Camel Talk

After the Second World War, areas around Ngarenanyuki were handed to various expatriate people by Britain ‘for their contribution towards the allied war effort’. The new settlers built up a thriving farming community, adding infrastructure and converted a dry rain-shadow area into productive farmland. But came the time when the Meru people decided the land wasn’t the British’s to give, so rightly, they wanted their land back. Instead of resorting violence Mugabe-esk, they sought justice through United Nations and sure enough the people were granted their traditional lands back. Before the settlers finally left, they destroyed the infrastructure they had put in place over the years, including their water projects.  

A small part of my role was to rehabilitate some of those water projects. One such project was in a small gulley beside Ngarenanyuki primary school. The school and a nearby church requested a standpipe each to come from a small spring perhaps a kilometre away. They told me there was fall from the spring to the school and church and on inspection, it looked a feasible proposition. For part of way there was already a disused galvanised iron pipeline that could be utilized, to cut down on the expense. To give some idea of the potential dryness in the area and the value of water, the two kilometre clay track between the cluster of shops that is Ngarenanyuki, and the school would typically have six to eight inches on dust over it! Driving through it created a veritable dust storm!

In a place like that, nothing ever happens as planned! The people of a small, nearby village, a couple of kilometres in the other direction also gathered water from the spring. They too requested help to bring water to their village. I figured that to provide one area with water and deny the other would result in ugomvi, bad feeling, with the intake being wrecked sooner or later. So I agreed. And then the village elders, traditional cattle herders, thought it was also important to add somewhere for livestock to be watered!

I found a sort of transfer-box halfway between the spring and the school and wondered about its purpose. Nobody seemed to know. It turned out that the original design was for water to bypass into a very big, open, concrete reservoir which was used for irrigating vegetable gardens further down the slope. It was all overgrown with weeds and quite hidden, but the settlers had not damaged it, they merely turned the water off. There was also a plunge cattle dip dug into the ground nearby, which we were to rehabilitate, but first we had to work out a way of emptying it for safe disposal of the used toxic chemical.

We built a sturdy concrete intake at the spring with the intention of taking no more than half the dry period water resource, but it never formed a creek, it just disappeared underground. I wondered if the settlers had divined the spring, or if elephants had located it. Nobody knew. We established a line to the more distant village with a single one inch tap at a central point. Halfway towards the village, on a small ridge we built a water trough for shepherded livestock. For the other line, water went into the transfer-box, which we rebuilt to make it larger and with an outlet to the open reservoir about two inches above the outlet to the school and church. Teachers lived at the school so essentially the water was for household use. Hopefully some water would be used by the kids for handwashing. Any surplus could go towards irrigation of vegetables, the allocation of which we left up to the village authority. All standard stuff.

While we were building the system, there were a range of surprises, but none greater than finding a Maasai man at the spring with a camel! We had camels at the Meserani Snake Park and on the way to Nairobi, but otherwise we never saw them in any of the villages we worked with. The usual beasts of burden were donkeys, so I was intrigued with this fellow. The camel was sitting down and the man was filling drums lashed to the animal’s back. I helped him carry a few buckets as a way to start a conversation with him while we worked. He came from about thirty miles away, and came here only rarely, when a closer spring was dry.

To order the camel stand up, the Maasai man spoke neither Maasai nor Swahili, a language I didn’t know, so I asked him what it was. Soberly he told me that camels only understand Arabic! Because of his use of Swahili and my understanding of it, I can’t be sure if he meant that particular camel, or all camels. Anyway he told me the man he acquired the animal from had taught him all the words he would need to control it. He told me that he couldn’t hold a conversation in Arabic. To demonstrate, he told the camel to lie back down, and said for me to try to command the animal using English or Swahili, or whatever language I liked. I tried but the animal just looked down his nose and flapped his eyelashes at me. The man carried a stick, but he said he never hits the animal out of respect, but if anyone hit camels, they will always find a way to repay you! I have found the same thing with milking cows.

The Maasai simply stood beside the camel, uttered a couple of Arabic words and back legs first the camel groaned and lurched awkwardly to his feet. I thought the animal was overloaded, but what do I know? Cheerily the man smiled, gave me a wave and they walked off, starting their thirty mile journey home.