The original post can be found here... http://karamojadf.wordpress.com/about-karamoja/
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KARAMOJA IN BRIEF
Karamoja is an agro-pastoralist region, northeast of Uganda.
For the past decades, it
has been characterized by chronic underdevelopment and
marginalization. The region
is currently going through a deep humanitarian crisis,
combining severe food
insecurity, human insecurity and environmental destruction,
all linked to global
climate change.
Atmosphere
Rain and season patterns Karamoja is a remote region located
near the Rift Valley in East Africa. Rain patterns are low, with an average of
500-700 millilitres of rainfall per year. But in contrast to purely pastoralist
areas in the region, like the neighbouring Turkana, Karamoja is an
agro-pastoralist area.
However, the natural environment is subject to
variations which are scarcely predictable, and are often unexpected. It is generally accepted in official reports that the rainy season
‘normally’ begins late in March or earlyApril; and that the rains then continue
with reasonable regularity until late September or early october when the dry
season begins.
The visible impact of global climate change Karamoja is
located far from any major urban centres. In Karamoja itself, there is little
urban development. The principle way of life in the region remains pastoralism,
which contributes little in carbon emissions.
Nomads such as the Karimojong have coped for centuries with
adverse weather conditions, and have often been more successful coping with
changing situations than the sedentary populations, as they could react more
flexibly to changing conditions. But the contemporary changes in climate will
most probably overburden the population.
Biosphere
The recent environmental destruction, whose fault?
Karamoja is sub-divided into three ecological categories
running from the east to the west, with the west endowed with best prospects.
In general, however, the vegetation is characterized by thorny bushes,
cammiphora woodlands, occasional small trees and patches of grassland.
There has been widespread environmental destruction in
recent times, mainly deforestation and overgrazing. A review of the historical
evidence, however, reveals that before the colonial presence the Karimojong
operated a viable system of land utilisation that left the country a ‘grass
savanna’, where today it is burnt out bush.
There is a controversy whether this destruction is caused by
mismanagement of grazing areas by pastoralists, or if it should be imputed on
policies which have restricted the mobility of pastoralists and disrupted the
ecological balance that used to be in place.
Local breeds and wildlife During the twentieth century,
there have also been dramatic changes in terms of wildlife. The first turn came
with the ivory trade that developed in the early twentieth century.
In Karamoja, the most viable form of livelihood is the
rearing of livestock, mainly cattle, but also including camels, donkeys, sheep
and goats. This is because livestock have an advantage over crops and can be
moved from place to place in search of water and pastures, depending on the
season.
There are several major diseases affecting livestock.
Efforts at livestock development involve two aspects, namely disease control
and improved animal husbandry.
Hydrosphere
Traditional water sources
There is no significant water body in the region.
Traditionally, the people of Karamoja obtained water in
several ways. The main characteristic of traditional water catchments is that
they do not normally last very long at any one place, and therefore prevent
overgrazing as the cattle have to be moved from one water-hole to another.
Water development: new problems, same mistakes. But while in
the past, the rivers never used to dry up, with the decreasing rains, the
rivers nowadays dry up and getting water from drilling wells has become
difficult. In this difficult context, water development has logically always
been a priority.
Unfortunately, most if not all water development projects
undertaken in the past have been considered as failures, and were characterized
as misguided both for their huge size and for where they were built, but also
the means employed in their construction.
Over the past few decades, greater pressure has been put on
pastoralist mobility and conflicts over pastures have escalated, limiting
access to some of the wetter areas. This means that water development without
land reform, grazing control and cooperation from livestock producers leads
rapidly to the destruction of the grass cover by serious overgrazing, bush
encroachment and soil erosion.
Pedosphere
Interpretive discrepancies about erosion and land use
Even in the 1930s, before the human and livestock
populations mushroomed, the area was thought to be in a process of reduction to
desert. Much of the land is not suitable for crop cultivation either because it
has been degraded through erosion or because the soils are rocky, i.e. the soil
is unable to retain water.
Government has for years tried to persuade the Karimojong to
move west, where land is more fertile, rather than east. But the grass of the
west is deficient in minerals in the dry season, and livestock herded there
lose condition. In ecological terms, the Karimojong have developed tracking strategies
that enable them to find ecological niches at the right time and at the right
place, and know where to find e.g. minerals for their cattle.
Population
The controversial demographic issue
Official reports now mention 1,1 million inhabitants. Exact
figures are nevertheless unknown, and some experts consider the real figure
greatly inferior, down to 500,000 people. Also, the population has historically
been subjected to considerable variations.
The dominant approach to demography in Karamoja has always been
‘Malthusianist’, so that population growth has been considered one of the major
causes of food insecurity in the region.
Migration represents another key demographic phenomenon; for
the past decades, Karamoja has indeed experienced high migration rates. Many
destitute people, excluded from the pastoral system, have moved to new areas in
search of alternative livelihoods. In return, the government is forcefully
sending back these people to Karamoja.
The Karimojong
The present Karimojong communities were established from the
1830s, when different ethnic groups and customs were irrevocably amalgamated.
The region is constituted by several tribes, with a majority of Karimojong, who
are sub-divided in ten sections.
Seven tribes (Jie, Turkana, Dodoso, Nyakwai, Toposa,
Nyangatom, Teso) scattered over north-east Uganda, north-west Kenya, and
adjacent parts of Sudan share with the Karimojong common characteristics,
including a common language.
The Pokot
Within Karamoja, a non-related tribe is also present, the
Pokot (also called Suk). They are the most pastoral section of the Kalenjin
cultural group.
The British colonial administration decided to give them a
tract of land in Karamoja – now known as Upe county. From then, fierce
political battles emerged between the British and the Karimojong on the one
hand and the Karimojong and the Pokot on the other hand,over what the
Karimojong constantly refer to as ‘lost territory’.
The mountain tribes
The mountain-dwellers are remnants of a population
pre-dating the incoming plains peoples. The Tepeth (or So) of the three
southern volcanic masses, the Ik (or Teuso) of the remote northeastern mountains,
and the Nyangeya of the northwest appear to speak related languages whose
affiliation remains in dispute.
These minor tribes are sedentary as they do not own cattle
in large quantity. They live on the hills and are mainly small
agriculturalists, with a liking for hunting and fruit-gathering and have in
general a tradition of clay and iron-working.
Legend and history about Karimojong migrations
All historical narratives of the Karimojong by outsiders
adopt a simplistic view of history, of people moving from place A to B to
settle or continue to C, etc. They view history as being a mere flow of time
without considering social, technological, natural and other relations that
combine to transform society. Karimojong legends contribute to reveal the
complexity of historical migrations.
In terms of trend, however, all the tribes now have a more
competitive attitude towards each other than in the past, when only the most
war-like of them all, the Jie, kept being troublesome to others.
This competitiveness results in the compact movement of
thousands of head of cattle at one time at a safe distance from their borders
which therefore now form practically a strip of few kilometers wide no man’s
land.
Economy
Karamoja has the worst socio-economic indicators in Uganda.
The region has been under constant food aid since the famine of the early
eighties, and it has lagged behind in terms of health, education or
infrastructure development. Life expectancy is estimated to be 42 years,
whereas it is about 52 years in Uganda. The reasons for this extreme poverty
are multilayered, interconnected, and surely controversial.
Understanding the complexity of ecological factors:
the clue to analyzing the economy of Karamoja
In Karamoja, the economy is based on cattle herding: this is
considered by the Karimojong to be the most sustainable type of livelihood in
the harsh environment in which they live.
This kind of subsistence strategy entails freedom to move,
to opportunistically exploit grass and water resources wherever they can be
found within the tribal territory. Movement enables the most productive use of
available pasture and water, while also allowing areas time to recover.
Historically such land use systems were self-regulating with
periodic famines and disease out breaks acting as controls. These
self-regulating mechanisms are for various reasons, no longer allowed full play
with resulting deterioration in land-use patterns, particularly in the
settlement zones.
An essential aspect of this ecological equilibrium is that
in Karamoja, all grazing is common to all herders in the tribe. This system
offers a sense of security to community members. To distribute one’s cattle
resources is a form of insurance against natural hazard and enemy depredation.
The traditional pastoralist mode of production is not a mode
of commodity production, in other words, it is not designed to produce for the
market, but for subsistence. Herds accumulation represents a vital economic
asset in the life of the Karimojong. As a matter of fact, the economic function
of major social institutions such as marriages and family bondages is fully
centred on cattle acquisition.
Agriculture as a mere, though necessary, complement
Many Karimojong can be said to be involved in a mixed
agro-pastoral economy. This dual system revolves around two locations at the
same time. The permanent settlement, the so-called manyatta, where
predominantly agricultural production takes place and some animals are kept,
and the mobile cattle camp, the kraal, for pastoral production.
Agriculture is practiced to the extent permitted by the
constraints in the ecological conditions.
Consequently, agricultural activity has only a complementary
role in the field of Karimojong economic activity, but it is an important role
because, without it, survival would be a much more complicated matter. In case
of complete crop failure, people resort to exchanging livestock with
agricultural products with neighbouring tribes, or everybody tends to move to
the cattle camps and depend on cattle completely until a new crop is harvested.
Marginalization throughout history
Karamoja has remained largely underdeveloped and
marginalized from national development policies, both during colonial and
post-colonial times. The first pronounced military action against the
Karimojong was the closure of the area, except to colonial military personnel.
It was only in 1987 that the NRM government considered
reinstating the special status on Karamoja. However, the real problems of the
region have not been clearly understood and so the solutions being offered are
inappropriate.
The so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’ and the cattle
complex
As early as 1920s, the onset of ecological degradation was
regarded as the result of the ways in which pastoralists used resources in the
rangelands. The “cattle complex” referred either to an aesthetic orientation
which privileged cattle above all else, or to an irrational cultural holdover
from a time when land was truly abundant, cattle rather scarce, and such a
value indeed made sense. The deterioration of the environment in fact came
about during and as a result of colonial rule and the particular forms of
exploitation visited on the Karimojong.
The British Administrators themselves, before leaving
Uganda, by recognizing the failure of their policy and allowing the Karimojong
to go back to their traditional way of life, recognized its validity. Recent
studies have ascertained that it is due to the local pastoral management which
allows the natives to keep a number of animals double-fold in comparison with
the one possible with a modern-rational system, in drought stricken areas, like
Karamoja.
Compiled with additions from www.karamoja.eu
By Longoli Simon Peter
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The original post can be found here...
http://karamojadf.wordpress.com/about-karamoja/
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