October 2010

The author on a stretch of tarmac through Lost Kenya. Photo by Chris Fletcher.

The road we are on is variously called the Cape to Cairo Road, the Great North Road of Africa, or—my favorite—the Highway through Lost Kenya. Mostly it’s just the standard African corrugated dirt track that shakes you like a martini but every once in awhile we’ve hit a stretch of pristine blacktop where we can drive for ten or fifteen minutes without coming across another vehicle traveling in any direction before it suddenly ends just as quickly as it began and we’re back on the corrugated road again.

These short stretches of tarmac (which are officially closed but we haven’t seen any construction going on so Calvin figures what the heck and runs on them when he can) are part of a multi-million dollar road being built by a Chinese firm called China Wu Yi that eventually will stretch from Mombasa, on the coast, to Nairobi and then all the way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The most important section is the one we’ve been hurtling over from Isiolo to the Ethiopian border, about 530 km. of road that has never been paved. So why would the Chinese be interested in building a road from Ethiopia to the Kenya coast?

Because they’ve been carrying out oil exploration up here in Northern Kenya and in Ethiopia and are expected to start drilling sometime next year. So, if they find oil or natural gas (and let’s be honest—of course they’ve found it! Why else would they spend $65 million to build a tarmac through a stretch of Kenya that is so isolated from the rest of the country that when people in the north head for Nairobi they say they are “Going to Kenya” because they just don’t feel a part of the country?) they’ll need a way to transport it or will need to build a pipeline. In either case, they’ll need a road.

The trouble is that the Kenya government has always had a hard time controlling the Northern Frontier District. Kenya’s Lost Land has for over a hundred years been troubled by shiftas—Somali bandits that steal cattle, poach elephants, hijack vehicles, and, every once in awhile, murder intruders. Just this April a Chinese engineer working on the construction of the road was shot and killed near Merille, where we watched the Rendille wedding ceremony, by shiftas who, supposedly, weren’t happy that the day laborers building the highway were mostly Chinese. Or maybe they just didn’t like their noodles. In any case, the project was shut down for awhile and eventually many of the Chinese were sent home and now Kenyans are on the job. Which may explain why we haven’t seen any construction going on during our drive. Fortunately, we also haven’t seen any shiftas.

Here’s a 30-sec. video of our photographer, Pete McBride, explaining where we’re going on the Chinese highway to Lost Kenya.

The bride and groom strut their stuff at Rendille wedding ceremony. Photos by David Lansing.

While we were at the wells where the Rendille were watering their camels, a young man came up and told us that there was a wedding ceremony going on at the Merille manyatta and if we wanted, we could watch the dancers. We crossed the sand river and followed a trail towards the village. The dirt here is rust colored and fine and seeps into your skin so that weeks later, long after you’re home, it leaches out of the thick soles of your feet or your scalp and turns the bath water a faint red.

Beneath a tall umbrella acacia were a dozen morani all dressed in their finest outfits. While the Maasai tend towards bright red shukas, the Rendille seem to prefer pastels—Easter egg pinks and blues, in particular, as well as canary yellow. Some of the warriors wore the traditional long hair flowing down their back while others were bald or almost so and all were painted in ochre.

The women are invited to the dance as well just as long as they, you know, keep their distance.

The dance ceremony seemed as prescribed as a hoedown in Texas. First the men formed a circle and started chanting and clapping their hands rhythmically. Then a single moran would enter the middle of the circle and leap straight up and down for as long as he could before being replaced by another warrior, each trying to outdo the other. Meanwhile, one of the warriors would recite some chanted littany, like a caller at a square dance, at which point the morani began to bob up and down as they danced in a circle beneath the shade of the tree.

At this point, there were no women in the dance although several young girls were huddled together at a discreet distance, giggling with their hands over their mouths and obviously keenly watching the warriors leap and chant. Like with the Samburu, the women live separately from the men until after they’re married; also like the Samburu, a Rendille marriage is usually arranged by elders and a wealthy man (i.e., one who has many camels and cattle) may have as many as five wives.

Eventually the dance reached a stage where one of the young women, who I assume was the bride, was led to the circle. A warrior lightly held her hand and together they led the rest of the group around and around as the morani chanted and clapped and the caller gave instructions or a blessing, I don’t know which. The other women cautiously approached the dancers but stayed just outside the circle, giggling and bobbing up and down until eventually they were invited to dance with the others.

This all went on for some time until Hardy decided that he wanted to dance too so showing off his best “white-man’s-overbite” he crashed the party and started bobbing up and down like a wounded duck and chanting something that sounded faintly like those hokey Indian war chants you hear in old John Wayne movies. The Rendille didn’t say anything but I don’t think they were too impressed with Hardy’s dancing (nor were we) and shortly after that everything began to wind down. I only wish we’d had a nice bottle of champagne to toast the bride and groom.

Here’s a short clip of Hardy pretending he knows how to dance. It’s very sad but explains why the party broke up so early.