Kenya's nomads feel pain of food price rises

By Hereward Holland

EL RAM, Kenya (Reuters) - It is tempting to romanticize the lifestyle of nomads in Kenya's northeast -- a land peppered with vast termite mounds which burst from rust-colored soil like fingers pointing to the cloudless sky.

For centuries, Muslim pastoralist tribes have roamed the semi-arid wastelands, in perpetual pursuit of pasture and water, seemingly oblivious to the borders of Somalia and Ethiopia.

Despite the picture-book image, these tribes, neglected for generations by the Nairobi government and colonial administrations, are at the sharp edge of global conundrums of poverty, environmental damage and now the food price crisis.

The nomads are among the most vulnerable people in east Africa's largest economy, where per capita income is around $580. The government expects growth of 4-6 percent this year.

In El Ram, an isolated settlement 80 km (50 miles) from El Wak on the Somali border, the nomads' survival is inextricably linked to fluctuations in local and global markets, and political machinations in the distant capital Nairobi.

They earn a meager income from selling milk and, on occasion, livestock. The rise in global food prices means that, like many other Africans, their purchasing power is heavily reduced and now they cannot buy essential supplements.

The semi-nomadic residents of El Ram were also affected, albeit indirectly, by the violence that erupted after President Mwai Kibaki's disputed election in December. More than 1,200 people were killed and some 300,000 were displaced.

The crisis laid bare tensions over land and tribe. Fights over water, cattle and pasture have long plagued the remoter, lawless corners of Kenya where many pastoralists or cattle rustlers carry machine guns and other weapons.