Photographer Geert van Kesteren visits the Ogiek in Kenya
Initiation (in Dutch literally de-greening) in Mau forest

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Photo journalist and winner of the Silver Camera Geert van Kesteren travels around the world looking for urgent stories. Last year his book about the war in Iraq was published. In december Geert visisted Kenya to record the struggle for land rights of the Ogiek.

Text and photos by Geert van Kesteren

High in the mountains of Mau forest lies the settlement of Kapcholola. It is a village of no more than three huts, surrounded by wooden poles. The grass land around the village is full of sawed off tree trunks. The morning dew is still on the leaves when 20 boys set out shouting and laughing. The girls that follow them are blowing referee whistles. “To make the boys happy”, one of the girls says joyfully, “because tonight they will become a man.”
The boys and girls speed up the pace, hurried on through the forest by the sound of the whistles. I have trouble keeping up with them. I’m catching my breath after the first minute; we must be high up in the mountains, the air is cool and thin. The kids run uphill and then follow a mud path down through huge trees, where they cross a stream stepping on slippery stones, to run up the next hill again. When the group of boys and girls finally drops to the ground panting and whistling, some of the boys utter loud cries; one boy yodles like Tarzan, dressed in hyrax skins.
Then the boys disappear into the thicket. The hyrax skins protect them from the thorns. After a few hours they emerge, laughing, carrying branches of the korosiot tree, symbol of regeneration. When the seeds of this tree drop to the ground, very soon a new tree grows from the seed. The boys will hand the branch to their mother after they have been circumcised.

“A circumcision is no joke”, one of the elders tells me. “They cut off a fairly large piece of the skin, and it can bleed for quite some time. If the circumcisor makes a mistake, the parents will be very angry; they do not want their son to suffer unnecessarily, because he should not show fear or pain during the procedure, that would spoil the ceremony and mean disgrace to the family.”

The morning dew is still on the leaves when 20 boys set out shouting and laughing.

Down in the settlement the older men and women and the children have gathered. The men light a fire at dusk, rubbing a stick on a log. When the fire is lit, the women cut their sons’hair. Tradition prescribes that the women and men dance and sing all night long, but they leave that tradition for what it is. The older men drink a lot of the home-brewed Ogiek ‘wine’. The boys have disappeared into the cabin in the woods where the circumcision will take place, they are just a few hours away from the great moment. Actually they had invited me to take pictures of the whole ritual, but now they are having second thoughts. They fear that a white man present might spoil the ritual. We decide to head back to the hotel. We will return later in the week to see how the boys are doing. Their wounds will take a full month to heal.

The men light a fire at dusk, rubbing a stick on a log.

Flamingos
The original inhabitants of Mau forest are honey hunters and know how to survive in the jungle. They have been fighting for years to have their claim to Mau forest recognized; already 70 to 80 percent of the original forest has been cut down. But it is not only a matter of a culture disappearing. It becomes apparent that a whole ecosystem is off balance when I visit Lake Nakuru.
On a first glance, it seems like a pristine Paradise. 1.2 million flamingos wade in the shallow waters on their long stilts, filterfeeding with their crooked beaks. There are thousands of pelicans, and bold eagles can be seen from quite nearby. Then there are white and black rhinos, gazelles, giraffes, and of course the lake itself. The finest view is from a nearby mountain top at sundown. I see a deep blue lake with a huge pink cloud in it, the flamingos. But when you drive to the shore of the lake, you see something quite different. Dozens of dead flamingos litter the shoreline, and bald eagles and pelicans are tearing at the carcasses.

“This lake is dying, it is drying up, it is almost beyond salvation”, says Bernard Kuboba, a research scientist working for the Lake Nakuru National Park. “Our former president Kenyatta loved the flamingos, every week he came down to watch them, they built a house specially for him on the shores of the lake. Kenyatta died in 1978, and his house is now about half a kilometer from the shore. The lake completely dried up in 1930, in 1976 and most recently in 1995. All the flamingos left the lake. El Niño actually saved the lake, causing it to fill up again in 1997. But now we are facing the definitive end of the lake. There is only one cause: the destruction of Mau forest.”

Lake Nakuru National Park covers some 188 sq. kilometers, but the future of the lake is decided over 1800 sq. kilometers, over which the Park has no control whatsoever. It was government policy to cut down the forest and give the land to government supporters. The original inhabitants, the Ogiek, were chased from their land. Now 70 to 80 percent of primaeval forest is gone. Mau forest is the catchment area for three main rivers: Njoro, Makalia and Enderit river. These rivers supply Lake Nakuru with fresh, running water. The rivers have become seasonal, often drying up completely for six months of the year, and only filling up with water during the rainy season. The flamingos are completely dependent on the supply of fresh water, but so is the town of Nakuru, which is already experiencing water shortages.

Lake Nakuru National Park covers some 188 sq. kilometers

Algae
The lake bottom consists of vulcanic ashes and contains a lot of soda and alkaline. Without fresh water running into the lake, the lake water will become toxic. Settlers have started farms in the areas where the forest has been cut; but they are not Ogiek and have no experience with farming on a hill side. Unsound farming methods cause the soil to erode and the (toxic) vulcanic earth to wash away into the rivers, ending up in the lake.The same goes for the giant flower plantations which have sprung up in the former jungle: their fertilizer and pesticides end up in the lake aswell. This causes the algae in the lake to multiply at a very high rate. The lack of fresh water creates a lack of oxygen. Then the algae start to rot and die, producing a lot of stench. Because the flamingos eat the algae, they are exposed to the bacteria which are released by the rotting process. This may be the cause of their dying in great numbers.

“Saving the lake is a matter of land rights”, affirms Bernard Kaluba. “If the land had been given to the rightful owners of the forest, this would have never happened. Even if the forest had been cut down, the land would have been cultivated in in the right way, with respect for nature. We have started a campaign to show the public how the fate of the lake is intertwined with the fate of the inhabitants of the area. We have brought rhinos and giraffes to the park so as not to be too dependent on the flamingos. But you are right: this lake is dying, it will have completely dried up in the near future. The only thing that can save us is that other natural disaster, El Niño. Only El Niño can refill the lake now.”

English translation of the main article of the jan-feb 2005 issue of Indigo,
magazine on indigenous peoples, p. 9-11
© Indigo magazine, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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