I remember the sweltering heat of Niamey the capital of
Niger which played host to the 33rd
ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights in May
2003 for at least two reasons. First, it is during this session that CEMIRIDE
and Minority Rights Group International filed a Petition on behalf of the
Endorois community over state annexation of Lake bogoria which 8 years later
would yield a landmark decision that would energize the indigenous movement in
Kenya and the continent. Second, and relevant to this article, is that I had
the opportunity to meet Dr. Melakou Tegegne who was then working with
Panos in Adis Abeba.In between escaping the unbearable temperatures in Niamey
by partaking copious mugs of iced Karkade- the Sahelian beverage made out of
hibiscus flowers- we conversed at length on models for advocacy of pastoralist
rights.
Ethiopia, according to Melakou, had pioneered a very
innovative concept of facilitating constructive dialogue between the state and
pastoralists, namely the Ethiopian Pastoralist Day (EPD). An initial concept of
the Pastoralist Forum of Ethiopia, EPD had grown into an annual event that was
hosted under the auspices of the Ministry of Federal Affairs. It was
unsurprising, given the stature of the event, for the chief executive of the
country-the Prime Minister- to attend the events of the day. This discussion
formed an important conceptual bedrock upon which the Kenya Pastoralists Week
(KPW) was initiated.
In designing KPW, there was a clear appreciation that unlike
in Ethiopia, in Kenya, state and media response towards pastoralism as a
livelihood was ambivalent at best and
hostile at worst. Additionally, Kenya’s highly centralized state which
concentrated all vital state functions in the capital, Nairobi, militated
against the adoption of the Ethiopian model where the EPD, thanks to the
federal character of the state, was hosted in various regions occupied by
pastoralist groups on a rotational basis.
The dynamism of Kenya’s political milieu also meant that any advocacy
process needed to puncture the popular imagination in ways quite different from
the Ethiopian experience, where EPD had gradually become mainstreamed into
formal state programming. The need to also ensure that KPW’s approach enabled
the envoicing and ownership of pastoralist groups across the country weighed
heavily on the program design.
Balancing the foregoing imperatives was a fairly unenviable
task. In the end, the KPW was developed as a programme whose philosophy was to
provide safe and creative national space for positive profiling of pastoralism.
To deliver, KPW needed to grow out of community agency-through supporting the
execution of ‘zonal events’- and engage the state at the national level through
a week long program of activities. Such
effort aside from the demands of its scale and scope could only be carried
forward through a multi-stakeholder approach.
It was conceived that CEMIRIDE would provide the technical and
secretariat role but that the program structure would bring together a range of
local and national advocacy and state institutions whose competencies would
bear on successful implementation. Coordinating the local and national efforts
and creating vertical and horizontal links for the panoply of actors with
varied interests, messages, methodologies
and capacities was and remains a huge challenge. Yet, it is this cacophony,
this untidy knot, that has continued to enrich the programme, sustaining it
through the initial years when resource mobilization was a dreary affair to its
current less volatile phase.
Through its ten year evolution, KPW has transformed into an
important national platform for visible articulation of concerns of pastoralist
groups but also an instigator of the elusive pan-pastoralists solidarity in the
context of policy advocacy. The program has enabled communities dramatize their
social economic predicaments as demonstrated for instance during the ‘great
trek campaign’ in 2005 which raised national consciousness by way of an
aggressive media campaign that captured the 1 month long trek of community
groups tired of the state neglect of the Moyale-Isiolo road as a broad metaphor
for the economic exclusion of Northern Kenya. Indeed, communities credit the
KPW for the ongoing tarmacking of this important road that links Kenya and
Ethiopia-with enormous economic potential. KPW has catalyzed the emergence of institutions,
including the League of Pastoralist Women, which started as part of KPW’s
attempt to increase pastoralist women voices in governance. In the ebbs and
flows of Kenya’s search for a new constitution and its effective
implementation, KPW has been a crucial site for enabling active engagement of
community groups with such crucial national processes. KPW has not just been
about intra-pastoralist conversation. Rather, it has also enabled policy makers
and mainstream groups to engage with these communities not as noble savages of
a bygone era, but as equal citizens of a diverse democracy. This legitimation
for me was most apposite when in the 2006 KPW forum ,children from various
primary schools in Nairobi held an art exhibition at KICC where they captured
on canvass their innocent views of pastoralism. That this forum was graced by
Njeeri Ngugi, the wife of Kenya’s celebrated literary giant, Ngugi wa Thingo,
suggests the potential inherent in KPW as a space for a more rigorous
cross-cultural conversation on the Kenya we should crave for. The pastoral
parades that increased Nairobi’s traffic snarl ups and the penultimate gala
night in which pastoral cuisine and couture abound evince an impulse to engage
the ‘other’ without trepidation.
It would be remiss if I were to suggest that KPW has evolved
without the sweat and blood of many leaders. In its annals stand tall, men such
as the late Eddy Ekuam who was the constant master of ceremonies at gala
events; the late Guracha Konchora, whose
pen gave forth the first edition of the Pastoralist
Post. Women such as Alyce Kureiya and Josephine Nashipae, too who have
borne the pain and joy of carrying forward KPW’s visionand must be saluted. My
worthy successor at CEMIRIDE, Yobo Rutin, who is now leading the charge in
taking KPW to the Counties, cannot go unmentioned.
Perhaps then, the story of KPW is the story of relationships
build, experiences shared and of struggles waged. Its nascent success presents
important lessons, not just on policy advocacy but on the need to finally
address the challenge of inclusion and belonging in the country. None of us
should feel strangers in this commonwealth. Much remains to be done given the
perfidious state’s paternalism of pastoralists as needing command and control
type of governance in order to bring them peace, health, happiness, and other
benefits of civilization . . . But, undoubtedly-and this must change- the extension
of government control is directly related to protecting the economic interests
of the Nairobi government-which often has little to do with the guys on the
margins of our collective geographical space..
Long live KPW!
