Sandra Gray

Cattle Raiding, Cultural Survival, and Adaptability of East African Pastoralists

Since the late 1970s, cattle raiding with automatic weapons has escalated among nomadic herding societies in northern East Africa. We examine the impact of AK47 raiding on the adaptability of Karimojong agropastoralists in northern Uganda. Most notably, raiding is linked to a loss of population resilience in Karamoja, measured in increased mortality of young children and of adult males in their prime reproductive years and decreased female fertility. AK47 raiding has acted both directly and indirectly as a Darwinian stressor in this population, compromising longstanding adaptive strategies and intensifying selection pressure. We briefly discuss similar effects of recently altered patterns of raiding among related Turkana pastoralists in Kenya. We then consider the process by which this traditional cultural institution was modified in the interests of preserving cultural identity. We conclude nonetheless that cattle raiding with automatic weapons constitutes singularly maladaptive cultural behavior in contemporary pastoralist societies. Indeed, it represents the single greatest threat to their biobehavioral resilience and ultimately may have profound evolutionary costs in terms of pastoralists survival.

Butterfat feeding in early infancy in african populations: New hypotheses

The feeding of butterfat and animal milk to infants during their first 6 months has been documented in a number of pastoralist populations in Africa and elsewhere. In the view of the majority of nutrition scientists and physicians, this practice heightens the risk of malnutrition and infection for the infant. Where these nonbreastmilk foods are used to replace breastmilk, this view certainly is justified. In high‐risk populations who use foods such as butterfat as complements to unrestricted breastfeeding, however, the relationship between early supplementation and infant growth and morbidity may be complex. Moreover, it may be mediated by the nutritional status of mothers and the nutritional adequacy of their breastmilk. In this work, the ecological context of butterfat feeding in Turkana, Kenya, is examined. It is argued that butterfat promotes positive infant energy balance prior to the critical period of the transition to active immunity, which occurs during the stressful dry season. Breastmilk alone may be inadequate to sustain growth and fat storage of young infants, since the diet and nutritional status of Turkana mothers suggest that fat content of their milk may be at the low end of the human range. In an environment where selection pressure is assumed to be high, a strategy of complementing the fat in human milk with butterfat may prolong positive energy balance of infants and enhance their resistance to infection and their survival during the critical period. Hence, it is an important component of human adaptation in Turkana. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 10:163–178, 1998.

Correlates of dietary intake of lactating women in South Turkana

Previous studies of nutrition among nomadic pastoralists in South Turkana, Kenya, have suggested that social mechanisms may be used to buffer vulnerable members of the group from acute nutritional stress. During 1989–1990, 24‐hour dietary recall data were collected from 101 lactating women in Ngisonyoka, Turkana. Multivariate regression was then used to quantify the effects of environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic variables on dietary intake. The location of individual herding camps had the greatest impact on maternal diet. After the site of camps, rainfall patterns, the socioeconomic ranking of the herding unit, and the age and rank of wives were the most significant predictors of maternal food consumption. The results suggest that some women in the study were buffered from moderate seasonal nutritional stress by the practice of food‐sharing among members of their social network, as well as by voluntary reduction in dietary intake by other women. Maternal dietary intake differed both qualitatively and quantitatively between herding camps of higher and lower socioeconomic ranking.

Beer is the cattle of women: Sorghum beer commercialization and dietary intake of agropastoral families in Karamoja, Uganda

Karimojong agropastoralists of Uganda have employed a dual subsistence strategy of cattle herding and sorghum cultivation to survive in an unpredictable environment, one afflicted by a severe humanitarian crisis. Armed raiding since the 1970s has led to devastating cattle losses, high male mortality, and increased sedentarization of women and children in densely populated homesteads, where infectious diseases and malnutrition rates are prevalent. Fieldwork in 1998-1999 confirmed the detrimental effects of armed raiding on child growth and development. During this period, however, women maintained largely traditional subsistence patterns. Follow-up fieldwork in 2004 revealed surprising subsistence changes: sorghum beer, an important food and ritual item, was being brewed for sale, which had not been noted in previous literature on the Karimojong. We outline the role of beer in the diet by analyzing the nutritional profile of Karimojong women and children, nutrients supplied by beer, and those supplied by foodstuffs purchased with sales profits. Commercial beer supplied from 3 to 6% of energy intake, and grains leftover from brewing (dregs) supplied from 3 to 12%. Selling beer was womens preferred form of casual labor, with differing patterns of participation in brewing between rural and peri-urban areas. Women who were paid in currency relied on profits to purchase nutrient-rich supplemental foodstuffs important in an otherwise marginal diet, as well as beer. The households of women who worked for other brewers or purchased beer wholesale and sold it retail relied heavily on dregs for daily subsistence. Nutrient intake was highest among women with cattle and sorghum who brewed and sold beer from their homesteads, and lowest among women who lacked sorghum and worked for commercial brewers in urban centers. Because nutritional status remains marginal in Karamoja, beer commercialization as a consequence of subsistence changes could have dramatic health consequences for women and children.

Mixed-longitudinal growth of breastfeeding children in Moroto District, Uganda (Karamoja subregion). A loss of biological resiliency?

This study examines the pattern of growth, underlying growth velocity and nutritional status in a sample of thirty breastfeeding Karimojong children, aged from birth to three years. A mixed‐longitudinal structure was adopted for the study, which was carried out between August and December, 2004, in two communities in Moroto District, Uganda. Monthly anthropometric and health examinations were administered to mothers and children during this interval. Children in the study were small at birth but grew relatively rapidly for their first six months. Thereafter they experienced falling off of growth in weight, length, and head circumference. Loss of growth velocity and deterioration in nutritional status after six months was a result of physiologic stress arising from high parasite loads, introduction of inappropriate weaning foods, and psychosocial stress associated with patterns of maternal behavior. Environmental and maternal effects on child growth were exacerbated by widespread armed violence and related subsistence change in these communities. Growth of these children reflects loss of growth plasticity resulting from worsening environmental and social conditions in Moroto in 2004. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2008.

The End of the End

The theoretical framework of this book is human ecology, and it builds on a long tradition of ecosystems research in pastoralist societies. What distinguishes it from earlier studies is the author’s rejection of a model of the ecosystem as self-regulating. Instead, the model upon which Terry McCabe builds his argument is environmental disequilibrium. In a seminal paper published in 1988, Ellis and Swift described Turkana pastoralism as an adaptive response to nonhomeostatic ecosystem dynamics, or disequilibrium. At disequilibrium systems are incapable of self-regulation because external physical drivers such as rainfall patterns force their populations into decline well before they are able to attain carrying capacity—the defining feature of homeostatic systems. Sustainable human responses to disequilibrium require extraordinary behavioral plasticity. McCabe explores how the Turkana secure the survival of their herds in the short term by optimizing physical mobility, individual autonomy, and sociopolitical flexibility across a range of environmental contingencies. Among McCabe’s objectives in the volume is to “bring the ecosystem concept back into the analysis of human-environment relationships” (p. 7). The book therefore begins with a background chapter on the South Turkana Ecosystem Project (STEP), perhaps the definitive study of human ecology in a pastoralist system (Little and Leslie 1999). McCabe began his work in Turkana as a STEP researcher. A review of the literature on the ecosystems concept in anthropology and of more recent work on disequilibrium systems follows. Chapter 3 provides a discussion of Turkana social organization that is informed by the environmental and political history of Turkana District. Chapter 4 focuses on the geography and ecology of Ngisonyoka, the territorial subdivision that was the locus of STEP’s and of most of McCabe’s research. In a critical chapter (5) he introduces the central theme of the monograph, the linkage of pastoralism and violence. The odds that a family’s herds will survive over the long term are close to zero. Ultimately, disequilibrium defies all attempts to avert catastrophe (the loss of the herds). Disasters strike—randomly—and require a rapid response if the family is to avert starvation. Under these conditions the single most effective strategy to rebuild the herds is to acquire animals through raiding. This is the fundamental paradox of East African pastoralist societies: the cattle that ensure their survival expose them to raiding and violence. As the women in this study express it, “Cattle bring us to our enemies.” The heart of the book is the next four chapters, in which McCabe chronicles the changing fortunes of four Turkana herders and their families, in response to raiding and disasters, over a 16-year period from 1980 to 1996. The chapters are predominantly ethnographic, as he addresses a second major objective of the book: to reclaim human-ecosystems research by emphasizing its humanity. His analysis describes the actions and reactions of individuals behaving as people rather than as effects in a flow chart. He begins the section with a description of the situation of each of the four herding units in 1980 and traces the movement of their camps in the seasons that follow. He analyzes the reasons herders elected to make particular moves and the results of these decisions in terms of herd growth or decline. He investigates the correspondence between herd dynamics and family formation, development, and disintegration. His data quantify the direct effects of raiding on migratory patterns and herd growth as well as its indirect effects, through these variables, on family well-being and survival. In the next-to-last chapter of the book, McCabe expands his analysis beyond the four focal families to an examination of group movements in four territorial divisions of the Turkana in response to drought in the mid-1980s. In two divisions, raiding was the driving force behind their moves, whereas in the other two sections drought and livestock disease figured most prominently. McCabe considers the ecological, political, and cultural factors implicated in variable effects of drought on different sections. In the final chapter of the book, he considers the implications of his findings for economic development in pastoralist zones. This is a fine and timely book. First, its insistence that the ecosystem be placed front and center in human-environment interrelationships is particularly compelling at this time, when global climate change threatens both biological and cultural diversity. Second, this is the first comprehensive analysis of a pastoral system as a set of highly individualized responses to disequilibrium. Lastly, it documents a pastoralist society immediately before it embarked upon the extended spiral of violence that has engulfed the whole of the East African pastoralist zone and may ultimately spell the end for pastoralism as a viable human adaptation in this region. McCabe’s research overlapped with the widespread adoption of automatic weapons (AK-47s) by herders in northern Kenya and northern Uganda. Between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s, partly as a consequence of the influx of these weapons, the structure of pastoralist violence was transformed from small-scale, opportunistic raiding with spears to carefully orchestrated attacks with modern assault rifles. This book provides us with insight into the factors that compelled the Turkana to adopt automatic weapons: unrelenting drought alternating with floods and livestock epidemics and increasingly savage raids by Pokot herders to the southwest, who

Longitudinal weight gain of immunized infants and toddlers in Moroto District, Uganda (Karamoja subregion).

This study examines longitudinal weight gain of a sample of 123 immunized children from Moroto District, northeast Uganda. The weight data were combined from two sources: (1) anthropometric examinations carried out between 1998 and 2004 by a research team from the University of Kansas, and (2) weights recorded on childrens immunization records by local health care practitioners. Our findings conform generally to the pattern described in previous studies in this as well as other pastoralist populations in sub‐Sahara. Relative to international standards, the weight‐for‐age status of Karimojong children was best during the first 3 months of infancy. Noticeable declines in weight velocity occurred in the fourth month and after the sixth month. Weight gain was static after the second year, when upward of 40% of children were clinically underweight. Factors influencing weight gain in this sample include immunization status and maternal height, weight, and parity, but these effects explain relatively little of the variance in weight gain. We conclude that immunization is not sufficient to buffer Karimojong children from multiple stressors during teething and weaning. Of these, the practice of canine follicle extraction (CFE) is of most interest, although its effects in this study are ambiguous. The data also are suggestive of variability in the pattern of weight gain between closely spaced birth cohorts. This finding may be of particular importance for the interpretation of growth patterns described for other pastoralist populations in sub‐Saharan Africa. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 2010.

Mixed‐longitudinal growth of Karimojong girls and boys in Moroto District, Uganda

In this article we examine results of a mixed‐longitudinal study of child and adolescent growth among agropastoral Karimojong children in Moroto District, northeast Uganda. During a 5‐month period from August to December, 2004, longitudinal data were collected for a mixed sample of 104 Karimojong children, aged from birth to 18 years. During a previous study in 1998–1999,we had measured 26 of these children who then ranged in Age between 3 months and 7 years. Most of the children were small and thin relative to accepted growth standards, and prevalence of stunting and wasting in childhood was high. In the period from the end of childhood through adolescence, however, Karimojong girls showed marked variability in annual growth, with some attaining a large adult size relative to what we predicted based on their poor childhood growth. Developmental, evolutionary, and environmental determinants are considered. We conclude that growth of these children reflects exposure to environmental insults that vary unpredictably within relatively short intervals. Variability in the magnitude and timing of these insults among children from different birth‐cohorts is probably sufficient to account for so‐called “shifting” of growth percentiles in childhood and adolescence in this mixed sample. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009.

Comparison of body composition among settled and nomadic Turkana of Kenya

Adoption of farming along the rivers of Turkana District in Kenya has lead to the settling of traditionally nomadic Ngisonyoka Turkana pastoralists. The impact of resulting changes in activity and energy expenditure, disease, and diet have not been investigated previously. This study examines the effects of subsistence transition on body composition of nomadic and settled Turkana. Anthropometric measurements (height, weight, skinfolds, circumferences) were taken in 1989-1990 and 1994, from a sample of 93 nomadic and 81 settled males, and 184 nomadic and 107 settled females. The two groups were compared by sex using univariate tests. Factor analysis was used to identify important components of body composition differences, and these were tested for differences between groups. The effects of age and parity on body build were removed for the analysis. Results indicate that settled males and females both have greater fat stores than nomads. No differences were found between male groups in fat-free mass. However, nomadic females develop more lean tissue and are larger than settled females. Differences in body composition between groups probably reflect differences in diet, disease, and activity. The settled diet based primarily on grains may be calorically sufficient to encourage fat tissue stores, but deficient in protein necessary for fat-free tissue development and growth. The high protein, low calorie nomadic diet may contribute to maintaining fat-free mass but not adipose tissue. Increased exposure to pathogens may contribute to differences in overall body composition by increasing the nitrogen and amino acid requirements of the settled population. Differences in physical activities may be responsible for some bodily differences by encouraging muscle hypertrophy.

Child Growth in Karamoja, Uganda: Effects of Armed Conflict, Subsistence Change, and Maternal Behavior

This chapter reviews recent studies of child growth among Karimojong agropastoralists in Moroto District (Karamoja sub-region), northeast Uganda. In recent decades, prevalence of stunting and wasting has increased among Karimojong children, compared with children from this population in the 1960s. Their growth is also poor by comparison with closely related Turkana pastoralists in Kenya. Slow growth and poor nutritional status of Karimojong children today is partly a consequence of heavy disease burdens in this population, but these have not changed since earlier decades. However, maternal capacity to mediate the impact of infection and other stressors on children’s physical well-being – a critical buffer against environmental insults resulting in growth faltering – has been undermined by subsistence changes associated with worsening environmental conditions and decades of armed conflict in Karamoja. As a result of the disabling of the agropastoral system, the nutritional quality of the diet has deteriorated while demands on maternal time of other subsistence activities interfere with maternal care. Specific effects of dietary change and altered maternal behaviors on breastfeeding and weaning and on the growth of children in their first few years are considered.