Skip to main content

Tribes in Kenya Wage Water War -- In These Times

Tribes in Kenya Wage Water War -- In These Times: "For hundreds of years, the Turkana have herded cattle, sheep and goats. They are among the most nomadic people in the world, constantly moving in search of pasture for their livestock. But the changing climate and marginalization by successive governments have caused resources to dwindle at a startling rate across the Turkana’s traditional home.

“It was easier before,” says Loochi’s father Akadaye as he holds a protective palm over Loochi’s damaged eye. “We used to have dry periods, but the rains did eventually come. But now it just goes on and on.” Droughts that once appeared every decade have started ravaging the land every two or three years, throwing the tribe’s migratory patterns into disarray.

All this is undoubtedly due to climate change. Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro have seen their ice caps recede during the last 60 years and Lake Chad, which extends over Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria has lost 80 percent of its water since 1980.

But a sanguine Loochi, having lived only in drought in his young life, sweeps his gun over the distant mountains and says the problem—and the solution—lies across the border, in Uganda. “They have all the green land, the water and the cattle,” he says. “We will go there tonight.”

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When Fracking Came to Suburban Texas

When Fracking Came to Suburban Texas January 01, 2013 "The Guardian" - -The corner of Goldenrod and Western streets, with its grid of modest homes, could be almost any suburb that went up in a hurry – except of course for the giant screeching oil rig tearing up the earth and making the pavement shudder underfoot. Fracking, the technology that opened up America's vast deposits of unconventional oil and gas, has moved beyond remote locations and landed at the front door, with oil operations now planned or under way in suburbs, mid-sized towns and large metropolitan areas. Some cities have moved to limit fracking or ban it outright – even in the heart of oil and gas country. Tulsa, Oklahoma, which once billed itself as the oil capital of the world, banned fracking inside city limits. The ...

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review : "The placement of four Ethiopian girls in a separate class from their peers at a Petah Tikva grade school has sparked accusations of segregation on Tuesday morning following a report in Yediot Aharonot. According to ‘Hamerhav’ principal, Rabbi Yeshiyahu Granvich, complete integration of the girls was impossible. The reason being, said municipal workers, was that the students were not observant enough, nor did their families belong to the national-religious movement that the school was founded upon. Among the differences in the daily school life of the girls, a single teacher was responsible to teach them all of their subjects. Worse yet, the four were allotted separate recess hours and were driven to and from school separately. Such action has been labeled by observers as “apartheid.”"