Locating the Il Chamus

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Il Chamus modes of livelihood have been characterized by high fluctuation and flexible adaptation to climatic volatility and to political and economic transformation. They were ‘herders by inclination but farmers out of necessity’ (Little 1992: 33, Anderson 2002: ch.2,3), combining a mostly sedentary form of pastoralism3 This mode of pastoralism, which is broadly shared by inhabitants of the area, involves temporary medium-range (20–30 km) herd movement during the dry season (Little 1992: 35). and agricultural production with intermittent periods of predominantly pastoralist livelihood patterns that included a strongly grain-based diet between the 1920s and 1970 (Little 1992: ch.2, Little et al. 2008: 509).4 Il Chamus simultaneously continued to rely heavily on grain (maize meal) trade and consumption, in particular during the dry season when, as part of a transhumant livelihood pattern, they divided up stock species and members of a household (ekang) between different areas and cattle posts. Il Chamus occupied an increasingly marginal position, first within the colonial economy and then in the national body politic of the independent Kenyan state. Their form of pastoralism has made them progressively more vulnerable to state policies that from early on affected livestock and grain distribution in the area and made them dependent on a market-based distribution of subsistence goods (Little 1992: 61). Initially, the British colonial order generated some security and protection for Il Chamus against raiding Maasai, Tugen, and Pokot groups, and allowed the majority of Il Chamus families to move away from irrigated agriculture and into transhumant pastoralism in the 1910s (Anderson 1989: 252–4, Little 1992: 94, Little 1998: 448–9) and, starting in the 1920s, to build up significant livestock holdings throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Simultaneously, however, the colonial state undermined the long-term viability of pastoralist livelihoods by seriously reducing the size of vital grazing zones (Little 1992: 39).

The period between 1920 and 1945 was a period of major land-use change in the rain-fed crop-producing areas of Baringo, as finger millet was replaced by maize as the most important crop. Larger political economic transformations since the 1960s included a state-enforced, growing dependence of Il Chamus on grain import and consumption, effected essentially through a state-controlled export production scheme (Little 1992: 53–4).

Starting in the mid-1970s, in a reversal of the early-20th century shift from agriculture to pastoralism, many Il Chamus families increasingly relied on irrigated agriculture and dry-land farming (Little 1985: 246). This trend was prompted by several developments, among them the weakening of herd owners’ purchasing powers because of a higher inflation rate for maize and other food items than for cattle; the negative effects of livestock market quarantines (Little 1992: 56–7); periods of severe drought; and the downsizing of livestock holdings for many poorer families, which meant that they could no longer rely on cattle as the main basis of livelihood. As a consequence, wealth and power inequalities between different households, while being rooted in 19th-century political and economic inequalities (Anderson 1981, Little 1992: ch.2) have resulted in growing social differentiation and socioeconomic cleavages within Il Chamus society that showed in highly unequal livestock ownership and in poorer families’ higher expenditure of cash income to purchase grain for consumption (Little et al. 2008).

The situation was further compounded by a loss in communal grazing areas since the mid-1980s, as a result of a higher population density, intensification of agriculture and the prosopis invasive species. An expanding economy of violence and trans-border arms trade in northern Kenya since the 1980s (Mkutu 2005), combined with the effects of the 1992 introduction of multipartyism, end of Moi regime in 2002, and devolution since 2010 (Greiner 2013), put many Il Chamus in a disadvantaged position vis-à-vis the neighbouring Pokot.5 Little et al. (2009: 156) estimate that since the early 2000s, Il Chamus families have lost about 30 per cent of their grazing land because of violent cattle raiding and encroachment by well-armed Pokot. The Il Chamus’ successful litigation process against the Kenyan state over the prosopis invasive species turned them into a cause célèbre of successful ‘lawfare’ politics (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006), that is, of making the court a battlefield to gain political rights. Nevertheless, the actual economic benefits of the commodification of prosopis have been limited (Little 2019, Odhiambo 2015).6 In 2006 Il Chamus lawyers sued the Kenyan government, arguing that introducing the invasive prosopis plant breached international human-rights and environmental laws. The lawyers won the case in 2007 and sparked celebration in the Il Chamus community. However, soon it became clear that the court order to eradicate prosopis from the area would be costly, and it was never seriously considered or implemented by the Kenyan government (Little 2019, Odhiambo 2015).

As an indicator of the relative economic marginality of Il Chamus residents of the Baringo area, opportunities to generate an additional income are scarce, for women even more so than for men. Most members of a household or ‘homestead’ (ekang) lead a sedentary lifestyle, with a highly diversified family economy based additionally on waged labour, trading, and irrigated agriculture or dryland farming (Little et al. 2008: 509). Regardless of these activities and resources, most families strive to maintain or rebuild at least some livestock herds. Household diversification strategies reveal significant, socioeconomic cleavages within Il Chamus society; income strategies vary significantly from ecological zone of the Baringo area to another and with the respective security situation. Near the shores of the lake, families additionally rely on small-scale fishing. Young men who live close to Marigat town and tourist resorts in Kampi Ya Samaki (close to Lake Baringo), seek to generate an income from the tourist economy and by providing motorbike transport services. Charcoal production has diminished with the 2018 governmental ban on charcoal burning.

Like other Maa-speaking societies with whom they share genealogical roots (see Hodgson 2005, Straight 2007), Il Chamus historically believed in the existence of a higher divinity that rarely interfered in their daily affairs. They also solicited the support of ancestor spirits and other spiritual entities to ensure well-being and prosperity for individual families and the larger collectivity. Many Il Chamus refer to their engagements with these invisible entities not as ‘traditional religion’ but as ‘culture’. Even if today, Il Chamus Christians use the term ‘traditional religion’ in contradistinction from (modern) ‘Christianity’, we need to keep in mind that these are emic terms inflected by missionary Christianity, not analytical categories.

The written historical record on early missionary presence among the Il Chamus is scant. It appears that the Baringo area received almost no missionary attention until the 1960s, except for the African Inland Mission (AIM), which intervened mostly in the Tugen Hills and in Eldama Ravine south of Lake Baringo. In the 1960s, the St. Patrick Society for the Foreign Missions, an Irish branch of the Catholic Holy Ghost order,7 The order is also called ‘Kiltegan Fathers’, after its headquarters in Kiltegan, County Wicklow, Ireland. founded a mission station at Marigat, which was taken over in 1982 by the Franciscan Missionaries of St. Joseph, a women’s congregation.8 David Anderson reports that during his archival work at the AIM archives (Billy Graham Center) in Wheaton, Illinois, he came across a few diaries from the early 1900s that related to missionary activity in Eldama Ravine and Laikipia but did not specifically mention the Il Chamus (David Anderson, email communication, January 2020). AIM missionaries also established a presence in Kiserian in the early 1960s.9 Handwritten historical record kept by P.Sikamoi, Kiserian.

Facilitated by rapid state investment in formal education, as a by-product of President Arap Moi’s favouritist policy toward the area in the 1980s and 1990s, many Il Chamus families have integrated school education of select children into their livelihood-diversification strategies, as demonstrated by a sharp increase in school enrolment and attendance between the 1980s and 2000s (Little et al. 2009: 155, 157).10 According to Little et al. (2009: 156-157), by 1999 about 10 per cent of the total Il Chamus population worked or attended school outside the district. But enrolment rates for boys and girls remain highly uneven, as do the numbers of completed degrees (see Archambault 2011). Progress in female enrolment has been made mostly at the primary-school level. Girls’ post-primary-school drop-out numbers remain high because of early marriage and limited prospects of female salaried employment. Female school attendance appears to facilitate early pregnancies and a broader shift from conventional marriage to cohabitation. Also, prevalent virilocal residential patterns make it so that many parents feel that investing in their daughters’ school education will not benefit them to the same degree as it will their in-laws (Little et al. 2009: 157f). This tendency has been reinforced, rather than attenuated, by the shrinking of the public sector since the late 1980s, which has rendered the prospect of employment in the sector more and more uncertain. Still, Little et al. (2009: 160–2) state a significantly higher reliance on education-based salaried employment and trading as a risk management strategy and buffer against a loss of cattle through droughts and raids, to generate livelihood security beyond the pastoral circuit.

What emerges from this multi-layered, longue durée history of Il Chamus society in the Baringo region is the picture of a complexly stratified, rural society whose conceptions of the future and future-making strategies are not uniform, but need to be explored through a focus on specific segments of rural society. We will do this below by looking at those groups for whom the option of constructing a future for themselves and their own families by converting to Christianity arose due to their proximity to the Christian mission in Kiserian.