Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Kenya’s Masai people have adapted their semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle to suit their arid, fragile landscape, but the effects of the changing world on their cattle threatens their economy as well as their culture, writes FINTAN O'TOOLEin Enkaroni, Kenya

KOOYIAN NKARO is around 78, but the devilment in her eyes is that of a 12-year-old. She is standing in her compound – two wooden huts and a small pen for the animals – in Enkaroni, a small settlement in Masai country, south-west of Nairobi. She has a memory from her own parents of that city before it was one of Africa’s major capitals. On the way down here, we had regularly passed young Masai men with their herds of bony cattle, walking along the road to the city. When I asked her why all the men from around here were going to Nairobi, she replied, with a twinkle in her eyes but a tone of defiance in her voice: “Because it’s ours.”