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

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Figure 18: Livestock losses.<br />

Source: Republic of Kenya 2006: 9.<br />

For the Turkana case, computation of the data reveals that before the<br />

2005-2006 droughts, each of the 80 households studied owned an average<br />

of nine cattle, 11 sheep and goats, two camels and two donkeys (see Table<br />

5). 118 According to the discussion in Chapter 4, these numbers were still<br />

below the minimum livestock units that pastoral households require to<br />

resist drought cycles. 119 This may partially explain why the Turkana<br />

people were more vulnerable. Household heads explained that they had<br />

less stock prior to the 2005-2006 droughts and famine because the<br />

drought condition under study occurred just before they were sufficiently<br />

recovered from the 2000 drought. Respondents stressed that there was<br />

118 Average numbers of livestock per household during the pre and post-drought period<br />

were arrived at by dividing the total number of each species by the total number of<br />

families interviewed.<br />

119 Niamir-Fuller and Turner (1999) found that the minimum number of livestock units<br />

below which a pastoral household is unable to resist drought cycles is 50.<br />

184

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