PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

informants, relatives, neighbours and friends (stock associates) will help
and contribute an animal. Animals provided by others are not purely gifts,
and those who give expect to get back at a later stage. The reciprocal claim
can go from one generation to the next. Informants re-affirmed that the
Turkana people traditionally regard the reciprocal system as part of risk
management as it enables the community to establish social bonds of
mutuality between affiliated parties.
For instance, a Turkana man pays livestock to get a wife, the wife gives
him daughters who will be married for bridewealth, and this bridewealth
can be invested in new wives and social networks through reciprocity. It
follows that a family that has lost livestock, but has daughters of
marriageable age, can quickly recover from losses as the girls get married,
but also, sons will grow up and get married, which will lead to payment of
bridewealth and reduction in the number of cattle. This scenario is best
explained by Figure 11, which shows the financial investment of capital
and savings from a male perspective. Boys are seen to reduce the number
of cattle through payment of bridewealth, and daughters are seen to add to
it. In this process, a 16 year old girl informally lamented that:
Girls do not have much say in this process. If she
refuses to marry a certain man accepted by the father,
her father may even kill her (Informal interview,
Morulem village 20 th March 2007).
Informants also claimed that by dividing herds into several units, some as
reciprocal claims and some taken care of by relatives, reduces the chance
of losing everything if a disease erupts, or if a particular cattle camp gets
raided. It is also a strategy for not letting the community know how many
animals a person has. There is a general fear that knowing the exact
number of livestock an individual has may spell disaster or bridewealth
and claims will be adjusted accordingly. This is also the reason why it is
impossible to get an accurate answer when asking Turkana men how
many animals they own. They would either not tell, or they would
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