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

is argued that it appears that the 2005-2006 drought and famine must
have stimulated the Turkana District primary school enrolments to
increase.
Thirdly, out-migration became yet another mode of adaptation. During the
sojourn, the migrants exploited friendship, kinship, and affinal ties to get
food and shelter. Fourthly, Turkana pastoralists used reciprocity as an
insurance mechanism to counter the devastations of the drought and
famine, then and in the future. More significantly, the drought victims
formed small corporate groups of cohorts, pooled their surviving livestock
and left them in the care of a few among them as the rest dispersed to
Ethiopia and other towns in Kenya such as Kitale in search of alternative
means of livelihood. This pooling of resources had an added advantage, for
it enabled the herders to exploit economies of scale. It would hasten the
future return to the mainstream of pastoral life.
Regarding the second hypothesis, the data showed that adaptability is a
function of the physical, social, and economic environment. Our test
showed significant differences in levels of wealth, and livestock and human
deaths at the two localities, thus being indicative of variations in
adaptability. For instance, the people of Morulem village, because they
inhabited a hostile environment, suffered more severely than the people of
Lokichar, whose environment is more favourable to adaptability. It is that
a hostile environment impedes adaptability and contributes to human
vulnerability to the devastations of drought and famine.
8.5 Conclusion.
The findings of this study have important implications both for theory and
policy towards nomadic pastoralism in general, and Turkana in particular.
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