Stony Brook University in New York, say that the Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery.  They believe it was constructed and used over a period of several centuries, between about 5,000 and 4,300 years ago.  Early herders built a platform about 98 feet (30 metres) in diameter and excavated a large cavity in the centre to bury their dead.   After the cavity was filled and capped with stones, the builders placed large, megalith pillars, some sourced from as much as a half a mile (one kilometre) away, on top. Stone circles and cairns were added nearby.

The researchers say that an estimated minimum of 580 people were densely buried within the central platform cavity of the site.  Men, women, and children of different ages, from infants to the elderly, were all buried in the same area, without any particular burials being singled out with special treatment.  The researchers said that essentially all individuals were buried with personal ornaments and the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal throughout the cemetery.  They said these factors indicate a relatively egalitarian society without strong social stratification.

Historically, archaeologists have theorised that people built permanent monuments as reminders of shared history, ideals and culture, when they had established a settled, socially stratified agriculture society with abundant resources and strong leadership.  It was believed that a political structure and the resources for specialisation were prerequisites to engaging in monument building.  Ancient monuments have previously been regarded as reliable indicators of complex societies with differentiated social classes.  But the Lothagam North cemetery was built by mobile pastoralists who show no evidence of a rigid social hierarchy.

Doctor Elizabeth Sawchuk, of Stony Brook, said: 'This discovery challenges earlier ideas about monumentality.  Lothagam North provides an example of monumentality that is not demonstrably linked to the emergence of hierarchy, forcing us to consider other narratives of social change.'  She said the discovery is consistent with similar examples elsewhere in Africa and on other continents in which large, monumental structures have been built by groups thought to be egalitarian in their social organisation.  The research team said the discover has the potential to reshape global perspectives on how - and why - large groups of people come together to form complex societies.

They said it appears that Lothagam North was built during a period of profound change.  Pastoralism had just been introduced to the Turkana Basin and newcomers arriving with sheep, goats, and cattle would have encountered diverse groups of fisher-hunter-gatherers already living around the lake.

The research team said newcomers and locals faced a difficult environmental situation, as annual rainfall decreased during that period and Lake Turkana shrunk by as much as 50 per cent.  They believe early herders may have constructed the cemetery as a place for people to come together to form and maintain social networks to cope with major economic and environmental change.

Dr Anneke Janzen, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said: 'The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate, renew social ties, and reinforce community identity.  Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical landscape.  After several centuries, pastoralism became entrenched and lake levels stabilised. It was around this time that the cemetery ceased to be used.'

Study leader Associate Professor Elisabeth Hildebrand, of Stony Brook University, added: 'The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the earliest known monumental site in eastern Africa, built by the region's first herders.  'This finding makes us reconsider how we define social complexity, and the kinds of motives that lead groups of people to create public architecture.'

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I was interested to see that several of the 'pendants' were made of rose quartz and red jasper; we found many of these (unworked) stones when camping on the east side of the lake, and my oldest daughter was very good at spotting them, and also worked obsidian tools.  I must ask her if she still has her collection of them !

African Rhapsody

I found this on https://www.facebook.com/SafariAnts/photos/a.1337265299688273/1660198684061598/?type=3&theater
which seems to be the facebook page of Susie Kelly, the author of the book I just wrote about !

Its a bit slushy, but I understand and love the sentiments.

More books I've been reading ....

... do I read anything except books about Africa ?!   Not often ...

This book with the strange title could almost have been written by myself; the author and I share so many Kenya experiences and thoughts, many of which I've already blogged about in the past !

She writes about her first return to Kenya after about 40 years absence to go on an organised safari with friends.   So many pages made me think "Gosh, that's exactly as I did" or "She thinks the same way as me about Africa's future".   

http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2012/02/braless-in-nairobi-read-on.html

She writes about her Pope John Paul moment, as I did (click the link) .... and also the bra-less moment, as I did (same link).    I'd love to meet this lady.    

~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

The other book I've read this week is this one:-

Its a mystery story, not travel/autobiography as is 'Safari Ants ...' but mostly set in Kenya, with odd chapters in S. Africa and elsewhere.   I was enthralled .... and although it was clear 'who dun-it' I didn't anticipate the twist in the tail.   

There are so many old European owned houses in Kenya that only just now being renovated and conserved .... see  https://www.facebook.com/happyvalleytrust/

'Old Africa' magazine also has articles about some of them, and the house called 'Mbabati', (if it actually existed other than as a location for a murder mystery), would be a suitable candidate for conservation.   We had friends who rented a huge old colonial house at Njoro, and the old missionary house we lived in at Maseno, would both be interesting houses for the Happy Valley Trust to record and maybe conserve........ I must send them photos !  

Thoughts .....

(I remembered that back in my very first week of blogging, I was writing about Kenya now, as compared to Kenya then)     See   http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2010/07/empire-or-independence.html

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I've had connections with Africa (mostly Kenya, but include Namibia, Egypt, Zambia, Nigeria, Uganda, etc. etc.) for nigh on 50 years.   What have I observed and learned in that time, and how do I see the next 50 years for my favourite continent ?  Big order !!

A quote from a recent email from an old Dutch friend, a newly retired Mill Hill Missionary, said -  "The aim of a missionary, is to make himself superfluous."   As the wife of a mzungu teacher sent out to Kenya in 1968, this is certainly what we were doing by the end of the 1970's.  It's like having children; there comes a time when they have to fly free, and make their own mistakes out in the world away from home.  I've been watching young sparrows leaving their nests; unfortunately my cats catch and dispatch many of them, but some survive.    So when the wazungu left Kenya, many systems we had set up, and to which we gave flight, have since failed and been forgotten.  

I remember back in the late 1960's being concerned that we were teaching African students in the high school to become, in effect, white collar workers, taking over ex-pat office roles in the big cities and government offices.  However, those jobs, even then, were filled in the three or four years since independence by the first wave of African  25 - 30 year old graduates, who would be 'on seat' (to quote an African expression !) for perhaps 30 years.  Even by 1970 there was much unemployment of the 'educated' Africans, who were moving to the capital in search of work.  Shouldn't the British ex-pat experts have been educating African students to become artisans, skilled in carpentry, building, electronics, plumbing, engineering, tailoring, agriculture, catering, how to run a business, and so on ?  But what did the African students in schools have as role models ?   White (or Asian) teachers, in white shirts, who rarely got their hands dirty in manual tasks !  I well remember the astonished row of faces peering at us over the garden hedge, as we dug our own garden, and grew our own vegetables, and did our own car repairs.

Now when I go back to Kisumu, I talk to many African children, and ask them what they want to do with their lives.   99% of them want to go to Nairobi and become doctors, teachers or nurses.   And 99% of them will likely go to Nairobi, and end up unemployed, with no skills, and living on a dollar (or less) a day in the slums like Kibera, Korogocho and Mahira, or if they stay in Kisumu, then they might end up in Pandipieri, Nyalenda or Manyatta B.   Is this what they have to look forward to ? And that mysterious 'dollar a day' we often read about in the news, how do they actually get that ? Small petty crime, drug dealing, scavenging and selling on anything useful found in the rubbish which is everywhere.

Kibera slum housing  -  (photo from  'The Ed Colina Foundation')

Nowadays, many new roads and a new railway from Mombasa to the capital and beyond are being built ... by the Chinese !    Kenya is a rich country, and there is plenty of money being generated in the country, but it seems to go only into the pockets of the 1%.  Why, 54 years after independence, is Kenya still relying on foreign engineers, architects and designers ?    The labourers on these projects are all more or less unskilled Africans.   

It seems to me that its easy to say the fault lies with the government and the newly rich Africans …. but isn't what is happening all over Africa just the same as it was when the Europeans first set foot in the 'dark' continent ? They saw possibilities and wealth there for the taking, and moved in, to exploit and plunder Africa, firstly with slave trading, then gold and ivory, and finally, with land.  The so called  'White Man's Country' of Lord Delamere, and written about by Elspeth Huxley. The Africans were just a nuisance that could be exploited as cheap labour, and then maybe given a little simple education, enough to be able to serve the white man, but (hopefully) not enough to make them want more. I keep thinking of a quote/poem by Desmond Tutu:

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible, and we had the land.

They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes.

When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. “

One 'growth industry' I have observed over the years, is the huge expansion of different types of Christian churches in Kenya; Orthodox, Pentecostal, Anglican, Catholic, the 'Israeli' church, the Legio Maria Christian sect, various American style mission churches .......... they all provide a focus and support for people, and the richer ones like the Catholics have done enormous good in pastoral care, medicine, schooling.   What will be their future in Africa ?  Here, friends were commenting that 100 years ago, we sent white missionaries to Africa, and that maybe its the time we had some black ones come here to invigorate our dying churches !

So now, its some of the richer and more educated Africans who are exploiting other Africans, and bringing in 'foreign' experts rather than training their own. And maybe in another 50 years …. well, some sort of equilibrium is what we can hope for, in a stable continent, which has plenty for all, if its shared fairly. The white teachers, missionaries, settlers, medical people who came, stayed briefly and went, will mostly all be forgotten, as they should be, and Africa will be for the Africans.   As it should be.

Another old map !

Sorting out my books, I had a real look at my fathers 'New Gresham English Dictionary', published 1926, which I remember him telling me he had bought 'to educate himself'.   If he bought it new, he must have been only 19 or 20 at the time.   Being an orphan and disabled, he hadn't had much of an education or good start in life.   I remember him sitting browsing his dictionary when I was a young child !    Its an interesting book, for as well as being a dictionary in the usual sense, it also has maps, illustrations, and 'facts' about all sorts of things, like, for e.g. how an engine works.  

But the maps at the back caught my attention, especially the one of (guess where !) Africa.   If the dictionary was published in 1926, then the maps must pre-date that.   Here's East Africa ... 

What caught my attention was L. Sugota, right in the centre, just below L. Rudolf (now renamed L. Turkana) and north of L. Baringo.   Lake Sugota ?   I know most of the Kenyan Rift Valley lakes well, but that was a new one on me, so of course I went to Google .... 

"Lake Suguta is a former lake; it formed in the Suguta Valley which is part of the East African Rift, south of Lake Turkana during the Holocene.   The lake existed a number of times during history, most recently during the early and middle Holocene when a stronger monsoon caused increased precipitation in the basin of the lake. The lake then reached a top elevation of 577 metres (1,893 ft) above sea level, when it overflowed into the Kerio River and then into Lake Turkana. The lake possibly ultimately drained into the Nile.   Between 8,000 and 5,000 years ago the lake progressively dried up; today only the small Lake Logipi occupies the area."

The word 'former' explains why I never saw L. Sugota during two or three expeditions to the Rudolf/Turkana area, and I think Lake Logipi is probably also seasonal.

"Lake Logipi is a saline, alkaline lake that lies at the northern end of the arid Suguta Valley in the northern Kenya Rift. It is separated from Lake Turkana by the Barrier volcanic complex, a group of young volcanoes that last erupted during the late 19th Century or early 20th Century."   (In 1921, in fact, effectively blocked the outflow from L. Sugota).     And I strongly suspect there is an underground outflow from the Soguta valley and Longipi into Lake Turkana. 

I love old maps !   They provoke so many extra and interesting questions, and where would we be without Google ?