Oil and Isolation
<
http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/juliet-torome> Juliet Torome
Juliet Torome, a writer and documentary film-maker, was awarded Cine-source
Magazine's first annual Flaherty documentary award.
* Full profile
<
http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/juliet-torome>
. May. 15, 2012
NAIROBI - In Kenya, there is a running gag that sums up how far away the
Turkana people live from the rest of us. When a Turkana man leaves for the
capital, Nairobi, the joke goes, he tells his family, "I'm going to Kenya."
In recent weeks, ever since Kenya's government announced that oil had been
discovered in the Lake Turkana basin, more jokes have emerged. A picture of
unidentified happy, half-naked black children I had seen on my Facebook
friends' profiles many months ago began circulating again, this time with
the caption, "Discover Oil in Turkana.No More Dry Skin."
At first, I chuckled at the jokes. As a Maasai, I have heard every Kenyan
joke about how "uncivilized" my people are, so I was happy that someone else
was in the spotlight for a change. But when I saw a photo of a topless
Turkana woman doctored to look as if she were breastfeeding a white baby, my
attitude began to change.
The creator of the picture was implying that now that oil has been found in
northwestern Kenya, Western oil workers will descend on the region and
impregnate Turkana women, perhaps against their will. A British company
discovered the oil, and, thanks to allegations that British soldiers raped
hundreds of Kenyan women from 1965 to 2002, our former colonial master's
reputation isn't good. But if the rights of the Turkana end up being
violated, it will be Kenyans, not the British, who will bear the blame.
The Turkana people are, as the joke suggests, as far away from Nairobi as
one can be without being foreigners. For this reason, we know very little
about them. In schools, we learned about them only within the context of the
Leakey family's decades-long work excavating the Lake Turkana basin in
search of fossils of humans' ancestors. This could be one reason why Kenyans
have historically looked at the Turkana people as archaic beings, millennia
away from "civilization" and with different needs from most of the country.
The lack of adequate infrastructure in the Turkana region is evidence of
this. Unlike the Maasai, the Turkana inhabit a region that, until now, was
of little or no value to the country. There are no wild animals to attract
tourists, and, although the Turkana, like the Maasai, have preserved their
indigenous culture, they are not renowned around the world, perhaps because
of their distance from Nairobi.
Indeed, Turkana is one of Kenya's most neglected districts. Whenever there
is a famine, chances are high that Turkana will be affected. Gado, a
renowned cartoonist for one of Kenya's leading newspapers, summed it up
best, depicting a jubilant Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki leading a pack of
bureaucrats and dogs in suits to Turkana to announce to the people,
"Rejoice! We have discovered oil!" A Turkana woman asks him, "And when will
you discover water?"
In addition to famine, the Turkana people have endured decades of raids by
cattle rustlers from neighboring Ethiopia and Sudan (now South Sudan).
Still, Kenya - which has been actively involved in peacekeeping operations
in the Horn of Africa region and beyond - has not seen that as a good reason
to protect Turkana.
The discovery of oil presents Kenya with a rare opportunity to end the
Turkana community's marginalization. Discussion of how the oil exploration
and extraction will proceed needs to start now, and the health of the
environment surrounding the Turkana people must be paramount.
"Pastoralists and indigenous people often rely heavily on their immediate
environment for their livelihoods," says Ikal Angelei, the director of
Friends of Lake Turkana, which has been opposing the construction of Gibe
III, an Ethiopian dam that threatens to reduce the amount of water flowing
to the lake. Angelei says, "My fear is that if the oil exploration and
drilling happens without community participation, and goes against the
communities' expectations, there is a great possibility of conflict."
Africa's numerous resource-driven conflicts validate Angelei's concerns.
Some of the precautions that she suggests to safeguard her people's welfare
include establishing a regulatory body that fosters transparency in contract
negotiations; balancing oil production with conservation of the area's
unique biodiversity; enforcing high standards of corporate responsibility;
and regulating land sales to prevent conflicts. Finally, the government
should ensure that Turkana people are trained to understand and participate
in the new sector.
If Kenya approaches oil exploration and extraction in Turkana the way my
Facebook friends have, and fails to implement these common-sense
recommendations, a few years from now Kenyans might be sorry that oil was
ever found. Indeed, Kenya could end up with a conflict similar to the one in
Nigeria's Niger Delta, where local people took up arms to fight the oil
industry's degradation of their environment.
Unfortunately, the foundation for such a conflict has already, sadly, been
laid. Many people in the Lake Turkana region are already armed with AK-47s
and other weapons originally intended for protection from cattle rustlers.
If Kenya's government fails to protect the Turkana from the oil companies as
well, its people might well start shooting.
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Received on Tue May 15 2012 - 19:03:08 EDT
