Brothers of the Boran Once Again: On the Fading Popularity of Certain Somali Identities in Northern Kenya1

Abstract

This article focuses upon a cluster of questions about identity: under which conditions can social, political or ethnic affiliations which have been denied for over a generation be revived? Can there be, even in predominantly oral cultures, a kind of backup copy for older identities which are of no use in the present but might be useful again in the future? How does collective memory deal with what is deleted from it? Do insiders preserve and pass on what in the version of history they propagate has been cut out, maybe by describing to the younger generation in detail what it is that they should not say? Two cases are considered. The Ajuran of Kenya, who in the early colonial period were regarded as Oromo, later insisted on being Somali, denying completely that the close ritual and politico-military affiliation they once had to the Boran Oromo ever existed. In recent years the Ajuran have sought an alliance with the Boran again. This case is mirrored by the Degodia Somali, who briefly claimed to be brothers of the Boran, producing even a genealogy in support of that idea, and then went back into the Somali fold. The physical and social environment in which these re-identifications take place comprise arid lowland conditions with contested water and pasture resources, the Kenyan and Ethiopian states and their ethnic policies, neighbouring groups of pastoralists like the Gabra and Garre, and international legal discourses about human, civic and minority rights. As identity games imply, choices are restricted by considerations of plausibility, consistency and the need to be accepted, and it is not easy to re-affiliate in terms of belonging to one major category rather than another according to political and economic needs. Re-affiliation may also fail and the claim to historical links be exposed to ridicule.