Ewaso Village: Poems and Stories from Laikipia County, Kenya

By Salim Amin and Chip Duncan

The Maasai people of East Africa comprise one of the most intriguing and resourceful cultures on Earth. For more than a thousand years, the Maasai and their Samburu neighbors have survived and thrived as pastoralists on the savannah near Mt. Kenya and the Maasai Mara borderlands of Kenya and Tanzania. Photojournalist Chip Duncan exuberantly combines prose, poetry, and beautiful photographs to celebrate the stories, songs, rituals, and dreams of people who live in Ewaso Village, one of his favorite places to visit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SelectBooks
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781590795217

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about birth, death, stars, fire, critters, climate, family, friendship, and keeping bees. The stories take place in the sun-scorched, rolling savannah of Laikipia County and Ewaso Village in rural Kenya. My work as a documentary filmmaker brought me to Ewaso Village for the first time in 2012. As a lifelong resident of America’s very green Midwest, little about the brown, parched landscape of Laikipia County spoke to me at first, but the local people did.

As part of my work, I’ve documented global cultures and spiritual practices on every continent except Antarctica. The Dungchen long horns of Bhutanese monks and hand drums of Haitian Vodou celebrants still ring in my ears. I can still see an Andean shaman tossing coca leaves from atop Peru’s Wiñay Wayna, and the sweet taste of dried apricots and raisins puts me right back in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Province. But the Maasai people in and around Ewaso Village inspired a part of me that had been buried by deadlines and drive. Their easy laughter and ingenuity now bring me back annually, and their knowledge of the earth has helped me discover new ways to listen, to learn, and to slow down.

During the past few years, I’ve done numerous speaking engagements that include my photographs of and experiences with the Maasai people of Laikipia County. Some talks include discussion of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, but most are related to the topic that defines much of my international work for the past two decades. That is, how do we build bridges between cultures instead of building walls? How do we break down stereotypes and build trust? Of course, the simple answer is to get out more, go see the world, and open our minds to the fundamental truth that innovation, creativity, and great ideas transcend borders. The complicating factors involve overcoming our own fear and uncertainty, finding a way to afford the travel and, in my case, putting aside the natural introvert that lives inside me while extending myself through curiosity and a genuine desire to make friends around the globe.

It didn’t take many speaking engagements to anticipate a list of common questions about documenting different cultures, including:

Where do you sleep?

What do you eat?

Where do you go to the bathroom?

What happens if you get sick?

Are you ever afraid?

My answers differ depending on the place and climate, but the short answer is that I usually sleep in a tent for about a month each year, I gave up being a vegetarian two decades ago and prefer to eat the food that’s local, I go to the bathroom when and where I have to, and when I’ve been sick, it’s usually been intestinal and manageable. Fear is a normal part of life, and it takes many forms. Assessing the risks helps us navigate fear, but at some point a decision has to be made. I can be as uneasy or fearful visiting a Florida country club as I am documenting a Sufi festival in Khartoum or a protest on the streets of Nairobi. But the rewards begin by saying yes. The common denominator I’ve found documenting cultures around the world is that we are all just people, and the people I meet everywhere I go share a generosity of spirit and desire to make visitors feel comfortable. It’s true in a slum, it’s true in a palace, and it’s true in most places where our intentions are not about taking from or exploiting the people we’ve come to see. In my experience, the Maasai are the unquestioned champions at making me feel welcome. From my first visit, their curiosity has matched my own, and their kindness to visitors is unsurpassed.

The other question I get with some frequency has to do with my use of the word privilege. After documenting many natural and unnatural crises including post-earthquake Haiti, Darfur during the genocide, Burma during the last dictatorship, and a few visits to Afghanistan since the 2001 NATO invasion, I’ve heard myself describe my visits as a privilege quite often. It is a privilege because I grow from my experiences with other cultures. With some reflection, I also know that I, like many Western aid workers and photojournalists, sometimes use the word privilege to describe our experiences as if to shake off some of the guilt we may feel by simply having the luxury of a reasonable income or the opportunity to get on an airplane and leave at the end of a dangerous assignment. Is it a privilege to do the work? Yes. And it’s often a privilege to be able to go home, or even to have a home to go to. The guilt that comes from the privilege of leaving a crisis zone is an age-old part of the journalistic profession and we all deal with it in our own