| dc.description.abstract | The Pokomo of north-eastern Kenya farm the banks of the Tana
River, which form the only cultivable area in this otherwide semi-desert
part of Kenya. If the monsoon is regular, the Tana should flood its
banks twice a year, and on the moist soil as the water recedes the
Pokomo grow bananas, rice, maize and a few minor crops. This study aims
at uncovering the rationality of traditional farming methods, and
focusses on the devices by which the Pokomo cope with the extreme unpredictability
of the physical environment, where, for example, the river
might not flood for up to seven seasons in succession, or it might flood
and stay high for several months. Many factors in the physical environment,
such as the river and animal pests, combine to limit productivity.
Land is divided up in such a way that lineal connexions can be re.ad from
the pattern of holdings. The production and consumption unit is the
nuclear family; there is no joint farming between brothers, or between
father and son. Village-based work parties are occasionally called out,
but wider kinship ties are not stressed. Clans are not exogamous. The
traditional political system was not centralised; it was based on a
hierarchy of men's secret societies, and a series of age sets. The need
for flexibility and mobility presumably explain all this apparent atomism.
The traditional political system began to be undermined with the
introduction of colonial administration, and younger men used a new-found
faith in Islam to challenge the traditional gerontocracy. Later, with
the introduction of taxes, the expansion of cash-crop marketing, and
possibilities for wage labour within and beyond the district, the
economy began to be linked more closely to the national economy. In
general, however, the District was ignored by Government, so that its
poverty is more residual than structural. The general frustration and
powerlessness of the Pokomo are explored, and the paucity of options
open to them at the local level for generating any cash income is
demonstrated. At present, the only valid alternatives are to become
an irrigation scheme tenant, or to sell one's labour. An irrigation
scheme, using the river water, was begun in 1955, and now covers 8OO
hectares, with about 2000 Pokomo tenants. Plans are afoot to expand
irrigation and thereby drastically reduce the flow of the river, so
that traditional agriculture will no longer be' possible. Thus, by
becoming tenants, or wage labourers, the Pokomo will have completed a
transfer of dependency from the river to the market. My data indicate
that the relative backwardness of the Tana River area is due not to
exploitation, or to innate conservatism, or a lack of aspiration, but
to a lack of outside investment, end a general scarcity of opportunities | en |
