Northwest Kenya Research Articles

The built environment is more predictive of cardiometabolic health than other aspects of lifestyle in two rapidly transitioning Indigenous populations.

Many subsistence-level and Indigenous societies around the world are rapidly experiencing urbanization, nutrition transition, and integration into market-economies, resulting in marked increases in cardiometabolic diseases. Determining the most potent and generalized drivers of changing health is essential for identifying vulnerable communities and creating effective policies to combat increased chronic disease risk across socio-environmental contexts. However, comparative tests of how different lifestyle features affect the health of populations undergoing lifestyle transitions remain rare, and require comparable, integrated anthropological and health data collected in diverse contexts. We developed nine scales to quantify different facets of lifestyle (e.g., urban infrastructure, market-integration, acculturation) in two Indigenous, transitioning subsistence populations currently undergoing rapid change in very different ecological and sociopolitical contexts: Turkana pastoralists of northwest Kenya (n = 3,692) and Orang Asli mixed subsistence groups of Peninsular Malaysia (n = 688). We tested the extent to which these lifestyle scales predicted 16 measures of cardiometabolic health and compared the generalizability of each scale across the two populations. We used factor analysis to decompose comprehensive lifestyle data into salient axes without supervision, sensitivity analyses to understand which components of the multidimensional scales were most important, and sex-stratified analyses to understand how facets of lifestyle variation differentially impacted cardiometabolic health among males and females. Cardiometabolic health was best predicted by measures that quantified urban infrastructure and market-derived material wealth compared to metrics encompassing diet, mobility, or acculturation, and these results were highly consistent across both populations and sexes. Factor analysis results were also highly consistent between the Turkana and Orang Asli and revealed that lifestyle variation decomposes into two distinct axes-the built environment and diet-which change at different paces and have different relationships with health. Our analysis of comparable data from Indigenous peoples in East Africa and Southeast Asia revealed a surprising amount of generalizability: in both contexts, measures of local infrastructure and built environment are consistently more predictive of cardiometabolic health than other facets of lifestyle that are seemingly more proximate to health, such as diet. We hypothesize that this is because the built environment impacts unmeasured proximate drivers like physical activity, increased stress, and broader access to market goods, and serves as a proxy for the duration of time that communities have been market-integrated.

Suspension as Politics: A Stadium and its Ruins in Northwest Kenya

ABSTRACT From mega-projects to small-scale repairs, many construction projects in Kenya are characterised by delays and false starts. One such case is the renovation of the Kamariny stadium, where since the 1960s world-class long-distance runners have prepared for international races. Part of the government’s Vision 2030 development agenda, the renovation promised to turn old athletics tracks into an imposing modern stadium. However, the construction was started and then suspended. Suspension as an ethnographic observation and an analytical framework provides a nuanced account of infrastructural development, one that complicates state-sanctioned narratives of vision and emergence. Conceptualised as a process and a deliberate political action – rather than an ontic condition – suspension is a resource for political performance and economic speculation, a tool for the state to assert itself as a provider of development, but also a method of civic dissent.

First report on mycetoma in Turkana County-North-western Kenya.

Mycetoma is one of the six Neglected Tropical Diseases that are prevalent in Turkana County (northwest Kenya). The aim of the study was to estimate the prevalence of mycetoma in the county, as well as to describe the main causative agents involved in the disease using methods affordable locally. Based on the data collected by the team of cooperative medicine Cirugia en Turkana (Surgery in Turkana), a specific study for mycetoma was started during the 16th humanitarian medicine campaign in February 2019. Patients with suspected mycetoma were studied at the Lodwar County Referral Hospital (LCRH). After informing the patient and getting their consent, the lesions were examined and sampled (mainly by biopsy) and clinical data were recorded. Samples were washed in sterile saline solution and cut in fragments. Some of these were inoculated on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar, Malt Extract Agar, and diluted Nutrient Agar plates. One fragment of each sample was used for DNA extraction. The DNA and the rest of the fragments of samples were kept at -20°C. All cultures were incubated at room temperature at the LCRH laboratory. The DNA obtained from clinical samples was submitted to PCR amplification of the ITS-5.8S and the V4-V5 16S rRNA gene region, for the detection and identification of fungi and bacteria respectively. From February 2019 till February 2022, 60 patients were studied. Most of them were men (43, 74,1%) between 13 and 78 y.o. (mean age 37). Half of the patients were herdsmen but, among women 40% (6) were housewives and 26.7% (4) charcoal burners. Lesions were mainly located at the feet (87.9%) and most of the patients (54; 93.1%) reported discharge of grains in the exudate, being 27 (46.6%) yellow or pale colored and 19 (32.8%) of them dark grains. Culture of clinical samples yielded 35 fungal and bacterial putative causative agents. Culture and molecular methods allowed the identification of a total of 21 causative agents of mycetoma (39.6% of cases studied). Most of them (17) corresponded to fungi causing eumycetoma (80.9%) being the most prevalent the genus Madurella (7; 41.2%), with two species involved (M. mycetomatis and M. fahalii), followed by Aspergillus (2; 11.8%). Other minority genera detected were Cladosporium, Fusarium, Acremonium, Penicillium, and Trichophyton (5.9% each of them). Actinobacteria were detected in 19.1% of samples, but only Streptomyces somaliensis was identified as a known agent of mycetoma, the rest being actinobacteria not previously described as causative agents of the disease, such as Cellulosimicrobium cellulans detected in two of the patients. Although Kenya is geographically located in the mycetoma belt, to our knowledge this is the first report on mycetoma in this country from 1973, and the first one for Turkana County.

Mineralogy and Sourcing of a Stone Bead Industry Found in Communal Cemeteries Associated with Eastern Africa's First Pastoralists, ca. 5000 b.p.

ABSTRACT This article describes the mineralogy and sources for a spectacular stone bead industry associated with the first pastoralists in eastern Africa ca. 5000–4000 cal b.p. Around Lake Turkana, northwest Kenya, early pastoralists constructed at least seven mortuary monuments with platforms, pillars, cairns, and stone circles. Three sites—Lothagam North, Manemanya, and Jarigole—have yielded assemblages of stone and ostrich eggshell beads that adorned interred individuals. Mineralogical identification of the stone beads reveals patterns of material selection, including notable differences among the pillar sites. Geological sourcing indicates use of many local raw materials and two (amazonite and fluorite) whose known sources lie > 200 km away. The data suggest that bead-making represented a significant investment by early pastoralists in personal ornamentation. New sociopolitical factors emerged, such as access to grazing grounds and water, and definitions of self and society manifested in novel mortuary traditions as people coped with a drying, cooling climate.

‘A place for training, not for competition’: negotiations of competition and agency among long‐distance runners in Kenya

AbstractKenyan long‐distance runners have for decades famously dominated international athletic competitions. Most of the aspiring runners live and train in the highlands of northwest Kenya, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, where they have access to competitive peer groups of budding athletes and an elaborate infrastructure of camps, coaches, and managers. The most promising and successful ones travel abroad to take part in international races, only to quickly return and continue training in the ‘county of champions’. Meanwhile, Kenya is undergoing a rapid transformation, envisioned by the government's development plan, which promises to transform it into a ‘globally competitive and prosperous country’. On the surface, competition is a self‐explanatory notion that drives the transnational sports industry and the state's development plan. However, ethnography of the county's capital, Iten, and its community of athletes reveals tensions: Kenyans take up, negotiate, appropriate, and challenge meanings of competition offered by the state and the sports industry on ecological, gendered, and moral grounds. Ethnography of ideologies of competition in Iten, conceptualized as moral, aesthetic, and gendered projects, complicates accounts of competition as a tool for global neoliberal governance. It also provides an alternative to analyses of African subjects’ agency in global circulation of capital, people, and ideas, namely analyses subsumed under signs of marginality, dependence, and subjection.

Observations of the Turkana Jet and the East African Dry Tropics: The RIFTJet Field Campaign

Abstract The Turkana low-level jet (LLJ) is an intrinsic part of the African climate system. It is the principle conduit for water vapor transport to the African interior from the Indian Ocean, and droughts in East Africa tend to occur when the jet is strong. The only direct observations of the Turkana jet come from manual tracking of pilot balloons in the 1980s. Now, modern reanalysis datasets disagree with one another over the strength of jet winds and underestimate the strength of the jet by 25%–75% compared to the pilot balloon data. This article gives an overview of a field campaign based in northwest Kenya—the Radiosonde Investigation for the Turkana Jet (RIFTJet)—which measured the Turkana jet for the first time in 40 years using modern technologies. Radiosonde data reveal a persistent low-level jet, which formed on every night of the campaign, with an average low-level maximum wind speed of 16.8 m s−1 at 0300 LT. One of the latest reanalysis datasets (ERA5) underestimates low-level wind speeds by an average of 24% (4.1 m s−1) at 0300 LT and by 33% (3.6 m s−1) at 1500 LT. The measurements confirm the role of the Turkana LLJ in water vapor transport: mean water vapor transport at Marsabit is 172 kg m s−1. The dataset provides new opportunities to understand regional dynamics, and to evaluate models in one of the most data-sparse regions in the world.

Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 evaluation and projection of East African precipitation

AbstractThis study evaluates the performance of 43 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) models in reproducing annual cycle, climatology, and trend of observed precipitation over East Africa during 1950–2014. The results show that the CMIP6 models display good performance in simulating the annual cycle (i.e., bimodal pattern) of East African precipitation; however, most models and the multimodel ensemble mean (ENSEM) underestimate the March to May (MAM) precipitation while overestimating the October to December (OND) precipitation. Spatially, most models seem to perform relatively better in simulating OND precipitation compared to MAM season, despite wet (dry) biases over most parts of East Africa with the wettest (driest) biases over the Lake Victoria basin (southeastern Tanzania) during OND (MAM). The metrics have shown that nine models (i.e., MPI‐ESM1‐2‐HR, AWI‐CM‐1‐MR, MPI‐ESM1‐2‐LR, IPSL‐CM6A‐LR, CAS‐ESM2‐0, BCC‐CSM2‐MR, NorESM2‐LM, CESM2‐WACCM, and CMCC‐CM2‐SR5) outperform the other individual models during both OND and MAM. Compared with individual models, the ENSEM better agrees with the observation. Besides, the ENSEM and most models can reproduce the increasing trend in OND precipitation as observed over East Africa. However, for the secular change of MAM precipitation, given that half of the models show increasing trends, the ENSEM simulation produces an inconsistent trend with the observation. The ensemble of the above nine models with better performance projects an increase of precipitation averaged over East Africa in both MAM and OND by the end of the 21st century, with larger changes under SSP5‐8.5 than under SSP2‐4.5. Spatially, the largest percentage increase in MAM precipitation is projected to occur in central Tanzania and northwestern Kenya, while southeastern Tanzania shows the greatest percentage decrease. The projected percentage increases in OND precipitation are larger in the northeastern highlands of Tanzania and northwest Kenya.

Variability of the Turkana Low‐Level Jet in Reanalysis and Models: Implications for Rainfall

AbstractThe complex topography of East Africa poses challenges for accurate modeling of regional climate. The Turkana Channel in northwestern Kenya is an important feature because of a persistent low‐level jet (LLJ) that blows through it, which has complex interactions with local and regional rainfall. We establish the annual cycle and interannual variability of the LLJ in the ERA5, MERRA‐2, and JRA‐55 reanalyses. The jet is strongest during wet seasons in the surrounding region. Results suggest a statistically significant weakening of the LLJ over the last 30–40 years in two out of the three reanalyses. We propose an explanation based on the jet's relationship with regional warming patterns and zonal surface pressure gradients, which link the jet to larger‐scale climate dynamics including the Walker Circulation. If these changes continue in the future, there may be significant implications for rainfall including increases in northwest Kenya and decreases further inland. However, the global models used to produce climate projections vary in their simulations of the LLJ in part because they represented topography. Consequently, it is not possible to assess how future LLJ changes will affect regional climate using CMIP5 models alone. Differences between the reanalyses preclude their direct use for model evaluation. Improving the processes by which topographical observations are mapped onto model grids could lead to improvements in the simulation of the East African climate. A field campaign to measure the LLJ directly could resolve uncertainties in the literature, help constrain reanalyses, and determine which models have the most realistic LLJ representation.

Socioeconomic status effects on health vary between rural and urban Turkana.

Background and objectivesUnderstanding the social determinants of health is a major goal in evolutionary biology and human health research. Low socioeconomic status (often operationalized as absolute material wealth) is consistently associated with chronic stress, poor health and premature death in high-income countries. However, the degree to which wealth gradients in health are universal—or are instead made even steeper under contemporary, post-industrial conditions—remains poorly understood.MethodologyWe quantified absolute material wealth and several health outcomes among a population of traditional pastoralists, the Turkana of northwest Kenya, who are currently transitioning toward a more urban, market-integrated lifestyle. We assessed whether wealth associations with health differed in subsistence-level versus urban contexts. We also explored the causes and consequences of wealth-health associations by measuring serum cortisol, potential sociobehavioral mediators in early life and adulthood, and adult reproductive success (number of surviving offspring).ResultsHigher socioeconomic status and greater material wealth predicts better self-reported health and more offspring in traditional pastoralist Turkana, but worse cardiometabolic health and fewer offspring in urban Turkana. We do not find robust evidence for either direct biological mediators (cortisol) or indirect sociobehavioral mediators (e.g. adult diet or health behaviors, early life experiences) of wealth–health relationships in either context.Conclusions and implicationsWhile social gradients in health are well-established in humans and animals across a variety of socioecological contexts, we show that the relationship between wealth and health can vary within a single population. Our findings emphasize that changes in economic and societal circumstances may directly alter how, why and under what conditions socioeconomic status predicts health.Lay SummaryHigh socioeconomic status predicts better health and more offspring in traditional Turkana pastoralists, but worse health and fewer offspring in individuals of the same group living in urban areas. Together, our study shows that under different economic and societal circumstances, wealth effects on health may manifest in very different ways.

“Nderit Ware” and the origins of pastoralist pottery in eastern Africa

“Nderit Ware,” a type of pottery famous in eastern Africa for its remarkably intricate basket-like bowls, is associated with evidence for the region's earliest pastoralism during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic (PN, c. 5000-1200 cal BP). This paper reviews the changing ways archaeologists have conceptualized “Nderit” pottery over the past eighty years. The “Nderit” ware type was defined in relation to initial finds in central Kenya, decades before archaeologists discovered Nderit had greater antiquity as a technology/artistic tradition in northwest Kenya's Turkana Basin. Ceramic assemblages from pillar sites surrounding Lake Turkana – including Lothagam North (GeJi9) and Jarigole (GbJj1) – reveal a more variable and complex history of ceramic production and use than previously recognized. Nderit's first known production and use is associated with the region's earliest food producers, mobile pastoralists establishing themselves around a dramatically shrinking Lake Turkana. These findings carry important implications for reconstructing the cultural history and material lives of early herding groups moving within and beyond the Turkana Basin, and expand our frame of reference for understanding the origins of pottery production by mobile, small-scale groups worldwide.

Agropastoralists? Late Iron Age and historic forest livelihoods in the Cherangani Hills of north-west Kenya

Abstract

Constraints on Fe‐Oxide Formation in Monsoonal Vertisols of Pliocene Kenya Using Rock Magnetism and Spectroscopy

AbstractPliocene Vertisols from the Turkana Basin of northwest Kenya (~4°N latitude) have been examined using isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) experiments, susceptibility measurements, and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The complete vertical profile of each paleosol is almost intact, measuring >2 m in thickness and being strongly magnetic (IRM at 1.0T ranges from 4 to 25 × 10−3 Am2/kg). Downprofile changes to the proxy indicators suggest uninterrupted pedodevelopment and a lack of stratigraphic inversions caused by argilli‐pedoturbation. Magnetic minerals consist of hematite to a lesser degree, and pedogenic ferrimagnets derived from moisture cycles that were controlled by monsoonal rainfall. Basal pedogenic zones of the paleosols are magnetically intense, and preserve the greatest slickenside development indicating pronounced seasonal wetting and drying. These observations indicate a deeper dry season water table as compared to poorly drained temperate/tropical Vertisols, which suffer reductive dissolution of Fe oxides in basal pedogenic horizons associated with weak magnetic intensities. Magnetic susceptibilities and the well‐represented presence of fine pedogenic ferrimagnets suggest that Pliocene rainfall was greater than the local modern rate of 200 mm/year and may have been within the range of 500–1,000 mm/year. The study highlights the need to expand the database on Vertisols Fe oxides and magnetism, especially considering the anomalously dry and bimodal rainfall seasonality of East Africa.

A monumental cemetery built by eastern Africa’s first herders near Lake Turkana, Kenya

Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many people to build a conspicuous structure commemorating shared beliefs. Examining monumentality in different environmental and economic settings can reveal diverse reasons for people to form larger social units and express unity through architectural display. In multiple areas of Africa, monumentality developed as mobile herders created large cemeteries and practiced other forms of commemoration. The motives for such behavior in sparsely populated, unpredictable landscapes may differ from well-studied cases of monumentality in predictable environments with sedentary populations. Here we report excavations and ground-penetrating radar surveys at the earliest and most massive monumental site in eastern Africa. Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery near Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) constructed 5,000 years ago by eastern Africa's earliest pastoralists. Inside a platform ringed by boulders, a 119.5-m2 mortuary cavity accommodated an estimated minimum of 580 individuals. People of diverse ages and both sexes were buried, and ornaments accompanied most individuals. There is no evidence for social stratification. The uncertainties of living on a "moving frontier" of early herding-exacerbated by dramatic environmental shifts-may have spurred people to strengthen social networks that could provide information and assistance. Lothagam North Pillar Site would have served as both an arena for interaction and a tangible reminder of shared identity.

Managing conflict in north-west Kenya: the siege of Loregon and its aftermath

Conflict management in the context of ethnic boundaries and a history of inter-ethnic violence remains a challenge in a range of socio-economic contexts. Conflict management in remote rural areas within developing states where state presence and capacity is relatively weak amidst a background of prolonged and ongoing inter-ethnic violence is particularly challenging. This article examines a case of successful bottom-up efforts to manage conflict at the micro level in northern Kenya. Focusing on the so-called siege of Loregon and its aftermath, this case study describes dynamics on one part of the ‘border’ between Turkana and Pokot ethnic groups, examining the causes and consequences of this violent episode, with a particular focus on recent successes at the local level in managing conflict and as a consequence in reducing the likelihood of future violence in a particular locality, despite ongoing violence in other parts of the interface between Turkana-Pokot ethnic groups.

Nomad aesthetic: Cattle modifications among the northern Turkana of north west Kenya

Among the Turkana of north western Kenya, as well as in many other eastern African pastoral societies, cattle are not only a source of food but also an essential tool for a man to establish his own concepts of aesthetic and to visibly express his own personal identity and social relationships among his people. A Turkana man achieves these objectives by choosing a specific male cow and then modifying its external appearance with branding to permanent alter the coat, with a forceful modification of the growth direction of the horns, and with peculiar cuttings of the ear margins and dewlap. These modern-day practices are identical to the images of cattle present in numerous Neolithic rock art scenes over widespread geographical areas. This present-day Turkana custom may facilitate a correct interpretation of prehistoric rock art and help to understand the systems of thoughts, values and aesthetic perceptions of long-vanished prehistoric pastoral societies.

Hunting in yellow waters: an ethnoarchaeological perspective on selective fishing on Lake Turkana

As riverine and lacustrine environments expanded across north tropical Africa during early Holocene times, certain characteristic fishing or “aquatic hunting” strategies became widespread. This paper investigates one such strategy and an associated technology: selective fishing and barbed bone “harpoon” points in the Turkana Basin, northwest Kenya. These tools have a geographically widespread distribution across Africa, primarily north of the equator, and can shed light on hunter-gatherer technology and resource acquisition in the face of environmental and social change. Interviews with contemporary Turkana fishers highlight near-shore fishing practices analogous to those of early Holocene hunter-gatherers. For example, Turkana fishers exploiting deltaic “yellow waters” have traditionally employed selective harpoon-like tools to acquire large aquatic fauna like Lates niloticus (Nile perch) and Synodontis sp. (catfish), while using non-selective traps, hooks and nets to catch smaller and deeper-water species. These practices have changed over several decades in response to local socioeconomic and environmental shifts. Today these selective strategies show a marked seasonality and regional variability that the archaeological record of this region has thus far been ill-equipped to investigate. Through carefully constructed analogy, this preliminary work contributes to a better understanding of human technological and behavioral responses to shifting lakeshore environments today and during early Holocene times.

New archaeological investigations at the Lothagam harpoon site at Lake Turkana

The Lothagam harpoon site in north-west Kenya's Lake Turkana Basin provides a stratified Holocene sequence capturing changes in African fisher-hunter-gatherer strategies through a series of subtle and dramatic climate shifts (Figure 1). The site rose to archaeological prominence following Robbins's 1965–1966 excavations, which yielded sizeable lithic and ceramic assemblages and one of the largest collections of Early Holocene human remains from Eastern Africa (Robbins 1974; Angel et al. 1980).

Gigantic lion, Panthera leo, from the Pleistocene of Natodomeri, eastern Africa

AbstractThe partial skull of a lion from Natodomeri, northwest Kenya is described. The Natodomeri sites are correlated with Member I of the Kibish Formation, dated to between 195 ka and ca. 205 ka. The skull is remarkable for its very great size, equivalent to the largest cave lions (Panthera spelaea [Goldfuss, 1810]) of Pleistocene Eurasia and much larger than any previously known lion from Africa, living or fossil. We hypothesize that this individual represents a previously unknown population or subspecies of lion present in the late Middle and Late Pleistocene of eastern Africa rather than being an indication of climate-driven size increase in lions of that time. This raises questions regarding the extent of our understanding of the pattern and causes of lion evolution in the Late Pleistocene.

Positive effects of refugee presence on host community nutritional status in Turkana County, Kenya.

Refugee camps are often assumed to negatively impact local host communities through resource competition and conflict. We ask instead whether economic resources and trade networks associated with refugees have benefits for host community health and nutrition. To address this question we assess the impacts of Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya, comparing anthropometric indicators of nutritional status between Turkana communities in the region. Participants were recruited at four sites in Turkana County (N = 586): Kakuma Town, adjacent to Kakuma Refugee Camp; Lorugum, an area with sustained economic development; Lokichoggio, formerly host to international NGOs, and now underdeveloped; and Lorengo, an undeveloped, rural community. We evaluated nutritional status using summed skinfold thickness and body mass index (BMI). Structured interviews provided contextual data. Age-controlled multiple regression models reveal two distinct skinfold thickness profiles for both sexes: comparatively elevated values in Kakuma and Lorugum, and significantly lower values in Lorengo and Lokichoggio. BMI did not vary significantly by location. Despite better nutritional status, a large proportion of Kakuma residents still report worries about basic needs, including hunger, health, and economic security. Kakuma Refugee Camp is associated with better host community energetic status indicators, compared to other relevant, regional sites varying in development and resources. Based on global nutritional standards, observed differences likely represent meaningful disparities in overall health. We suggest that access to cereals via refugee trade networks and employment might mediate this relationship. However, perceptions of refugees as illegitimate interlopers maintain a high psychological burden.

Erratum to: Back to the Grindstone? The Archaeological Potential of Grinding-Stone Studies in Africa with Reference to Contemporary Grinding Practices in Marakwet, Northwest Kenya

Erratum to: Back to the Grindstone? The Archaeological Potential of Grinding-Stone Studies in Africa with Reference to Contemporary Grinding Practices in Marakwet, Northwest Kenya