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Pokot remains home to the largest black mambas, spitting cobras and camel spiders I have seen anywhere. One mamba who lived by the seasonal riverbed was in the T Rex class of scary reptiles.
Encouraging a
stock substitution programme from cattle to camels is never easy. Often a
person’s entire wealth may be ‘on the hoof’ and there is the matter of personal
status as well. Cattle are also usually required as payment for lobola ‘the bride price’, which is a subject that deserves its own separate post. Camel husbandry requires its own set of
skills which have to be learned carefully, as their loss would be a severe blow to
the owner.
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| Spraying the camels for external parasites |
However benefits easily outweigh the risks. They can lactate far longer into the dry
season, providing a milk supply particularly valuable to the women and
children. The soft padded feet do not
compact the soil and there are selective browsers often of thorny bushes rather
than grazing cattle that quickly remove the sparse vegetative covering and of course they have a greater tolerance
to thirst and hunger than cattle.
The Pokot
eventually used scoops harnessed to camels to create dams which
would capture and hold water when the rains came. One of these dams was nearly my undoing. Returning
late at night on a XT500 motorbike, I ran
into a very large bad tempered crocodile that had unexpectantly made one dam its home and was out for a midnight stroll. With much wobbling I managed to
stay on the bike and avoid its open jaws. It was rather a shock for both of
us.
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| Camels scraping out a seasonal dam |
