An arid and unforgiving desert
Nariokotome, Kenya
Photographer’s Field Notes:
Nariokotome, Kenya. An arid and unforgiving desert, it is home to the Turkanas, natives who are traditionally nomadic pastoralists. One of the largest ethnic groups in Kenya, many of them also reside in town centres such as Nairobi, and across borders in Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. The year was 2012 and I was in between jobs when I first heard about The Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle (MCSPA). I decided to volunteer with the group and hopefully in the process, rack up some life-changing experiences.
I am the first to admit that I view the world through rose-tinted glasses and still possess the stubborn idealism of youth.
Before I left for Kenya, I shared with others the trip I was about to embark on. Inputs and opinions varied wildly, but two polar opposites stuck with me to this day. One was discouraging and mused on the ills of forced development in an unprepared continent, believing that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Yet, another was encouraging and believed that the world is coloured in a swath of grey instead of clear cut black and white issues. And so should solutions be borne out of necessity. I have since learned that nothing can be changed or improved upon if we sat around and quipped cynical quotes all day. I learnt to follow my gut, and the result was that the priceless experience grounded me and gifted me with long lasting genuine relationships.
MCSPA is committed to helping the natives in Nariokotome, whose lives still revolve around animal husbandry and the physical sourcing for food and water. From goats to cows and camels, livestock were raised to not only provide milk and meat, they also function as currency, with many a camel exchanged as dowry in a wedding. Nariokotome natives possess few and far between. Dome-shaped huts built from saplings, fronds and wood make their homes easy to build up and tear down when needed. Cow dung or mud are also used as building materials during wet seasons, which due to climate change and recurring droughts, are occurring less often. This has also led to many of them adapting to agro-pastoralism or fishing, which is uncommon practise and considered taboo for some of the Turkana clans due to superstitions and traditional beliefs.
A new job and the month of May came around before I had saved up enough time to take a month off to volunteer with MCSPA in northwest Kenya.
With 2 boxes of donated clothes and a backpack, I took a long haul flight to Nairobi via Dubai. There, I travelled by a local domestic plane to the gravel air strip of Lodwar. I met Father Antonio, a kindly but hardy priest with a wicked sense of humour, who flew me in a little propeller plane to the mission base in Nariokotome to the east of Lake Turkana.
The presence of MCSPA has had a 27-year history in Nariokotome, and their impact is undeniable. As with every Christian-based NGO, their core mission is to attend to the needs of the native people, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Evangelising is not without its dangers — one of their churches north of Nariokotome still bears bullet holes from conflict near the Ethiopian border. Fighting between the Turkana community and the Ethiopian indigenous people have a long history but has been fuelled recently by territorial disputes and the scarcity of food and pastureland.
Compounding the situation, locals on both sides are obtaining automatic weapons from neighbouring conflicts. Since my last visit, civil war in neighbouring Sudan had broken out, resulting in the split between Sudan and the newly formed, South Sudan.
Nonetheless, the missionaries have forged on and today, they have created a self-sustaining base running on solar power and water wells. There, they have learned to till the land, gently cultivating and nurturing a variety of plants and rearing livestock on small plots of farmland. Humble one-storey houses provide accommodation for the missionaries and visiting volunteers. A workshop stores construction equipment so that they can continue to build reservoirs, small schools, churches, and medical centres. Locals are hired to help in any way they can, from construction to gardening, with the mission returning the favour by helping natives to be self-sufficient.
During my time volunteering, I followed the proactive spirit and tried to aid in any way I could, from handling administrative work and taking photographs for their newsletters and evangelising materials, to basic housework. My lacklustre skills in the vegetable fields only serve to highlight how displaced I was in a natural environment. Far away from the comforts of modern society with our 24/7 supermarkets and ready to eat meals, I had to learn plenty of basic life skills in a short amount of time.
My inadequacy in the fields also highlights my hosts’ infinite patience at having me around for the duration of a month (to be fair I had nowhere else to go until the day of my return flight). The people I worked with were also an incredibly warm and welcoming community, allowing me freedom to roam the grounds and to participate in and document all aspects of their life in Nariokotome. I witnessed how the volunteers collected large scalding rocks in the harsh midday sun for gabions, to protect a riverbank next to the mission from soil erosion. I took photographs during their make-shift medical clinics, sometimes held simply under the shade of a large tree. There, we would provide basic health checks and administer vaccines for children and pregnant women. We drove around villages to teach agricultural skills to those who were interested and handed out basic farming equipment. I milked a cow. Badly. I had a fun time assisting the volunteer teachers with the children who would learn, for free, basic Swahili, English and Mathematics. I was far away from home, and yet strangely, never felt more at home.
My entire stint in Kenya triggered in me a hunger for social work which would lead to another volunteering trip to Mexico the following year, but that’s another story for another day.
I’m Nart!
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My Preferred Storytelling mediums are pens, brushes, needle & thread.
